Tabletop Forge

Tabletop Forge is a new(ish) virtual table top I've talked about before. It differs from rptools Maptool greatly. The coolest feature is that it's built as a google hangouts application. This removes the need for an gathering everybody up on skype or teamspeak, making sure the dm's firewall is configured correctly, and various other things that have to be done separately in other VTs.

But that's not what I'm talking about today. Today I'm pointing out neat stuff that's happened for the TF team.

Their kickstarter is doing very well, it's already past its second stretch goal. Also lots of really cool people have offered material or to run games in the VT. So its become quite popular.

So popular infact that the team has been invited to google I/O.

The family/Mask game is moving to TF as well apparently so as that moves I'll review the software. In the mean time congrats to Tabletop Forge!

More Kickstarters, Blog splitting consideration

A note about this post. I do not own and am not in anyway related to any of these projects or the images used for links to the Kickstarter pages. No infringement is intended.


First, A few Kickstarters that interest me. Here's Catalyst Game Lab's The Duke. CGL is why Battletech is still a live. So just about any thing they do interests me at least a little.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/450703636/the-duke

Next is a kickstarter for a portable gaming table. I'd been looking at designing something like this myself just last year. I hope this one turns out. The goal is pretty high though.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/132http://s3.amazonaws.com/ksr/projects/162842/photo-full.jpg?13358452667678769/the-future-of-table-top-role-playing-games



For those that want a darker setting for their pathfinder games. The Bleeding Hollow looks to be an interesting option. I'll be getting the pdf and will probably do a review later.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/939904996/the-bleeding-hollow-a-pathfinder-rpg-horror-mega-a


Now for three a little different. These are computer game Kickstarters, all RPG related and mention looking to release on linux.

First is a classic 8-bit style RPG called Crystal Catacombs. It's met its primary funding but its first stretch goal is a map editor, which should be fun.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/crystalcatacombs/the-crystal-catacombs



Finally we come to a "point and click" rpg called Hexit. This one's current charm is graphics/eye candy, but promises a real world. A hi quality graphics game on linux can only be a good thing. This one also has a pretty high funding goal, but more than 20 days to go.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/935411564/hexit-point-and-click-sci-fi-adventure-game

That's no where near all of the Kickstarters that I've looked at this week. There are lots of projects coming even just to the RPG (P&P or Video) genres. Originally I was posting a kickstarter that interested me because a) it interested me, and b) I didn't have anything else to talk about.

Now (as you can see above) there's enough traffic on kickstarter to turn my ranting into a KS spam fest. I don't want that. I do want to pass on projects I'm interested in in a timely fashion though. This means something like "only one kickstarter post/month" won't work. Once a week is letting projects slip by as it is, and filling my G+ or facebook or twitter pages with KS links doesn't really work either.

Then there's the fact that NSNGaming exists finally, and my personal gaming and other rants really should be separate. So I'm thinking about some kind of split of my blog, twitter, and or creating G+/Facebook pages for NSNGaming and such.

I haven't made any hard decisions yet, but when I do. I'll post them here, as always.

Project Updates

First... the second session of Mask is less than 24 hours away. The first session was kind of quiet, the parents are new to gaming and me and the sibling are still feeling them out. It was promising though!

The quick review of the first session. I'm playing a cleric of my LG deity, mom's playing a ranger (with a sailor concept), and dad's playing a wizard who's got a secret in his heritage that's very "no one has gone before".

So far we've shuffled to this town on the way to other destinations after finishing school or apprenticeships. A trade caravan has hit town and the market is packed with new stores, new shoppers, and unfortunately, new thugs.

Several pockets are picked. My cleric and mother's ranger notice, a chase/fight breaks out and the truth of the highly organized nature of the thugs is exposed. By the end of the day the four thugs are down, proof of at least three more is discovered, and the three of us are pressed into service as a small squad of the guard. Our current duty, hunt the gang.


Second... An email from Purple Duck Games

"Open Faiths

All 27 deities have been written (3 for each of the alignments).

All deities have gone through editing and development to link 

ideas and knit them into a coherent group.

I've sent the gods back to the authors to get second opinions and to make sure everything hangs together.

Tamas Baranya is handling the art duties for the god symbols and I expect them late next week.

The origin of the world and the primary relationship of the gods is in 1st draft. 

We should be able to go to layout early June and then its on to the Open World project.

- Mark Gedak, Purple Duck Games."

Yep, we're very close to having an open license pantheon available to the public. Then there's the new project he hinted at... Sounds like fun!

Finally... Tabletop Forge has made lots of progress, and has an odd problem. Google currently doesn't have any support for Google Drive working in cohesion with Google Hangouts.

Now Drive is new, so its understandable that not everything works as some people's ideas would hope, but I agree with TTF that this should work as soon as possible. So speak up. Google's usually listening. (Sometimes more than we care for them too, but that's a whole other story not to be covered here).

Thats about it! My projects are moving, but aside from the updates to the character sheet a few weeks ago none of them are really to a point I want to talk to them here yet.