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Rumor has it in pittsburgh that a couple of students at CMU have building build a virtual table top specificly for D&D in mind, with the use of the new Windows Surface.  boingboing.net/2009/10/29/dd-on-multi-to... for anyone who is interested.

May 6, 2009 -- 6:24AM, Kyraeus wrote:

Wow, really Wolf?  No offense, but that's extremely hopeful and/or naive of you.  Shelved software products have this alarming tendency never to be finished. I certainly can't remember the last decent offering that got shelved, then picked back up that ended up well. At the very least it would mean any work that WAS done on it would need to be redone from scratch. Who are they going to get to pick that up?  Moreover, see the other people's point of view. Hasbro/WoTC spent the better part of a year or more now marketing a product to us that, frankly, didn't exist, and if you're saying it's shelved indefinitely, that means for the forseeable future probably WON'T exist. Yes, it sucks. Yes, people are unhappy about it. They've got every right to be. I'm sorry if you don't like whining on your boards, but that's kinda going to happen.  Hasbro has changed a number of things about the franchise, not the least of which was slamming the price of the books through the roof immediately because they knew they had a hardcore fanbase who was willing to pay to get their 'fix'. Dropping these tools that had already gone out through their marketing department as an incentive to purchase a subscription to Insider just shows more of the same. Once with this problem when the original character builder was semi-released with the books was bad enough. Now this second shortfall is just ridiculous.  While I see your point, and trying to maintain hope, I honestly have to say it looks extremely bad, and I think pumping money into D&D in it's current state is a big mistake. I won't go dramatic about it, but it is a damn shame to go through picking up this new service with overdone promises of new tools, better experiences, and GENERAL COMPETENCE OF THE COMPANY TO FULFILL CUSTOMER EXPECTATIONS, only to be let down, and told that 'well. our 3rd party software developer may have dropped the ball'. or, excuse me, not told that, because I highly doubt anything I've heard on here was from a rep. Oh wait, they haven't said anything except that it's delayed. Indefinitely.  I dunno. maybe that's just me, but that sounds like EXTREMELY poor planning on the part of the officials overseeing the D&D project as a whole. Proper implementation would have had 2/3+ of this software suite done by now. Before people start saying I don't know what I'm talking about, I work in distribution sales for software and hardware implementation, speaking daily with guys who do exactly this. I've seen rollouts of software platforms intended to allow remote management of systems in the 10,000+ qty pushed faster than this.   Frankly, it's a damned shame. I think a good gaming table made by the franchise itself would have pulled people back in droves to the game, besides my own happiness. Not to mention I'd hoped being connected to a large company known for gaming products would have done some good. Ah, well. Live and learn.

Very well said. What worries me most about a lot of this, is how they seem to make the same mistakes as they made at the start of 3.0, with the character builder that ended up being e-Tools, the interactive atlas and such.

Jan 4, 2010 -- 4:47PM, Dragom wrote:

So...  I made an adventure for Maptool.

First I downloaded Maptool, then I downloaded some tokens and the Tokentool

Then I made some tokens and a map out of pictures and maps I had from previous.

I wrote in all the stat lines for the monsters on the first floor

Then I watched a "how to" video and exclaimed "So that what Macro's are for!"

Then I wrote in Macro's for all the tokens on the first floor.

Then I downloaded Veg.lib

Then I redid all my Macro's.

Then I spent most of the night digging for pics on the Wizards website for more tokens.

Then I finished the adventure.

Then I figured out how to add a rider text to power macros, so things like the Stormclaw Scorpion might work the way their supposed to.

I'm ready for the WotC Game Table now.  Seriously any time.

I lol'd at this. Not in a making fun of you way, but in a simpathetic  way. I did something similar.  Although I didn't jump in right away on  building stuff. I really did quite a bit of homework after the initial "what? I can do more with these things called frameworks?". I took some time  to figure out how it worked, what options I had etc. Again, not making  fun.

I will say though that I can't see the DDI VTT being as  robust as we want it to be. I really do see it as a visual tabletop that  has some basic stuff, such as lighting, character management, etc, but  not much in the way of automation. Maybe I'm wrong, but...

Apr 4, 2010 -- 8:19PM, Acrylium wrote:

Maybe someday WotC earns enough money with us DDI Subscribers for finishing their former promises. Or maby someday no one will re-subscribe until the do so...

I know the frustration of the vtt. It is the biggest reason to get DDI  for me. But I can't see people not resubscribing. There are good things about DDI, and the price is reasonable for what you get at this point. If not, people wouldn't be there now.