EpicTable Screenshots VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

These are also up on flickr and facebook.  One could reasonably ask “why here and facebook and flickr?”  Mostly, I just can’t decide how best to present them. I really like the way the Windows Live galleries integrate effortlessly into the site. EpicTable already had a facebook presence, but I like the way flickr presents them better, and I can’t leave well enough alone.  Count yourself lucky that I haven’t provided a link to these on my screencast.com site too.

It’s the same set of screenshots, so your choice:

• EpicTable screenshots on flickr
• EpicTable screenshots on facebook

Hand-Drawn Map and Tokens

Brennen drew a quick map and scanned it in.   As much as I give Brennen a hard time about hassling me for ad-hoc drawing tools, he’s right—they’re necessary, and I want them too.  I “drew” a river with blue stones in a session, which is something I don’t want to ever repeat.  Over the Easter holiday, I prototyped some drawing support….  Ah, but until then…Brennen draws maps and scans them in.  He then sets them as his background on a tabletop or a map.  (There’s really no difference except a map can have a grid, and will be able to support vision later—actually supports it now, but it’s turned off in the beta thus far, because vision opens up a whole new can of worms.)

The tokens here are an accidental variety.  We have a couple of square ones, which is the result of a couple of us setting the same image for portrait and token.  (One of us should have known better.  One of us wrote the code that creates a pog-style token from the portrait, if you don’t supply a token.)  The wolf token is an example of EpicTable creating a token automatically from a portrait.  The other small round token was a separate token image supplied by Brian for his character, and the red stones are game pieces that are in the EpicTable game piece gallery.  Brennen’s using them here for enemy minions, rather than digging up images.

Interactive Flash version   •  Open Image

Brennen actually ran this game, so all I have are screenshots.  He and I will do a screencast of a walk-through in a future session and focus on using various EpicTable bits to create something like a character sheet.  In the meantime, I’ll post a series of annotated screenshots from our session.

You have a couple options for using the screenshots here.  If you have Flash, you can just load the Flash version and hover over each of the bubbles to get more info.  If you’re morally opposed to Flash, you can read the same timeless prose right here and correlate it to the bubbles the old fashioned way.

Game Intro Tab

Brennen put together this nice intro to his game to set the stage for us.  It has an overland map of the area, some adventure background material, and even a set of suggestions for setting-appropriate names.  This is a great, creative use of EpicTable tabletops. 

Interactive Flash version   •  Open Image

Screen Maximizing View

You can maximize your screen real estate in EpicTable in a number of ways.  You can minimize the ribbon from a right-click menu or a double-click on any of the tabs at the top (Main, Characters, etc.). 

You can set the various panels, like Chat, Dice Tray, and Portrait Bar to "Hide" or "Auto-Hide", or you can detach them and drag them to a secondary display. 

In this screenshot, I have the Dice Tray and Portrait Bar hidden, and I’ve dragged the Chat window to my second monitor.

Overland Map

Brennen drew this overland map and scanned it in for use with EpicTable.  Drawing tools aren’t integrated into EpicTable (yet).  Those of you wanting ad-hoc drawing tools in EpicTable will have Brennen’s relentless campaign for them to thank when they arrive.

The map is, I think, part of the background he used. Alternatively, he could have used an “image object”. The adventure text and name list are “rich text objects”.

Like any other surface in EpicTable, you can use game pieces or character tokens on this map.  What I’ve found helpful is using stones or map pins (from the gallery on the Tabletops tab) to mark the group’s position or important landmarks.

Adventure Background

Brennen used a rich text note (from the Tabletops tab) to provide a brief set of adventure notes to get us all on the same page (so to speak). 

He could have used a plain old notecard, but those are plain text and he’s way too into typography for that.  <g>

Sample Character Names

Brennen included a couple lists of setting-appropriate character names right here on the game intro tab.  That’s a great idea.  Not only did it help guide the naming of our own characters, but it gave us a set to draw from for NPC names.

In EpicTable, this is a "rich text note" (accessible under the Tabletops tab) placed on the tabletop.

First off, a little clarification based on questions and feedback from the mockup: This is a tree of campaign-specific resources. It’s not intended to manage a huge library of objects, but rather to give the GM a means to organize the resources—NPCs, maps, handouts, etc.—for the current campaign.

What you see here (and you may want to click on the image for the full-sized view) is a set of four cropped screenshots of the resource tree. These four show small vs. large icons for the nodes of the tree, and folders vs. themed icons (treasure chests). Allowing you to choose between small and large icons is a no-brainer. It’s easy and it already works.

I like the resource-specific icons, like the comedy/tragedy masks for characters, the notepad for notes, and so on. Less obvious to me is whether the themed folder icons—in this case, treasure chests (complete with lids that open when the node is expanded)— are cool or hokey.

Those who saw the last round of demos know that I’ve toyed around with the notion of game-specific or genre-specific themes for EpicTable, so you can imagine other things in place of treasure chests for sci-fi games or horror games.

Good old folder icons have the advantage of familiarity, and maybe professionalism. I’m weighing that against the fact that this isn’t a business app. One thing I can say is that a little of this goes a long way. I experimented with having the folder icons reflect their content, and that created an awful lot of visual noise.

Thoughts?

Along the way to finishing the “Arrange” (i.e., z-order) context menu for the tabletop, I introduced a short-lived but extravagant bug. One of the things you can do with objects on the tabletop is duplicate them. Last night, you could duplicate them…a lot. Imagine my surprise to see pieces of eight spilling out across the tabletop. By the time I stopped it, I had more than 9,000 coins on the tabletop! They were multiplying like tribbles.

Now, if I could just figure out how to do this on my physical tabletop….

Here’s a shot of the current context menu for Arrange with a sufficiently tamed Duplicate function. To the folks from the forum who have weighed in on this, let me know what you think. I’ve not forever ruled out something more elaborate, but my thinking is that this is sufficient for version 1.

Credits and Sources: Background texture and Pieces of eight from iStockphoto.

Tomorrow, I’ll add the ability for you to move objects up and down in the stack. I’ll planning on using the context menu (i.e., right-click menu) for this, and will add a keystroke that will do it as well, as discussed in the forum.

Credits and Sources: Fanmail images by Brennen Reece. Leather texture and coins from iStockphoto.

Virtual Tabletop Surface

I’ve integrated the tabletop “surface” functionality that some of you saw during the demos. This is the surface on which you can move game pieces, dice, etc. Check out the full-sized image (1165×973).

Beyond what I showed in the demo:

• You can create tabletops within tabs in EpicTable, just like you can with maps
• You can use fixed images for the tabletop background, rather than just textures, which is nice for gameboards.
• I added index cards as one of the objects available for use on the tabletop.

Dice (and other things) Panel

I created a dice panel at the bottom of the main screen. It’s actually for a bit more than dice, ultimately. It’s sort of a personal area for each player, analogous to the space you have in front of you at a physical game table. There’s a whole lot more to think about for this area, but for version 1, it holds dice. This is a more natural way to interact with the dice than the gallery-based approach some of you saw during the demo. You can move them around, duplicate them, change their colors. There’s a dice bag that serves as a source for dice, so if you’re playing Spirit of the Century, for instance, you can keep your polyhedral dice in the bag and pull out the Fudge dice.

Portrait Panel Improvements

The portrait panel had some resizing issues when I showed it during the demo. It also had remnants of unfinished features, like health and condition bars. Removing these half-baked features cleaned up the portraits considerably. You can also drag and drop them onto a tabletop surface in addition to the maps.

Character Sheets Queued for Post-Beta

I really want to get EpicTable in the hands of the community, and the character sheet support is the largest remaining task. So, while I’m still committed to character sheets and the character sheet designer, I’m going to wrap up what I’ve got and work on character sheets during the beta. Depending on how the beta goes, and what you folks tell me about what you want, I may release version 1 prior to integrating the character sheet work and provide an upgrade path. Don’t worry—I know the character sheet functionality is important to many of you. It’s important to me too! It continues to be a feature I’m excited about. I just want to get all the useful features already part of EpicTable into people’s hands.

Note: Due to a technical issue, the comments link below is broken. However, the discussion on this is NOT closed. You can join the discussion in the EpicTable forum.

Dogs in the Vineyard, in the words of its creator, is a game in which the characters are “God’s Watchdogs in a West that never quite was.” It’s a really interesting game, well worth the time to check it out for yourself.

In the screenshot above (you can click on that to get a better look), the tabletop shows a Dogs in the Vineyard conflict in progress. In Dogs in the Vineyard, conflict resolution is handled by a roll of the dice followed by a poker-like series of “raising” and “seeing”. The conflict starts with both the player and the GM building a dice pool from traits that are relevant to the conflict. You can see in this example that the player with the gold dice has managed to bring in a d8 to bolster 6d6. The GM, with the dark red dice, has 8d6 to bring to the conflict. Both roll their dice. Now, they take turns raising and seeing. In this example, the player with the gold dice says what his character is doing and puts forward a 4 and an 8 for a total of 12. The GM is unable to match a total of 12 with just two of his dice, so he has to put forward a third die. He puts forward a 5, a 4, and a 3, describing how the NPC responds. This continues until one side gives or is unable to match the raise.

I’ve greatly oversimplified the conflict resolution of Dogs in the Vineyard. It’s a really interesting mechanic, and it has the effect of making a player keep reevaluating just how far he’s willing to take a given conflict. The point, though, from an EpicTable development perspective, is that this is a game that requires more of the tabletop than just a landing spot for the dice. EpicTable supports that with a shared surface that allows you to place and move and roll dice. Along the way, I’ve added some creature comforts like different surface textures. What you see in this screen shot is a light brown distressed leather, which seemed more appropriate to the Western setting than a wooden tabletop. The red and gold dice are (to this colorblind developer’s eyes) matched to the colors of the Dogs’ coats.

If you’re interested in this kind of tailoring of the virtual tabletop to the game, stay tuned. One of my goals for EpicTable is to make it easy for you to create support for the games you want to play. In upcoming posts, I’ll talk about the options you’ll have for creating character sheets, adding your own surface textures, game pieces, etc.

Closing Thoughts

As always, I appreciate any questions and feedback that you have. Please chime in on the forum via the comments link below.

Credits and Sources: Dogs in the Vineyard is a game by D. Vincent Baker. Die images by Brennen Reece. Leather texture from iStockphoto.

EpicTable’s Virtual Tabletop Surface

Here’s an example of EpicTable’s general purpose tabletop. Now would be a fine time to click on that screenshot to get a better view….
What you’re looking at is a close-cropped view of the virtual tabletop. Instead of a map, you have a tabletop with a smattering of game pieces. The ribbon control at the top of the window contains galleries of table surfaces and game pieces from which you can choose. You can drag these around the virtual tabletop, stack them, clone them, and so on. Certain items such as dice—a few of which you can see hanging out on the right side of the screen—have additional actions that you can take; for instance, rolling them.

Questions and Answers

Will EpicTable come with any game pieces or table surfaces?

Yes. EpicTable will ship with a set of table surfaces, which currently include various types of wood, cloth, leather, and parchment. There will be some metal too for sci-fi games. Game pieces include coins, colored stones, and fanmail tokens.

Will I be able to add my own game pieces and surfaces?

Absolutely.

Will there be RPG-centric or game-specific game pieces?

Yes. Fanmail is fairly common and Brennen had already created a fanmail game piece, so that’s there already. I plan to let add-ons for specific games add their own resources as well.

Can I resize, rotate, and stack these game pieces?

Yes, yes, and yes. There may be some exceptions—it might be awkward to stack dice, for instance, if you can roll several at once.

Will there be support for cards?

Yes—I’m just not promising when. Cards weren’t part of the initial EpicTable version 1.0 plan, and I’m running a bit behind on that 1.0 release, so I really don’t want to add cards to 1.0. (But I really want to add cards to 1.0.)

Those galleries look a little small….

They’ve auto-shrunk because I resized the window to get a smaller screenshot and still get the whole ribbon in. They normally show five items across. The arrow keys allow you to scroll through items, and the lower arrow key pops open a window showing more at a time. In addition, the galleries support filtering, so if you’re only interested in coins, for instance, you can filter out the stones, fanmail, etc. All this applies to the table surfaces too.

Here’s an example:

Closing Thoughts

As always, I appreciate any questions and feedback that you have. Please chime in on the forum via the comments link below.

Credits and Sources: Die images and fanmail token by Brennen Reece. Coins, stones and textures from iStockphoto.

In case you’re not familiar with Fudge dice, they’re six-sided dice with two “+”, two “-”, and two blank sides. Rolling four Fudge dice gives you a range from -4 to +4. Fudge is a “rules-light” game system originating in the 1990s. A number of game systems draw upon Fudge in one way or another. For instance, Spirit of the Century, a popular pulp RPG, traces its lineage back to Fudge via FATE.