Show HN: Roll20, a new virtual tabletop for playing RPGs online • Hacker News Board

Re: Show HN: Roll20, a new virtual tabletop for playing RPGs online

#31

Post by NolanT » Sat, Apr 14, 2012, 8:28 AM UTC

colomon wrote: post #29

A very cool project, I've passed word on to the gaming friends I thought might be interested. Heck, I'd be completely geeked about playing D&D or d20 Star Wars using it, particularly with the vast majority of my gaming friends living at least two hours drive away. It doesn't seem like it would suit my style of GMing at all, though. It's been decades since I used a battle mat or dice. My basic style is just to tell th…

There's no downloads outside of an updated flash player, so there's no reason not to use the system for that. There will be a large kind of empty portion of screen... just like you'd have a large empty table in front of you. Heh.

I will say, I'm really jazzed that combat-wise we have a grid-less measurement system. Like, you can quickly drag your mouse to go "okay, this would move me 10 feet" or whatever, and I've always wanted to fiddle with that as an option.

Re: Show HN: Roll20, a new virtual tabletop for playing RPGs online

#32

Post by NolanT » Sat, Apr 14, 2012, 8:35 AM UTC

intended wrote: post #30

colomon wrote: post #29

A very cool project, I've passed word on to the gaming friends I thought might be interested. Heck, I'd be completely geeked about playing D&D or d20 Star Wars using it, particularly with the vast majority of my gaming friends living at least two hours drive away. It doesn't seem like it would suit my style of GMing at all, though. It's been decades since I used a battle mat or dice. My basic style is just to tell th…

Come to think of it - thats probably a good simple feature for them to add: An 8 bit mode or a simplified mode - A lot of the genre is related to imagination - the GM comes up with his description of frightening beasts, and people fill in the gaps with their own take on it. At the same time the case should also be made that a good market place will also create good art that inspires people to come up with scenarios.…

Had a guy on Something Awful today ask if he could play on a white background with just color blocks as tokens.

Yes.

Play checkers if you'd like. Honestly, at it's base this is a system of layers in a browser. You can put one thing on top of another thing. You put a token on a table. That's why this thing is cool, I think. Yeah, I'm using it to play D&D... but Riley and I were both pretty intent on making sure this was a blank slate. We both love video games-- but we also both loved that tabletop games can be so, so much more because it's whatever you bring (or don't bring) to the table.

Re: Show HN: Roll20, a new virtual tabletop for playing RPGs online

#33

Post by silverlight » Sat, Apr 14, 2012, 11:08 AM UTC

ceol wrote: post #26

This is such a cool implementation. Would you be willing to do a write up about how you got the basic tabletop functionality working? I see on your acknowledgements page[0] you use NodeJS and ShareJS. I assume you do JSON object editing like the Hex example[1]? [0]: http://roll20.net/policies/acknowledgements.html [1]: http://sharejs.org/hex.html

I will try and put together a writeup when I get a spare moment. Yes, we are using the JSON object syncing functionality.

Re: Show HN: Roll20, a new virtual tabletop for playing RPGs online

#34

Post by colomon » Sat, Apr 14, 2012, 3:40 PM UTC

NolanT wrote: post #31

colomon wrote: post #29

A very cool project, I've passed word on to the gaming friends I thought might be interested. Heck, I'd be completely geeked about playing D&D or d20 Star Wars using it, particularly with the vast majority of my gaming friends living at least two hours drive away. It doesn't seem like it would suit my style of GMing at all, though. It's been decades since I used a battle mat or dice. My basic style is just to tell th…

There's no downloads outside of an updated flash player, so there's no reason not to use the system for that. There will be a large kind of empty portion of screen... just like you'd have a large empty table in front of you. Heh. I will say, I'm really jazzed that combat-wise we have a grid-less measurement system. Like, you can quickly drag your mouse to go "okay, this would move me 10 feet" or whatever, and I've al…

Heh, usually the table gets filled with munchies when we play face-to-face. :)

That said, I'm convinced this is worth trying out, and will definitely keep an eye on it. If I can find the money in our budget, I'll contribute on Kickstarter too. (That's a big if at the moment, alas.)