Why is this place so dead?

[Heruca]

I thought it was a good idea to have a community of virtual tabletop users for story gamers, so I signed up. As a VT developer, I was interested in hearing what features people would want in order to better support story gaming and not be so map-centric. I initially thought I'd pop in at least once a month to mine the forums for ideas and suggestions, but this community seems to be devoid of any recent activity. I was wondering why.

[Double King]

John, finish this already... :)

back to the OP...
"What features should a VT have to make it more useful to story gamers?"

a problem that makes MT and Vassal so difficult for many exist before you get to the game. Port Forwarding issues aren't spelled out for the average users. And other connectivity / pack-unpack issues with the software or modules is fairly archaically described. at least 60% of the folks that i've tried to drag into either for Story Games have given up before they've begun to enjoy the playing.

[Brennen Reece]

I think John's in the home stretch, and part of what's taking him so long is that he wants to release a low-bug/user-friendly application. He's put a lot of effort into those awful port forwarding issues to make it easy for non-computer-savvy users...because sometimes us hippy gamers are a different type of geek.

[Heruca]

Instead of thinking "pushing around tokens on a big map", think "placing movable graphics on a big background". By that, I mean, maybe don't have a map at all. Use a mood-setting pic instead of a map. Turn off the map grid and the snap-to-grid feature, for a more free-form environment. Instead of character tokens, place Player Character and/or NPC portraits or dossiers instead. Draw lines connecting characters and place text labels or pop-up notes to show PC & NPC relationships. Play some background music or sound effects to enhance the mood of the game. Find creative uses for existing VT features. For example, one could use a card deck feature as an inventory tracking system or a power tracker, rather than for playing cards.

[MJ Harnish]

Actually that's exactly what I have done with Battlegrounds. Unfortunately the lack of a real, integrated character sheet (which at least for me is an important ingredient for successful GMing), and the clunky chat & identity functionality (the latter got better in the releases since I first bought BG but still was hard to use) make it a chore to use. On the upside, BG is by far the most flexible of the VTTs I've used in terms of dice and card mechanics so your efforts are appreciated.

I've managed somewhat better with FG2, but it's a major PITA to customize unless you like programming - setting up the Mouse Guard ruleset took more than 30 hours of effort which is not something I want to do for every game I play.

I realize I'm in the minority but I don't want map tokens or clunky interfaces that let you do a billion graphical functions like show the radius of torch light. I want a resizable chat window in which you can change text color and maybe add bold or italics easily. I want to be able to add NPCs on the fly and switch identities with a single click. I want a chat entry method that's not limited to 52 characters visible (or whatever it is on most of these systems; it's too short unless you're just typing "I swing"). I want a way to designate between Story, dialog, and OOC actions with a key stroke (FG2 does this at least). I want a way to create fillable character sheets easily and share them - I don't care about automation or fancy graphics. I want functionality and flexibility. I want a simple way to share graphics (drop file in directory, load, hit share). I want a virtual white board I can draw on with different pen colors. And, I think, that's about it.

All this said, the biggest hurdle has been finding reliable players. I have gotten almost no response to frequent posts looking for players and those I have gotten have turned out to almost always result in people who show up once and then fall off the face of the Earth, or who show up sporadically or who sign up to play an indie game and then proceed to argue with the group why we should just play D&D 3.5 (those are my favorite ones...).

If I sound bitter....yeah, I think I am, at this point because I've invested an enormous amount of time, money, and energy in to trying to run games for players via VTTs but the majority of people either aren't interested (which is fine since story games aren't necessarily for everyone) or who view the games as a "show up if I have nothing better to do" commitment. *sigh* And yet...I keep trying. I'm starting to feel like Sisyphus.

[Ben]

Sorry friend, there is much competition. I have my own board (experiment) that after 6 years I just gave up and locked it down about 3 months ago. When the domain expires in Juky - it will be gone. I was also unable to get new members and old members drifted off to other regions of the internet.

You made a good go of it, you should not feel bad... probably now you have a greater respect for facebook... I know I do. I believe table top gaming in general is dieing out. I know myslef that I don't like going to several websites to catch up on things I am interested in either. Sad but true. We are all busier. We are all a little lazy. Great user content (users sharing with users) is a hard thing to grow.

Be well.

[Brennen Reece]

I really hope tabletop gaming isn't dying out. I'm growing a nice little group down here in Alabama, but almost everyone here is coming to the table without the baggage of traditional gaming (not that there's anything wrong with it).

Ben...what was your board? Why do you think it died out? What could have happened differently that kept it alive? Even if I decide to get rid of this community, this info could be really helpful in the future.

Thanks.

[Ben]

I'm a member at FUM also. It used to be great resource for VT stuff. Then they botched their sire overhaul. The new site was not better it was just different without added value at least to me. Since the new site was botched (lots of bugs) confusing design, dropped posts... After a couple days I was not not going every day anymore. After a couple weeks I was not going at all. For all I know - all thats fixed and been fixed. IMO that's what killed FUM.

My site was/is http://www.rolldamage.com I'm guilty of some of FUMs mistakes too. I never finished the calendering system, the File Manager works but remains quirky. What also happened I peaked at around 200 members, 25 or so regularly active. Then the spammers found me. CAPTHCA helped, but I spent as much time deleting accounts and monitoring posts as I did working on the site. This prevented me from making good posts and writing articles too. 25 active members was not enough to get GREAT user generated content. It declined from there.

My last ditch was an attempt to create my own RPG rules set. I had help, 5 people, for a year we made good regular progress, but 1 by one the help dropped off and it was too much to do alone. PUCS is a decent simple BETA rules set. Oh well.

My close friends have convinced me to keep the domain alive, because in the private boards they 1000s of posts recording their adventures in RPG - table top and VT.

BTW the site never lost money, it just never made much money. I didn't really care about that so long as it covered the costs, but I think the amazon adds were viewed as shameless grabs for visitors cash. I did not intend them to be, but it is a valid complaint.

[MJ Harnish]

I'd have to agree. FUM is pretty much dead now too. There's way too many forums nowadays and not nearly time to stay active on all of them. Nowadays I blog about my own experiences and check a couple of boards from time to time but that's it. :o(

[Brennen Reece]

I check your blog regularly. It's one of my favorites. The quality and content is superb.

[MJ Harnish]

Thanks. I've been a little slow on posting the past couple weeks because of being so busy with other shit. :o( Hopefully I'll get the chance to start writing longer articles again once we finish the school year up. I also need to finish writing Kidz (and then get back to Desperate Measures).