What I *want* in a Virtual Tabletop

[Matt Strickling]

Okay, I've been through a lot of different options in the last few days, and I still can't really find what I need. I get a lot of options for maps and minis, and fogs of war, but here's what I really need/want for probably around 98% of the games I'd play.

* Graphical Dice - They don't need to be 3D, or make cool sounds, I just need to be able to drag them around, be able to tell which dice they are, and roll them

* Character Sheet Areas - Even for games without a character sheet, I'd like a spot to keep my dice when I'm not rolling them on the tabletop. Ideally, if I did have a character sheet, I could set clickable areas. That way I could, for example, add the dice for a trait in DitV by clicking that trait.

* Tabletop - This just really needs to be a tabletop. I want to roll my dice here, then be able to push them forward 2 at a time in Dogs.

* Playing Cards - C'mon... seriously? You can't let me draw a few playing cards?

Then just make it customizable for different games and I'm happy.

The sad thing is that the closest thing to what I want that I've found so far is Vassal. If only it weren't so amazingly complicated.

[Dogui]

"The sad thing is that the closest thing to what I want that I've found so far is Vassal. If only it weren't so amazingly complicated."

I know what you mean. I too find Vassal excellent, but creating a damn mod is painful.

[John Lammers]

Okay, I'm not done, and there's much gnashing of teeth about that, but it's not vaporware either--EpicTable really is coming and I really think it hits the points you're looking for....
http://www.epictable.com/dev/dice-and-dogs-in-the-vineyard/

I'm trying to get everything wrapped up but character sheets and make the character sheet designer a follow-up release. I'm currently describing the timing of an alpha as "several weeks, not several months", but I'd be happy to give you a demo in the meantime. I've been using Skype or Ventrilo for audio and Yugma for desktop sharing to give folks guided tours of EpicTable. Since FUMcon, I've integrated the tabletop, and Brennen has helped me make it look better--and ruthlessly harangued me about support for cards ;)

EpicTable started life as very map/mini/vision focused, but somewhere along the line, Brennen introduced me to story games, I found IPR, and all of a sudden, there's all this stuff about pushing dice around, and coins and fanmail, and then Jason Morningstar wanted index cards....

[Phil]

EpicTable started life as very map/mini/vision focused, but somewhere along the line, Brennen introduced me to story games, I found IPR, and all of a sudden, there's all this stuff about pushing dice around, and coins and fanmail, and then Jason Morningstar wanted index cards....

Only FG gets close to being a Story Games friendly VT, however customisation as a pain unless you're a programmer.

[John Lammers]

I think Vassal is actually pretty story games friendly. Of course, I have no idea how painful it was for Brennen to come up with the PTA module for Vassal, but it seemed to me like a closer fit than FG.

[Phil]

Cool, I shall go and have a closer look at Vassal. Its been sitting on my hard drive for a while now, time to dust it off :)

[Matt Strickling]

I totally recommend Filip's Bucket of Dice module for Vassal:
Bucket of Dice

[Bert Isla]

I too have resorted to vassal. Our game group plays a modified system that requires a huge deck of custom cards, and vassal seems to handle that very well. It's biggest drawback is not being able to add resources "live" including the use of say a virtual white board.