Monday, July 24, 2006

Fantasy Grounds

Lately, I've been getting my D&D fix through a digital table top program called Fantasy Grounds. I'm enjoying the campaign so far, and I thought I'd make a list of the pros and cons of going with a digital rather than actual tabletop.

Pros:
  1. Role-playing, I feel, comes easier across the anonymity that comes with playing over the internet.
  2. No cheating on rolls (except for the DM of course). Any player rolls are reported to everyone over the chat box.
  3. The /whisper command. This neat little function lets players send private messages to the DM, and lets the DM send private messages to anyone. The effect it has on priveledged information is priceless (spot rolls that only one person succeeds on for example, you're all making witty conversation when one of the PCs suddenly draws sword and jumps into the brush, comes out a minute later with an orc head, "now where were we?")
  4. The whole SRD at your fingertips. The program has nifty little book buttons that pull up just about any information you'd need, and if it doesn't see #5.
  5. Flexibility. Much of the xml is able to be edited. Any house rules or splatbook material can be inserted into the databases.
Cons:
  1. Crashes. Yeah, it happens for one reason or another. Most of the time it's a minor inconvenience, but sometimes the fates are just against you and the session can drag.
  2. Program malfunctions. Aside from crashes, there are little glitches that can get annoying like maps not loading properly, not being able to see text, etc. Like crashes, this doesn't happen too often most of the time.
  3. Less usually happens in any one particular session. Gameplay slows down a bit because of unfamiliarity with the interface, typing speed, etc.
If you'd like to know more about Fantasy Grounds visit http://fantasygrounds.com

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