Online gaming

Well, the online game is looking like it'll make a start soon enough.

Over the past month, I've been learning to use a nifty computer program called Maptools. It's a nifty online substitution for a battle map. I also recently found the dice generator, initiative tracker and state indicator. All in all, a pretty cool thing, and far handier than I first suspected.

Of course, there are a few quibles I have. The first being the fairly steep learning curve. It took me a month to be able to get the most out of the program, which is quite a lot. I'm the first to admit I'm not the most technically inclined of people, but still, that's quite a long while.

Furthermore, I can't get the blasted fog of war to work properly. While I don't really need one, the fact it takes some time to do a good layout of the terrain would make things far simpler. Instead of showing them the whole dungeon at once, I could reveal it bit by bit as the characters explore. The fact that monsters only show up in line of sight convinces me there must a way to make this work, but I haven't figured out how.

Finally, there seems to be no way to make a distinction between different kinds of terrain; a character on the map treats rubbel or a raging river the same as a patch of grass or a road.

I'm cautiously optimistic about the program for now. More on it as I use it.