WotC Virtual Table – Points to consider

I got a bit worked up today on Twitter.

Wizards of the Coast announced the beta of their Virtual Table (VT) today.  They provided one single screen shot and answers to a few FAQ.  For a good hour or two there was much buzzing, a lot hopeful, some hating, most excited, myself included.  With good reason, this was something out of left field that the public thought was never going to happen.  The long-lamented Virtual Table Top (VTT) that teased a 3D table top experience was long dead and buried, and there were no inkling that the folks in Seattle were going to revisit it.

I was cautiously optimistic about Web Character Builder (And still am, despite it’s Proterozoic state), buy my initial reactions to the VT was…mixed at best.  I started to warm up a little bit to it as I gave it some thought, but struggled to constrain those conflicting thoughts to 140 characters.

Much to some reader’s dismay, I have a larger word budget here.  So here’s a list of, if not pros and cons, points that I think WotC and us the gaming public need to consider as the beta rolls out.

• Lack of Functionality, Primarily Import from Character Builder / Adventure Tools (AT)

It was announced in the FAQ that, at least in the beta, the VT will not allow the capability to import a character from the character builder or the monster builder to use.  This seemed odd, as that is one of the key selling points of the VT over other alternatives.  All the other virtual table tops require the DM to make each monster token, and each PC has to create their own token.  Even in the most simple of these cases, the user still has to create something.  Having an ‘create token’ in the CB or ‘import character/monster’ in the VT is a huge win for online play, to lack it makes the VT almost worthless, given other tools that exist (See below)

However, this is a beta.  Good betas often test things in pieces, then test the whole.  I could easily see the early beta more concerned with network connectivity issues and other, basic things (Do the tokens move when 5 people are connected, does clicking on the kill pc button kill the pc) first, then add other features later.  And given that there’s no official export in the WebCB yet (Though there are unofficial work arounds…) it makes little sense to have that for beta phase 1.

Also, unless it is going to change drastically in the near future, the character data exported is simple XML.  It’s not too difficult (but does take some effort) to make a parser that can read that data in and assign those values to different fields, it’s what iPlay4e does.  That functionality is easily added at a later date.

It’s not a big deal now.  If it’s not around later it’s a deal breaker.

• Mature Alternatives to the VT

I’ve mentioned in the past, most of the games I play are online.  I’ve used three different virtual table tops in the 2 years I’ve played 4e: Maptools, Fantasy Grounds II, and GameTable.  They each have their pluses and minuses: Gametable is simple, free, but no frills.  Fantasy Grounds is beautiful and functional, but tricky to use and costs money, Maptools is free and as complicated or as simple as you allow it to be.

I’ll admit a bias here and say almost all my current games use Maptools (And for the two I DM, I require it), so I’m going to focus on this tool as it’s the one I know.  If you choose to add some complexity into Maptool, you can load a ‘framework’ into the software that will allow you to create links to your powers, and even allow you to copy the monster block made from the AT and create the powers automatically.

In other words, WotC is late to the game here.  The community has created its own tools in the absence of something official.  Maptools not only provides a virtual gaming table but an initiative tracker, map drawing tool, map importing tool, hidden rolls, vision tricks like lighting and fog of war, as well as allowing a way for people who want to make their own additions to do so.  None of these are required, but there’s a whole bag of tricks.

At this point, we don’t know what features the VT has.   But players have been using other tools to play 4e games for a few years now.  They have an existing set up with many features available to them.  In some cases, as with Fantasy Grounds and a few others, there is an existing money investment as well.  Competition may drive things so the consumer ends up winning, but as a late player to this game, the WotC VT has an uphill battle

• Price

In the FAQ was this odd question:

Q: What is the pricing going to be on the finished product?
A: We have not finalized any pricing decisions at this time.

The common conscious was that VT would included in the cost of a DDI subscription.  It still may be (or may end up that way), but the wording on that FAQ seems to be a bit squirrelier than it should be.

• Unique Offerings

For all of the concerns out this, this is where the VT may be a killer.  The VT has the option of having direct access to the media created by WotC.  Not only importing of AT monsters and CB characters, but allowing the use of the official dungeon tiles as demonstrated in the screen shot that came with the announcement.  But more could be done as well, for example as pointed out by one of my players (Thanks Ari), when Dungeon releases an adventure, have the matching maps and monsters available for use in the VT.  (It’s easy to imagine a ‘Create New’, ‘Load Saved’ and ‘Dungeon Adventures’ menu option on the initial splash screen.)  Contests in DDI so six winners can ‘play a game rub by -WotC celeb here-.

Since it’s the official VT, not only does it have a high bar to reach because of outside programs, but the access to everything official means there are extra exceptions added on to it as well.

• Different Environments: Java vs. Windows Presentation Foundation

For me, this is the biggest issue I had with the announcement, and it’s a bit more abstract, so stick with me.  During the communication in the 2 weeks between the announcement of the Web Character Builder (WebCB) and its launch, much was made of the requirement of Silverlight for the web app to run.  Silverlight, without getting too technical, is a framework developed by Microsoft that allows ‘fancy’ things to be run from a browser.  Silverlight uses Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) as a way of ‘drawing’ the various widgets (buttons, checkboxes, scroll bars, etc) and how they are laid out in the web panel.

(I’m oversimplifying here and probably have some of the details wrong, but for the sake of this talking point, the previous definitions should be good enough for what I’m going for.)

The Classic Character Builder (CCB) was written in an other Microsoft language.  I believe it was C#, but the specific language isn’t important, rather, that the CCB also used the WPF.  What this meant is that by using Silverlight for the WebCB, the developers could reuse a lot of the resources already created for the CCB; the buttons, layouts, etc could all be the same.  They didn’t have to spend time reinventing the same wheel in a new material, they had many things already done and ready to go.

Though I cannot guess or say what WotC’s decision making process is, this seemed to be one of the driving reasons to use Silverlight for the WebCB.  Silverlight is in an odd state, with Microsoft slowly starting to support an open technology that mimics Silverlight. Though the Microsoft change is recent.  One would assume that WotC simply already sunk enough into the Silverlight WebCB code base, supporting hardware, and technical talent that switching would be a waste of money; that they were stuck with Silverlight for the time being, but that wasn’t a bad thing because they a good Silverlight environment.

With the announcement that the VT is written in Java, all this is called into question.  Java does not use WPF, so code cannot be reused between the two, meaning things have to be created again that already exist.  Future changes may need to be made twice, not once.   A new environment and technical talent will need to be brought in to support a different tool.  All the decisions at best made and at worst rationalized with the WebCB are now suspect.

Now, given the rocky start with the WebCB, maybe two different platforms are best.  Other online table tops (See Maptools) already use Java, so that technology is proven.  Maybe, like others have said on Twitter, that both are primarily database driven so having to double effort is greatly minimized, under what I am assuming.  It’s just that, to me, the switch to Java calls many other decisions into question; makes everything suspect.  There may be a reason for all of this and we just won’t and shouldn’t know it, but the Java decision leaves me with some doubt as to what the larger goal, if any, is.

Now, with all this said, I’m hopeful for the VT and I want it to be a success.  There are just a lot of points that players and WotC, in my opinion, need to keep in mind.  As I was typing this manifesto like list @Trevor_WotC announced that the first beta invites went out and I was, sadly, not one of them.  I expect that a lot of these concerns will be addressed by the first wave sometime soon, and hope for the best at this point.

Mike Hasko .-._. PsychoPez

So, your thoughts on virtual tables, WotC or otherwise?