Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition Presentation: Part 3

[Lazybones]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aLXuMb6WWw&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fgadgets%2Eboingboing%2Enet%2F2007%2F10%2F16%2Fdungeons%2Ddragons%2D40%2Ehtml

Haven't looked for the other parts, but this part shows the new 3D table top tool so you can play online remotely.

[Shayne]

Thats pretty damn slick.  With most people prefering to get together for an adventure, you could easily connect a laptop to a TV to provide the player perspective.  I can see this being wonderful to use especially when it comes to planning things in the future.

I would hope they make it extensible so that things like SWPRG, D20 Modern, etc can use it as well.

[Thorin]

I've got several qualms with it.  Here's the first few:

Notice the movement?  You go through walls, you don't path out exactly what square you'll take.  So how do you figure out Attacks of Oportunity?
Notice the slow loading of monsters?
Notice they use a nice-looking map?  I've found it always takes longer to make a nice-looking electronic app than to sketch out a simple one on graph paper.
Notice they make a big stink about the Character Customizer?  (or whatever they call the make-your-unique-bling-bling-avatar)  Why is that so important?  Are gamers nowadays unable to use their imagination to figure out what their character looks like?

Don't get me wrong, I like that they're at least exploring the possibility of an electronic tabletop.  But why not buy out one of the existing open-source products?  Why roll your own, when there are ones out there that have had the bugs taken out?  And why pull the plug on Code Monkey Publishing (the guys who were hired to support and upgrade eTools) before this stuff is even near completion?

[Lazybones]

I've got several qualms with it.  Here's the first few:

Notice the movement?  You go through walls, you don't path out exactly what square you'll take.  So how do you figure out Attacks of Oportunity?

There is no movement tracking, just like on a table top grid it is still up to the player to count spaces. They just made a virtual board and virtual character.

Notice the slow loading of monsters?

He didn't really load, the DM revealed him then moved him on his turn.

Notice they use a nice-looking map?  I've found it always takes longer to make a nice-looking electronic app than to sketch out a simple one on graph paper.

They commented on there being two ways to create the maps. 1) drop in generic graphic tiles 2) just draw it out

Notice they make a big stink about the Character Customizer?  (or whatever they call the make-your-unique-bling-bling-avatar)  Why is that so important?  Are gamers nowadays unable to use their imagination to figure out what their character looks like?

As they commented, many DND plays like to have a photo of their character, and before now the only way to get them was to draw them, get a friend to draw it, or like me in ETools look for a closest match. It is just something else to customize.

Don't get me wrong, I like that they're at least exploring the possibility of an electronic tabletop.  But why not buy out one of the existing open-source products?  Why roll your own, when there are ones out there that have had the bugs taken out?  And why pull the plug on Code Monkey Publishing (the guys who were hired to support and upgrade eTools) before this stuff is even near completion?

Money

[Thorin]

Other online tabletop software allows you to map your movement to a grid so the DM can tell if you're moving past an invisible foe that you don't know about yet (really, why else would you ever pass within striking distance?).

Hmm, maybe I should've watched a little closer...  My comments were based on having seen this previously over a month ago.  They didn't include the dragon that they loaded from the monster list in this video.  It took forever to load.

Mapping on the go using software?  All I say is try it in a session and see how much or how little it slows you down.

As for the character sorta-3D portraits, all you can do is swap in and out gear, and maybe by the time the software launches pose their arms and legs a little.  You're still not going to be able to provide action shots.  There's already a free portrait generator out there, has been out for four years.  Damnit, of course now I can't find it   but I used it before I worked at Upside, so...

Pulling the plug on Code Monkey Publishing's support of eTools so far before the release of D&D4 actually *costs* them money.  Remember, every copy of eTools that Code Monkey Publishing sold for $30 went straight to Wizards.  Since Wizards doesn't have anything to replace it with for at least six to nine more months (I doubt they'll hit the deliver date that they're promising, at least hitting it with software that'll be usable), they're giving up interim sales of a product that is costing them *nothing* to continue living.  CMP carries the cost of patches and offsets that with the price of datasets.

[Mr. Analog]

I'm vastly unimpressed by the whole thing. If people want to play a hack-n-slash computer game WOW is right there already.

D&D has been around for 30 years in it's current state more or less. They've gone through various rule revisions to make it more accessible but ultimately the core of the game is a group of people sitting around a table playing make believe. The next edition will be the same but with the added optional "bonus" of lugging around a computer, and for what? To do what you can do with a sheet of paper or a dry-erase board? I just don't get it.

[Thorin]

I think they're trying to make D&D more accessible to people who aren't able to get together physically.  Like, say, adding Lazy back into the game while he's in Vancouver.  I understand that desire, because it must seem to the execs that there's this great big market of people who *would* buy the books and play if only they could find a group, so building tools to help groups form more easily would turn into more cashflow.  I don't know if there actually is such a market, or how big it is, though.

A big question for me is how the core rules are going to get changed.  3.0 to 3.5 was a bunch of tweaks, but the core rules remained the same.  3.5 to 4.0 is purported to be a much bigger change rules-wise, but I guess we won't know until they publish it.

[Mr. Analog]

I suppose that's true, and while I sorely miss Lazybones playing (man, Lazy, you were a pillar) I just don't think D&D lends itself to "online" play. I'm very concerned about the rule rewrite especially if it has to fit into the parameters of (from what I've seen so far) software limitations.

Who knows, maybe this is just an evolutionary step for D&D but so far I am worried about what it's going to do to the game.