Vacation and Virtual Table Tops

Vacation is over and I managed to survive my first day back to work. Vacation was great. I mean, what's better then doing pretty much nothing for a whole week?

I got to play videos games, Zombie Dice, Sopia, the Age of Mythology Board game, watch movies, eat tons of food, and just hang out with my brother and friend.

I even got a lot of work done on the board game I am currently designing. I really only have one more step left before it is ready to be play tested. I'm pretty excited about that!

Though I sadly didn't get to play Dungeons and Dragons or Dungeon World. Or any role playing game for that matter like I had hoped. Though in the time that I wasn't playing I searched online for a decent virtual table top (VTT). I tried just about every one of them. Most were demos and required outrageous amounts of money to us. On top of that they were confusing and overly complicated. I was going to settle for Table Top Forge on Google+ Hangouts. Which is a pretty good, free VTT but then as I was about to give up I found Roll20.net.

It's amazing and simple. Basically the GM's setup mode is also the play mode. The GM can add stuff is as the game is going on and the players will see it. There are multiple pages is the campaign and when the GM moves the marker for where the players are their screens load the new page. It's simple to set up a whole adventure ahead of time and play right through. With maps and baddies all set up and ready.

Roll20 also has video chatting. Making it even better as you can see how players react to certain things in the game. In addition to the video chat it also has the standard text chat. With built in dice roller. And the ability to make macros and then add them to the "macro bar". Which basically makes them buttons under the chat area. So you can set up your attack roll, damage, skills, etc. and just click the button and it shows up in the chat window with your roll and result.

I can't wait til I can actually play a game and test it out!

Oh and another game, that my friend showed me, is called Shadow Era. Its free to play and can be played online (for ranking and other purposes) or there is an offline version. Its a card game similar to Magic the Gathering. It's a lot of fun too.

I also borrowed Dead Island and Dragon's Dogma from my brother. So far Dragon's Dogma has been fun! I've played Dead Island before but wanted to finish it finally. I bought a copy of Medal of Honor which I had borrowed from my friend and had beat but I liked it enough to play again (and it was cheap). And I also got an older UFC game to mess around with. I haven't lost yet which is always fun!