Quote from: Bren;895668Back in the mid 1990s I bought my friends old DOS-based version of Campaign Cartographer. It was easy to learn, used vector images so you could zoom in without loss of resolution, and made nice maps. I probably still have it somewhere in my office, but it's likely on a 3.5" diskette that none of my last two generations of computers can read and Ghu knows if it will run on my current OS. I miss that program.

Yep.  I have gaming material on 5 1/4' floppies that nothing can read any more, on IOMEGA zip disks nothing can read any more, on Atari ST format disks nothing can read any more, from proprietary programs nothing can read any more.

Quote from: Ravenswing;895699Yep.  I have gaming material on 5 1/4' floppies that nothing can read any more, on IOMEGA zip disks nothing can read any more, on Atari ST format disks nothing can read any more, from proprietary programs nothing can read any more.

And some folks wonder why the computer age did not usher in a paperless society.

Quote from: Omega;895693According to those who were there. Neither Gary nor Dave used minis for OD&D. Or of they did, it wasnt much.

At least in home games, Dave ALWAYS used minis.

Gary NEVER used minis.

The Internet will now explode.

Quote from: Omega;895123Second Life has that level of creativity and customizability and has been used for extensive VR TTRPGing. On the text only scale theres at least one complete translation of Shadowrun into a MUD. Unfortunately the admin are worse than abusive so no one plays it.

I play in an Urban RP sim, and have been RPing in Second Life since about 2006. I wouldn't recommend it for D&D, aside from trying to organize a game within the Urban RP game which uses mesh polyhedral dice and actual physics to roll them.

I also have the Ultimate Licence for Fantasy Grounds and a few other VTTs (Tabletop Simulator, iTabletop and d20Pro) and I think using one of these in an Augmented Reality format might be more practical... eventually. Fantasy Grounds has good potential for this, and when they switch to Unity then maybe 3D representations would be possible. Of the the above I have mentioned, probably the best equipped for Augmented Reality play is Tabletop Simulator.

My current tech I am using for pen and paper D&D is Fantasy Grounds on my travel laptop that I plug into my friend's TV, and then run combat and stuff so everyone can see. There's even a way to manually enter die rolls so players can still use their own dice, or if they are lazy I just drag and drop the attacks.

Quote from: Bren;895695But they did for the even older school, Chainmail.

Which isnt an RPG.

Quote from: Omega;895710Which isnt an RPG.

What do you mean? I can play a hero or a wizard, or an Ent or a company of orcs...

But seriously, printed on each rule book in large font it said

Quote

Rules for Fantastic Medieval Wargames
Campaigns Playable with Paper and Pencil
and Miniature Figures

Quote from: Ravenswing;895699Yep.  I have gaming material on 5 1/4' floppies that nothing can read any more, on IOMEGA zip disks nothing can read any more, on Atari ST format disks nothing can read any more, from proprietary programs nothing can read any more.

No kidding. I finally was able to get back after 15 years my old hard discs that had ALL my RPG book material on it for printing. And had a hard time finding anything that could open the text files. The image files still cant. But no loss there.

Quote from: Bren;895905What do you mean? I can play a hero or a wizard, or an Ent or a company of orcs...

But seriously, printed on each rule book in large font it said

Guess you missed the Wargame part there for Chainmail. :rolleyes:

Quote from: Omega;895941Guess you missed the Wargame part there for Chainmail. :rolleyes:

I'm unsure what you mean here. :huh: If this is a joke, I didn't get it. Sorry.

What I quoted is on the cover of the each of the original three booklets of D&D. I'm assuming your are not suggesting that OD&D is not a roleplaying game because the designers called it a wargame. Right?

The subtitle for Chainmail is:

Quote

rules for medieval miniatures

[/FONT]

It doesn't say it is a wargame, but the motto of the company that published it is "WARGAMING WITH MINIARTURES." Clearly from context Chainmail is a wargame. Circa 1974, Chainmail and D&D were each called wargames.

Now the Chainmail rules are mostly about fighting with miniatures representing units. I alluded to that by my comment about roleplaying a unit of orcs. That was intended to humorously acknowledge your accurate point that Chainmail was mostly about playing miniatures that represented units not individuals. Even though the fantasy section clearly includes individuals like the above mentioned heroes, wizards, and Ents.

The rules to Chainmail include rules for individual combat e.g. the Man-to-Man Melee Table and the Individual Fires with Missiles tables which allows and seems to suggest people playing individual people, like in an RPG. Chainmail even includes rules for jousting for individual knights. At the point that you are playing the Hero Sir Hugo the Huge jousting against the infamous Black Knight Superhero, Sir Bruce San Spitty it's kind of difficult to argue that what you are doing is entirely unrelated to roleplaying. If I wanted to keep arguing that Chainmail is a roleplaying game that's the route I'd take...but I've always considered it a sort of predecessor to D&D that still had two feet in the wargaming camp and a toe or two in the nascent area of roleplaying.

If we are still disagreeing, could you kindly point me to what our disagreement is. At this point I'm confused.

Yeah thought youd trot that out. Keep struggling since you are so pathetic at trolling.

Back on topic.

The big question with VRTTs is. What are they bringing to the table that existing systems arent doing allready in 2d or semi-3d, or basic 3d?

I mean a fair portion of players dont use minis for RPGs so having a VTT then is adding what? I can sit around in SL and get the same result.

Quote from: Omega;896031I mean a fair portion of players dont use minis for RPGs so having a VTT then is adding what?

Character management. NPC management. Being able to make maps with pins for points of interest which open descriptive links when you click on them if you want. Being able to keep track of initiative automatically. Being able to track combat including rolls and saving throws. Automatic chat logging. There's a lot of useful tools, enough that I am setting up a travel laptop for Fantasy Grounds and Hero Lab so I can go to a friend's place and hook it up to his TV and run encounters without having to worry about loose pieces of paper. I realize you can still run a game without technology. Heck, you don't even need rulebooks if you are determined enough to play something. But I happen to like it.

Quote from: Omega;896031I mean a fair portion of players dont use minis for RPGs so having a VTT then is adding what? I can sit around in SL and get the same result.

If you are talking about current VTTs it isn't a matter that other program and site have a collaborative whiteboard, something to use a dice roller, text chat, and voice. It a matter of it all being combined in a way that is a lot less work for running RPG campaigns. However all software have a learning curve, so if your group know Second Life forwards and back then that going to trump the VTT no matter how good it is. The only thing to consider at that point is whether the RPG utilities the VTT includes for the system your group is using is worth making the switch. As those are of use regardless of whether you use minis or not.

I play a fair bit online using Roll 20 and Fantasy grounds and Google Hangouts and Skype... of all those, with all their bells and whistles, I still find the best experience is just having a hangout for voice chat and texting... maybe the occasional quick sketch to describe something held up to the camera. The rest of them... so many technical issues slowing the game down... and even when everything is working smoothly it ends up feeling so much like boardgames that if it isn't on the screen people cease to imagine it. So extremely limiting on what situations, creatures, atmospheres can be portrayed.
Trying to cram TTRPGs into a video games experience is soooooo restricting... unless of course my imaginary D&D game looks EXACTLY like Neverwinter Nights or whatever.

No interest in the VTT... not even if it were piping the images right out of my head and onto the screen.

I have been intrigued by the idea of using Second Life for role playing for some time--mainly as a way for me to connect with some of my role playing friends who are far away.  (I realize there are better means for this, but SL adds a visual context as well.)  I can also find most of the things I would want for my Cthulhu Invictus campaign already built.  (Tentacled monsters pose a special problem but therein hangs an SL story.)  NPC's require a quick change of accounts, but that needn't be insurmountable.

Quote from: wombat1;896449I have been intrigued by the idea of using Second Life for role playing for some time--mainly as a way for me to connect with some of my role playing friends who are far away.  (I realize there are better means for this, but SL adds a visual context as well.)  I can also find most of the things I would want for my Cthulhu Invictus campaign already built.  (Tentacled monsters pose a special problem but therein hangs an SL story.)  NPC's require a quick change of accounts, but that needn't be insurmountable.

Having used Second Life for the better part of a decade I can safely say that you should have no trouble at all from finding tentacled creatures.