Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 damon00 Dec 15, 2009 21:43:18	In the lead up to the release of 4e I saw a lot of videos demonstrating software for playing D&D over the internet. Like this one: www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWZ2WdeTo1M&feat... What's happening with this? Do people use it? Where do I get it?
#2 yarskath Dec 16, 2009 5:56:49	Last I heard this is planned as a DDI feature and is still being worked on.
#3 Sands666 Dec 16, 2009 6:20:15	Yeah, I remember that they were promoting all of that stuff too.  When I saw this post just now I poked around on the site to try and find something to no avail...  but I think that video looks like shht.  Why would I want to have a virtual mini that looks the same or worse than a real one.  I think it would be cool if you could click on a spot for the mini to move and see it walk there.  More animation would be cool if you were going to go virtual, otherwise just use these guys:  Battlegrounds. They are  a bit pricey in the beginning... and everyone playing has to buy their stuff, but its on line gaming!
#4 Darth_Caffeineus Dec 16, 2009 8:17:01	It has not yet and may never be implemented by WOTC. Not to worry, you can play D&D on the internet right now for free. There are many programs you can use. We use these and they work great. Skype for voice chat Skype.com RPtools for everything else rptools.net/ Even better they work equally well for any edition of D&D or any other RPG you want to play. Quite frankly these programs work so well for us I don't care if we ever see the DDI gametable, and I certainly don't want to pay for it. I think many people who play online feel the same way, and that is why WOTC went in a different direction with their software development.
#5 AbdulAlhazred Dec 16, 2009 9:24:33	Yup, maptool (rptools.net) is your go-to place for a good solid Virtual Table Top. Its pretty much the best thing out there. The main thing you have to do with maptool is get together a good 4e macro set. There are various people that have written different ones that do most of what you need. Building maps for online play (or finding them) can be a bit of a hassle and adds to the DM workload, but not too much. We play strictly online nowadays and have for over a year. It works. I'd rather play face-to-face if I could, but its viable. There are other VTTs. Some look fairly decent but none of them runs on anything but Windows, so if you have any players that have Macs etc then it isn't an option, and that's pretty common these days. Overall you won't go wrong using maptool IMHO even if there are other decent choices.
#6 icedcrow Dec 16, 2009 10:43:31	I use Fantasy Grounds.  It's by far the best from what I have used.
#7 Sands666 Dec 16, 2009 16:14:36	Fantasy Grounds looks expensive.
#8 rczarnec Dec 16, 2009 19:02:22	I use OpenRPG more than Maptool, but both work well for running games.
#9 damon00 Jan 04, 2010 11:15:02	Thanks for the answers guys. Sorry for the late reply. No one replied the day I posted this and then I forgot to check back until just now.  The options you guys presented look pretty promising. I'll have to take some time to really look them over.
#10 TelinArtho Jan 04, 2010 12:46:26	I pretty much exclusively plan D&D through forums - I'm in several games as a part of the Real Adventures group (here on the Community - link in my sig) and run the Core Coliseum group (also here on the Community - link in my sig). Lastly, I also play in several games on Crazy Monkey's Asylum. For tools, I make use of one of many dice rollers (usually the Core Coliseum's one for simplicity), the CoCo's Map generator (which displays the map with pins of where people are or were on the map). Playing by forum is a lot slower of course, but requires much less investment of time on a regular basis - which works well for my schedule.