TheRPGSite

Hi fellow GMs,

We are working on a product that will enhance the tabletop RPG experience. I'd like to get your feedback on it.

www.questkick.com (http://www.questkick.com)

It strikes me as a mashup between an MMO guild site and a wiki.

It isn't the sort of thing I would go looking for, personally. I would typically just bend a non-RPG specific resource towards this task.

I can see right now it would be mostly useless for me. I don't do dungeons, I don't use tokens/minis, the calender might have nothing to do with Earth's, the phase of the moon depends on what moon you are talking about - hell, you very well may be on a moon! - weather will vary far too much depending on the world - ammonia rain in a methane atmosphere - lightning storms in an argon atmosphere where the sky glows purple - airless moons with weather defines as the amount of radiation you get - etc., and I can use whatever dice I want now.

I expected this. It's really set up for D&D, and games like it, on a world much like our earth, and with years and seasons much like northern hemisphere temperate earth. You should advertise it like that instead of saying it's for all games.

Utterly uninterested.

I don't use a computer for gaming, I don't allow them at the table, and the idea of "theme music" is, to me, farcically bad.

But I'm a curmudgeon anyway and probably not your primary market.

Now git offa my lawn.  And bring me a beer.

Quote from: flyingmice;692017I can see right now it would be mostly useless for me. I don't do dungeons, I don't use tokens/minis, the calender might have nothing to do with Earth's, the phase of the moon depends on what moon you are talking about - hell, you very well may be on a moon! - weather will vary far too much depending on the world - ammonia rain in a methane atmosphere - lightning storms in an argon atmosphere where the sky glows purple - airless moons with weather defines as the amount of radiation you get - etc., and I can use whatever dice I want now.

I expected this. It's really set up for D&D, and games like it, on a world much like our earth, and with years and seasons much like northern hemisphere temperate earth. You should advertise it like that instead of saying it's for all games.

Not sure where you got the idea it had to be an earth calendar and weather.  That would all be customizable actually.

Quote from: Old Geezer;692038Utterly uninterested.

I don't use a computer for gaming, I don't allow them at the table, and the idea of "theme music" is, to me, farcically bad.

But I'm a curmudgeon anyway and probably not your primary market.

Now git offa my lawn.  And bring me a beer.

Thanks for the feedback.  Theme music actually helps set the mood in our games a lot.  Same reason they use it in movies and video games.  But good to know some people aren't interested in that.

Quote from: questkick;692043Thanks for the feedback.  Theme music actually helps set the mood in our games a lot.  Same reason they use it in movies and video games.  But good to know some people aren't interested in that.

This is another one of those things that I wouldn't go looking for a website to do.

I can see it being useful once familiarity with it has been achieved.

I would use the calendar, and to track initiative and hit points; roll dice.

It is a little hard to judge on a screen shot but my bigissue with these sorts of things is the structure is usually 1) one size fits all and 2) not well suited to how people actually run games and what they genuinely need during play. Nothing I am seeing here suggests this is any different than the other GM software programs that promised the moon and just ended up being more trouble than they were worth.

My suggestion is to start with the three ring binder as the base. Every GM organizes and structures play differently. Being able to customize tabs and organization is key to making something like this work. This service looks like it might be great for certain styles of play online, perhaps not that good for a live game at the table. I hate using three ring binders, but I have yet to find a software progam that replaces the flexibility and utlity they provide.

Again, just going on the one screen shot. Perhaps there is more to the program that I am not seeing.

As someone who plays purely on Roll20, here are my thoughts:

The UI mockup looks nice enough.

Phone play will be nice for people who are busy and would otherwise miss a session, though that might make more combat-heavy games slow to a crawl.

Playing music is always a contentious point. People would generally rather listen to their own music, if they're at their personal computer, in my experience. I know how it feels to WANT to play the right song at the right moment, but usually linking a youtube that people can click if they want works better (and lets players pick songs too!)

I'm curious what you intend to offer over Roll20, Obsidian Portal, etc.

Thanks for the feedback guys.

Shauncat:

Obsidian is geared more towards organizing and looking up notes, it's a little clunky to get around and the GM usually has to bribe the players to use it.  Roll20 is a virtual tabletop for remote games.

Unlike those tools, Quest Kick is designed to be used by the whole group at the table, and every feature is designed to be as simple and quick as possible.  Just off the top of my head, some features that set it apart are weather, music, in-game calendar, and dice.  In addition there will be player tools as well.


BedrockBrendan:

I agree the current tools end up being more trouble than their worth, and there's no point in making another one of those.  We're really focused on making it usable in-game, not just as a planning tool.

Looks pretty cool. I need to try it to find out how it handles combat and positioning in various systems that are not D&D but I'm hopeful.

I wouldn't be interested myself.  I *used* to do background music, but as I get older I find I have trouble picking voices out of a lot of background clutter.

But as far as anything else goes?  I can't imagine why I'd want to pay for an app to do things I already do low-tech and on the cheap.  If I want to roll custom dice combinations, I grab those dice, and I roll them.  If I want to send a player a private message, I get out my pen, scribble on the pad of sticky notes I have to hand for such things, and hand it over.  We all know the game date and season, I've got a chart for moon phases, and I've got a chart for the weather.  And so on.  All in neat, clean, black-and-white, and devoid of busy and distracting graphics.

Mind you, the 20-somethings who've been indoctrinated in the Everything Is Better If You Use Electronics credo becoming so prevalent in our culture would likely eat it up, and I expect you'd have a market there.

Let's see.

Quote from: Quest Kick Website

• Easily create & streamline your campaign in one beautifully designed system unlike any other.
•    Run any tabletop RPG more easily from any computer or mobile device with a web browser.
•    Enhance the mood with a soundtrack tied to events, characters, or places in your game.
•    Snag new adventures, settings, soundtracks, and more from the Add-on Store.

1. Unlike any other? huh? Realm Works by Lone Wolf Development? Inferno? Obsidian Portal? roll20? d20Pro? Fantasy Grounds? OpenRPG? Table Top Connect? 3d Virtual Table top...

2. See above.

3. Any MP3 player can do this.

4. Will this be like the market place in OpenRPG and others? Will it support 3PP?

Okay. I'm suspicious of the kitschy name with "kick" in it. I imagine this is going to be pitched on Kickstarter? You weren't concerned that the blatant product name was going to raise some red flags?

The site needs more info and more screenshots. It needs less hyperbole and more "this is what we're trying to do, this is the need we're addressing, this is what we're excited about". The name has fuck all to do with a tabletop tool and more to do with a desire to score the big bucks on Kickstarter which comes off as sleazy salesman vs. exciting product name (or just mildly naive and uninformed...).

Also, this is theRPGsite where I don't have to be diplomatic and can just dispense with the tough love, so here's some more where that came from.

You have ten posts. You roll up in here and jam a 400lb weekly advert up our unsuspecting pucker-holes before we could blink, drop or run for our lives. In summary, who the fuck are you and what do you like about RPGs? Have you GM'ed a game? Your forum name is the same as your company name and there's NOTHING on your website about who you are! (<- also ringing some alarm bells over here...)

Look. I'm sure your a nice guy. Or gal. OK. I'm lying. I'm pretty sure you're a polished scam artist who rolled up in here to pillage our women and rape our forums, but I've been wrong in the past so perhaps I'm just overly suspicious.

Let's do one of those online RPG play-by-post things as a test. I'll start.

The well-dressed well-spoken stranger (this is you) rolls up in the dark (probably seedy) tavern somewhere in an impossibly cold dark northern place full of trees, snow and death (this is theRPGsite), pulls up a chair at the bar, immediately turns to the crowd and bellows "I love me some cold hard tundra! Huh? You know what I'm talking about? Right!?!? I just so happen to have me some premium grade-A Russian military trucks out front just waiting for a savvy buyer to drive off into the sunset with! What say you? These are the BEST way to conquer the cold north!!"

The bar falls silent. Without so much as a breeze or a pin drop, every man, woman and animal has armed or shouldered some kind of deadly, cold-steeled firearm, pointing right at the shiny-white-smiled stranger. A stalwart gentleman who bears a striking resemblance to Daniel Day Lewis steps forward smoking a pipe, casts a wry smile at the interloper and says...

"We have dog sleds that get us cross the tundra just fine. We don't appreciate lots of nonsense hollering in our resting place and we never. ever. buy shit from a stranger. We have on occasion however, shipped a couple folks like you back to whence they came, as is our tradition, in a simple pinewood box. For convenience, you know, so as his or her loved ones can dispense with trying to put 'em back together and get straight to a proper service."

"Since you're obviously new to town, it would be less neighborly of us to riddle you with bullets without so much as a decent chance to explain oneself, so let's figure out where you stand, shall we?"

"Tell us three things you love about the Tundra (RPGs). Be genuine. You have several dozen guns pointed at you, and since this town is a freedom loving place, any one of my fellows who don't like what your saying gets to put one in ya."

Your turn.

Looks usable.  We recently added all sorts of tech to the game table - laptops and smartphones and all that hoopla.  I was against it at first, but once you get used to it, it's no different than having another pile of books.

The real issue for me is going to be:  how much are you going to charge for it?  How many free maps do we get before you start charging micro-fees for every icon?

Is that the model?  Or do you have something else planned?

I'm interested.

Thanks to everyone who provided constructive feedback.  

vytzka:

Thanks, glad to hear you think it may have potential.

Ravenswing:

Understood.  Some people prefer low tech.  Personally I came up with the idea because I thought the site could make these things easier for my Pathfinder game and for others.

Blackhand,

The pricing isn't set in stone yet, but will likely be a membership fee to use all the tools.  After that you can get both free and paid game content in the Add-on Store.

I might be interested, but it's going to come down to pricing and how useful its going to be since I already use a VTT (Roll20) in the majority of my gaming.
 
Because you're straddling this line between almost-a-VTT and not-a-VTT, a lot of your features are duplicated by Roll20 and I'm not sure there's going to be enough new things to be worth pestering my players over to use or worth my time to implement.

Quote from: Dave;692210I might be interested, but it's going to come down to pricing and how useful its going to be since I already use a VTT (Roll20) in the majority of my gaming.
 
Because you're straddling this line between almost-a-VTT and not-a-VTT, a lot of your features are duplicated by Roll20 and I'm not sure there's going to be enough new things to be worth pestering my players over to use or worth my time to implement.

This probably wouldn't be right for you then if you need a VTT.  Quest Kick is for gaming in person.

Quote from: questkick;692203Based on feedback I got that there wasn't enough info on the site, we added 4 new pages describing the features in more detail.  

If you want to read about the features and see screenshots, they are at questkick.com/world-organizer (http://questkick.com)

That link takes me to the same page and its lone screen shot. Where are the additional pages and screenshots, exactly?

Quote from: Black Vulmea;692324That link takes me to the same page and its lone screen shot. Where are the additional pages and screenshots, exactly?

Yeah thought it would be best not to show the details since it's in development and will probably change quite a bit.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;692324That link takes me to the same page and its lone screen shot. Where are the additional pages and screenshots, exactly?

Quote from: questkick;692505Yeah thought it would be best not to show the details since it's in development and will probably change quite a bit.

That's a BS answer if I've ever heard one.  "Oh, you were so helpful we added more information to the site to make it more clear what the product does."
"Okay, where's that information?"
"Oh, I'm not going to show it to you for some vague, unexplained reason, even though I JUST said I would."

He edited the post with the original note about providing more screenshots, so probably just decided it wasn't a good idea.

No harm, no foul.

Quote from: Bigbywolfe;692667That's a BS answer if I've ever heard one.

*shrug*

No harm in changing his mind. Not much benefit in it that I can see, either, but I'm not the guy with the product for sale.

If I was the guy with the product for sale, I don't know that I would be so glib about dismissing my competition as "clunky."

Quote from: questkick;692081Obsidian is geared more towards organizing and looking up notes, it's a little clunky to get around and the GM usually has to bribe the players to use it.

And the bribery crack is just cheap.

Quote from: questkick;692081Unlike those tools, Quest Kick is designed to be used by the whole group at the table, and every feature is designed to be as simple and quick as possible.

Fact is, we use Obsidian Portal at the table when we play. Last game-day, the players were logged in via a laptop and a phone as I refereed from my laptop.

With OP I link together my encounters, events, characters, locations, items, and the tables I use in the course of running the game. In this, the descriptions of QuestKick on the linked site or that I've been able to find elsewhere around the intreweb offer me nothing I don't already have and used happily for years.

If you want to say that QuestKick adds specific features that OP doesn't have, or that it automates functions which are left to the referee in OP, then perhaps you can draw an actual distinction between the two. If you can explain to me, or better yet show me, how those features make my actual play experience better, then you might catch my interest.

Right now, though, this is nothing but some empty promises.

Not trying to take cheap shots at Obsidian, just stating my experience.  I've talked to people that said navigating around was a bit slow and clunky, and I've tried it myself.  Some of them said they had to bribe players to use it by giving them bonus XP.

But my main point was that Quest Kick serves a different purpose.  We're trying to create something that streamlines the whole campaign, not just the world info.  So everything from combat, to tracking loot, to tracking the date and weather.  If we can make these thing super easy, groups can spend less time looking things up or calculating, and more time creating an immersive game.

QuoteIf you want to say that QuestKick adds specific features that OP doesn't have, or that it automates functions which are left to the referee in OP, then perhaps you can draw an actual distinction between the two.

We actually do have several features like this on the home page: mini-maps, private messages, auto organize, calendar/weather, dice.  Does OP have these features?  As far as I know they don't.

Quote from: questkick;692830We actually do have several features like this on the home page: mini-maps, private messages, auto organize, calendar/weather, dice.  Does OP have these features?  As far as I know they don't.

OP has both private messages and dice built-in.

A calendar and weather feature I honestly couldn't care less about. I have a couple of guesses about how mini-maps might work, but I can certainly include maps, floor plans, deckplans, and such in my OP wiki, so without more information, I have no way to evaluate your claims. The same thing with auto-organize: unless I know how it works, I have no way of knowing if it's of any use to me.

This software sounds like a solution in search of a problem.

I must admit, I find it hard to see a point in a dice roller in a tabletop game. Unless you're playing Exalted or Cthulhutech, but D&D?

Not really worried if there's a problem/solution fit, because we've had a lot of people sign up to use it already.  More just searching for what things people want so we can get a better fit.

So far most people seem interested in a good wiki, weather/calendar, init tracker, status tracker, sharing tools, and private notes.  You can add onto the list if you have any suggestions.

QuoteI must admit, I find it hard to see a point in a dice roller in a tabletop game. Unless you're playing Exalted or Cthulhutech, but D&D?

The purpose is really just to speed up rolls.  You may have to wait 12 minutes to take your turn in combat if everyone's rolling and calculating dice, or only 6 minutes if everyone just clicks on the attack they want to perform and sees the results instantly.  

I like dice myself, so I had mixed feelings about this feature, but once we used it in our game, I found my players spend less time waiting and are more engaged.

Will it be free?

QuoteWill it be free?

Yes there will be free features on Quest Kick.  There will also be premium features.

Quote from: vytzka;692853I must admit, I find it hard to see a point in a dice roller in a tabletop game. Unless you're playing Exalted or Cthulhutech, but D&D?

10d6 fireball?

Quote from: Bill;69350410d6 fireball?

(looks into his dicebag, stops counting d6s after two dozen, and shrugs)

Quote from: Ravenswing;693639(looks into his dicebag, stops counting d6s after two dozen, and shrugs)

But can you look them up, roll them, and calculate the result with bonuses in the time it takes to click a button?

A group of 5 people each spending 30 seconds looking up dice, rolling, and calculating, means waiting an extra 2 minutes between your turns.  That kills immersion and can make combat drag for an extra 10 minutes.

Quote from: questkick;693878But can you look them up, roll them, and calculate the result with bonuses in the time it takes to click a button?

A group of 5 people each spending 30 seconds looking up dice, rolling, and calculating, means waiting an extra 2 minutes between your turns.  That kills immersion and can make combat drag for an extra 10 minutes.

I agree, allthough some will defend rolling huge piles of dice as fun.

The point to me is not that rolling dice can't be fun, but the immerssion breaking aspect.

You can't elimiate metagame thinking or immerssion breaking, but I do like to reduce both where possible.