Sorry folks, snow storm, new job, ending the term with make-up classes (yeah, make-up classes, weird, huh?), and a pile of freelance, can slow a man down a bit.
I’m back, let’s NeoGrog this shit up!
So Wizards has swapped over to the Silverlight character builder, and I’ve actually be a strange mix of excited and worried about this one for a long time. I’ve know about the swap for a while, it was on the docket before I left WotC, but Non-Disclosure Agreements and blath like that. Getting Mac functionality is big. A better user interface is awesome. But I always knew Silverlight was going to be trouble.
Is that because Silverlight is a big piece of steaming crap? No, in fact I’ll be honest with you, I really don’t know much about the minutia of Silverlight. I know Microsoft is making a strategic retreat from it. It’s not that I have inside information, it’s just that Seattle-speak on downsizing always have that tone of the stepmom who is finally leaving—cold, fake, and promises without any kind of conviction. It’s pretty easy to see the writing on the wall. But that’s only part of what makes me worried.
With nine years with the company under my belt, I can tell you this: Wizards has technological ADD. I’m not poo-pooing Wizards; I’m actually a not-very-bitter Ex-WotC shlub. Many companies have technology ADD. It’s just a matter of fact. I guarantee that as soon as this builder gets all the bugs out of it, someone in the company (usually the new guy on the heels of the dude that left for a better gig or was shown the door by some seemingly sympathetic HR robot) will be wondering if there is a better program or distribution method to use for the character builder. The fate of Silverlight only makes that event more certain. They’ll want to rebuild it, it will be buggy at first, and fans, nerd-ragers, and edition warriors will complain or laugh up their sleeve. The vicious cycle starts again.
This is what happens to a company after daddy leaves.
Hey, but what about the virtual game table?
The virtual game table looks much cooler than I thought it would be. I’m sure it’s got the good folks at d20 Pro wrinkling their foreheads. Again, I think the interface looks good, clean and useful.
There is a bad tendency to put a lot of bells and whistles on a virtual tabletop. To be honest, it just needs to look and perform as well as my real table does. RPGs aren’t computer games; we don’t need to have particle lighting.
You know, for the most part game tables don’t need to do the math for me either. I don’t need it to be perfect, I need it to be D&D/Pathfinder/Call of Cthulhu/Vampire/What the fuck ever. I want the contextual over the procedural, or maybe I want the procedural and the contextual. There is a charm to the imperfection of it all.
Okay, maybe I’m getting old.
Anyhow, I think the game table looks great, and I think it is going to do well, but there are two sides to that “well.” With both sides, the table goes up. It works, or at least it works two weeks after its first launch.
Let’s say it gets 25% of the folks who are playing 4e to run games on the table. Theoretically, 25% should pay off the infrastructure in a number of years (let’s call it X). After X years, everything else is profit. You may make incremental changes based on current game needs, but since the game table does very little interaction with the rules—it is rather rules independent—it only give you a surface to play on, those changes should be few and far between.
Dave Chalker has a beta for the Virtual Tabletop and has an excellent preview at critical-hits.com. Click on the photo from his preview screenshot to read the article.
This is a sustainable model. It should, if managed correctly bring in a rather constant flow of money. But this is rarely what companies look for.
The other side of success is this: A number of people who didn’t have a virtual game table now have one. They didn’t get a D&Di subscription that nonsense. Eye-rolling disdain aside, a percentage of them will try it, and the next thing you know a certain percentage of those guy will like it.
And all the sudden the number of virtual tabletop users rises exponentially. And that’s a big deal. Why?
First off, while RPGers hate change, they love to game. As soon as they find out that scheduling and running games will become easier, they’ll jump on board. I know, some of you are thinking that you would never play on a virtual table top, because you prefer the real thing. And some of you will be obstinate about that point, but not enough of you. One good virtual tabletop will change the way many people will play RPGs.
But having a bunch of folks discover virtual tabletops is tricky, because they take up server space. In the age where Facebook games run up millions of dollars for server companies each month, having the right revenue model is key. I know, I know, it’s called the cloud now, but that’s just marketing and user interface theory at work. Too many or not enough serves can sink any online gaming endeavor (including this one) and being nimble about technology needs has never been WotC’s strong suits.
In fact, the more successful the virtual game table is, the more trouble it may be in, but I’ll get to that next time.
Talk at you soon.
This idea has been around for ages. Whether it was done or not, I don’t know. What is the purpose of this? To get people to play online, everybody in their own home? I don’t see it being useful for the regular game group that gathers weekly (or bi-weekly). How do you get everybody in the game to connect to the same table? Does everybody at the table have his own computer (or iPAD)? Do they all gather around the same computer? I know microsoft has a tabletop computer that people can gather around. The other question is whether it improves the player experience. I know a DM needs a lot of resources at his fingertips to run a good game, so using a computer makes sense. If everybody at the table is each staring at their own computer, it is like going out to dinner and your date is texting all night. I remember playing in the late 70′s when everybody brought their fancy LED TI-35 calculator to the game. It was completely unnecessary, but we carried them like geek badges. I think bringing a computer to a tabletop RPG is the same thing.
That’s really the ball game. If they get CB/MB integration, the ease of running online becomes incredibly excellent. All the other tools leave you with the issue of being slanted toward a demographic with a lot of time on their hands… the time required to input stuff endlessly for their PC/adventure. That is a small part of the overall gamer demographic. Just like HeroForge Excel character generation was fine with 3.5 but untenable for the onslaught of 4E content and the far easier CB, an online table with CB/MB interaction is just incredibly superior… even if it doesn’t have all the bells and whistles of MapTool with framework xyz.
The trick is that you don’t need all of that functionality. But you do need some of it. It isn’t critical to auto-assign conditions on a hit… but it is critical that the game’s flow not halt completely because all you see is an exclamation point indicating “conditions” (which ones not known) on a monster/PC.
The key is for WotC to find a happy medium where they can provide the core functionality needed to run/play an online game and then step back. We want them writing rules, not making the most incredible online gaming platform ever or rewriting it because of 5E. So far, those at WotC leading the tool generation have not shown the best vision or project management skills. It remains to be seen if WotC can finish something (CB, MB, VTT… anything) and actually sit back and make money off of it. I really hope they can do so, because I would like some stability. If you look at MapTool or FG, I think most gamers would admit MT actually has more than you need and just MB/CB integration would be fine and done.
Cosign. But i’m skeptical that this approach will get there. I think what we need is a more open platform, one that they can make stuff that plugs in, but is also open to third party monsters, characters, maps, modules and so on.
That’s not what they built. In fact, from what I’ve read, they’ve made it into more of a “closed garden”, trying for what is effectively a vertical monopoly. It worked for Andrew Carnegie, I guess.
I’ve been using MapTool to run 4e in a live game. My players and I quite like it. They roll dice, I just bonk buttons, it’s a lot better than looking up what the monster does groping for dice every time. I was thinking of building a tool that would read the xml generated by the CB and shoving it into MapTool. I want xml for monsters and items as well. I’m a freelance programmer, I’m sure I could make this all work. Or somebody at Fantasy Grounds could, too, or MapTool. But it only makes sense to do so in a commercial product if you have some plan for making revenue on the product.
Maybe this will build the market for VT’s and then when their attention shifts elsewhere, the opportunity will come.
Thanks for the link and kind words to my article.
I was really surprised that they did go back to something more scaled down and made something closer to MapTool/d20 Pro/etc., especially since those alternatives already have their fans and market share. It is smart though, because they’ve produced something solid, that does leverage some advantages of the game (here, tiles and tokens are already provided for you, no importing needed, and they’re the same ones that exist in your tabletop game.) Once (if?) they leverage everything else possible- importing from CB/MB, importable maps for Dungeon adventures, making logging in just a few clicks away… then they could really have something on their hands. Instead of overpromising OR underdelivering, they might just hit the sweet spot of an online tabletop that just works as expected.