The Gaming Den

So I noticed a friend messing with Tabletop Simulator. It's a Steamgame, it can play board games and card games and, most notably for our purposes, TTRPGs. It can display a grid, have models, figures, dice. It's a Steam Workshop game, so it has plenty of mod packs up for free.

I grabbed it, played with it, and I was impressed with the potential to be an online gameboard. What's more, it can have cards AND dice and models so you could potentially do After Sundown or other games what involve cards. Online!

I turned a more tech-inclined friend loose on it and he came up with this, based on an encounter I'm going to be running this weekend in the first session of a new game:

So I decided to risk it and sprung for it for the small group that's playing (it was on sale)--I'm doing a teaching game for some folks who wanted to learn.

I'll do a game report after the session, but it looks promising if you put in the time to learn to make it do what you want.

Well, they're competing with Roll20, which is (mostly) free. But at the same time, Roll20's dice roller is shit and I've heard an acquaintance repeatedly find problems with their syntax which cause that.

I mean, it looks cool. But it's also $20 per, or $60 for a 4-pack (currently). So I don't think it's going to go gangbusters anytime soon.

But definitely tell us how it goes. If it goes really cheap or I get some kind of miraculous windfall, I'd be interested in giving it a try.

Yeah, $20 per participant is a bit of a killer. I grabbed it ages ago when it was supercheap, and have only now started dicking around, checking out what's available from the workshop and all. To see some of the features available, you can watch things like TotalBiscuit + friends playing Secret Hitler. So card drawing/shuffling/stacking/flipping mechanics, hidden areas and all that.

I'd like to learn how to create minis and stuff to put into it, but I don't even know what software one would use. And if I did, I don't have the patience to actually go through with it, this is basically the Usagi-like "I WANT TO LEARN HOW TO DO THA-actually I can't be fucked".

As a tech-inclined person that took advantage of the sale, too, I'd also be interested in a rough list of the ressources that went into that encounter.

crasskris wrote:As a tech-inclined person that took advantage of the sale, too, I'd also be interested in a rough list of the ressources that went into that encounter.

I asked and got this:

You can upload static maps, and that the rest is models saved to my personal chest from various mods on the workshop. Specifically, Hilltop Encampment, and several of 'Vess's' packs

Re: Prak

Yeah, the price to entry is a killer. On the other hand, you can use it to do other things, like checkers and chess and jigsaw puzzles, so it's got some other value there, too. We'll know Saturday night how good it is in a live situation.

Edit:

mention the in game tablet, which has full web capability, including youtube, and you can do char sheets via google-docs.

I forgot about that bit. You can play music for the whole group. And other stuff, too.

Yeah, I could see maybe buying it on a whim if the price dropped even just a bit, but unless I knew other people in my social group who had it, it'd be more of an impulse. I mean, if I could get Cards Against Humanity and Munchkin in there, it'd be pretty cool. Magic the Gathering, too, especially since I'd only need to convince a couple friends from high school to get it for it to be worth it (assuming I could put the cards in myself, because if I had to buy them I might as well play Magic Duels with them).

As for playing music and having integrated character sheets, Roll20 does both of those. I don't know of any ability to play video for everyone, though.

Chiming in as the buddy of Maxus that did up the encounter, you can do CAH, Munchkin, and there's MTG as well. There's also Dominion, Twilight Imperium, Red Dragon Inn, and whatever else the workshop folk bothered to upload the resources for. As is, the super hot game that all the cool kids play is Secret Hitler, but you can do about anything really, which is the appeal. I haven't yet tested the dice for randomness, but so far, that seems to be almost entirely physics based, so you might want to watch for people gaffing their own rolls.

As for custom stuff, like models, you can either upload images that go on cardstock cut-out style models, or you can go the extra mile and upload obj file raws to get super cool miniatures. I find it slightly frustrating, but understandable in that you have to get hosts for anything you want custom, but signing up for an imgur account for pictures, and pastebin for raws, isn't that much of a trouble.

You can also right-click dice then click "roll" from the menu to force a "proper" roll, rather than grabbing, shaking and releasing. Or you can drop them into dice-roller towers which have been made.

The big issue for my group really is that importing assets for the system is a real chore. And it simply isn't worth it unless you have someone willing to do it for the group.

I don't think that the "Virtual Environment" model adds anything other than complexity and resource demand.

I like that the map itself is 3D, that was one of the big drivers of my interest in TableTop Connect prior to it's acquisition by FantasyGrounds, but all the rest of the window dressing seems unnecessary.

Honorable mention to the CAH and Magic support, though there's already a very competent Magic digital offering (finally).

i guess you could try and use it for TTRPGs like a virtual battle mat?

Stahlseele wrote:i guess you could try and use it for TTRPGs like a virtual battle mat?

It's what I was planning on doing.

Technical report:

-It works really well. It has a fairly steep learning curve, but there's a lot of keyboard shortcuts and manipulation tricks with the mouse. So if you put in the study time, you CAN learn how to work it fairly quickly. There's also a line tool that shows you units. If you have a grid turned on, you can figure Sneak Attack damage really easily with it.

-Conditional modifiers don't appear to be a thing, so it's up to you to enforce whatever rules you have. Dice are rolled and then added up manually, and you can't trigger stuff to happen on certain events.

-You want to physics-lock set pieces, by the way, so they won't move when things hit them.

Communication in-game is by a built-in IRC client, but the problem is is only scrolls up a limited amount and there's no way to set it to save accounts, from what I can say.

It's also fairly tiny, so until you start a map you've laid out, it looks like this. That's one drawback I don't like.

I also like the in-game tablet. Agrinja had the D&D wiki pulled up on his for reference.

Of course, there's fancy extras and lots of mod packs--the Paladin was able to represent an Enlarge Self by scaling up his model, and you can give individual models notations for name and information--how much damage, any status effects they have going on. I just don't advise you to go for the Apocalypse world mod pack.

Verdict:

If you've got the willingness to learn to use it, Tabletop Simulator makes a good D&D battlemat.

If you have a game group, it's a good buy because you can play chess, checkers, reversi, cards, whatever, when you're not gaming, so it's thing there.

Just makes sure you get it while it's on sale, and pool money to grab it in bundles to maximize that dollar.


Game report:

The players went with it pretty well. The one who wasn't so familiar with it got used to it and was rolling dice and asking "Can I get an attack bonus for my bow if I get on top of this thing, for shooting from a height?" REALLY QUICKLY.

They grow up so fast. ;__;

I recently tried out Tabletopia with a friend who backed it on Kickstarter and was really impressed by how it worked too.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ta ... escription

The nice thing about it is that it includes a matchmaker function for the tabletop games which I think would not be too hard to make applicable for RPGs. I'm just not sure what's the required price tag to get the editor function that lets you make your own custom scenarios essential for DMing.

Can you run a D&D tabletop simulator on the in-game tablet?

How convenient is it to move large formations of models, like a formation of goblin spearmen. Could it be used for tabletop skirmish/war games?

OgreBattle wrote:Can you run a D&D tabletop simulator on the in-game tablet?

Probably something web-based instead of a downloadable.

I now sort of want to see someone running Roll20 on the in-game tablet in Tabletop Simulator... just for the absurdity.

Oh my god a mountain of bears. That's fantastic.

OgreBattle wrote:How convenient is it to move large formations of models, like a formation of goblin spearmen. Could it be used for tabletop skirmish/war games?

You can just select a group of things and move them all, while keeping them in formation (as long as you don't move too quickly - rapid movements can tell it that you're trying to "shake" everything you've grabbed). You can also lock objects to one another so you could in fact lock the spearmen together if you're doing it the way WHFB used to.

Whoops, didn't see the question.

Yeah, there's commands to do all kinds of manipulation, so moving a whole group at once is by no means a chore.

It's also got a huge amount of Warhammer model rips available in the workshop, so presumeably you could play Warhams if you knew how. I don't.

Update:

In this week's session, we taught the rogue's player about undead and Sneak Attack Immunity (and then gave him some monstrous spiders to shoot in a lesson on target priority).

We also pushed the TTS about as far as it can sanely go.

Agrinja made a riser in Blender (re-teaching himself some Blender in the process), and, since the setting was a hilltop with a crypt beneath it, we ran a dual-layered game map and removed the riser when the PCs went below, like taking the roof off a dollhouse.

We also experimented with the Fog of War function, but it was a mixed success--it sometimes vanishes stuff it's touching, but it works well in small amounts.

The more stuff you pile on the table, the more chances of weird physics interactions--Agrinja said an entire joined sheet of grass tile blocks started boomeranging around the room at one point.

So the lesson of the week is: You can do quite a lot with it if you want, but there comes a point when it's too much.

Also, you can make custom models in Blender, and that should be fairly cool.

Looks great. Was there any point that fiddling with the UI slowed down the game?

OgreBattle wrote:Looks great. Was there any point that fiddling with the UI slowed down the game?

Just the initial setting up of the models I'd selected for zombies and spiders, and that's because I'm still not that graceful with it.

Oh, I forgot to mention the stuff on the riser couldn't be physics-locked, so it go a little scuffed as action happened.

Another virtual tabletop on Steam, Fantasy Grounds, apparently has official D&D content from WotC.

http://www.polygon.com/2015/4/22/847047 ... sy-grounds

It's 5e content though, so no one cares about it because 5e is for losers. But... y'know. It's a thing.