

Show HN: Virtual tabletop gaming - silverlight
http://roll20.net/

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silverlight
Hey everyone -- our startup (a virtual tabletop) just launched today. We
originally raised $40k on Kickstarter a few months ago. We've grown to 50,000
users during our open beta, and now we're officially "launching" and
introducing supporter accounts.

There's also more specific information about the launch on our blog:
<http://blog.roll20.net/post/31726725487/roll20-goes-live>

If you're interested in pen and paper gaming, especially tabletop RPGs or
board games, check it out!

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jeremyarussell
I'm sending my buddy the link to your site, I'm pretty sure me and some old
friends from school are about to spend too much time playing games... And I
had been so productive these last few weeks.

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silverlight
Sounds like a great idea to me! :-)

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vyrotek
Looks interesting! There was a period of my life not too long ago where my
friends and I would buy a new board game every month for a while. I love
learning new game mechanics. But, I've never really played Pen & Paper games
before and don't understand their appeal in this age of technology. Heck, I
get frustrated with how manual and tedious regular board games are these days.
Digital versions of games are so much better and move faster. How many times
have you played a game and then half way through you realize you forgot some
important rule or have been adding some points up wrong? I imagine what keeps
players interested in this is that the game rules and content are all
generated by the players?

Personally, I get over my frustrations and enjoy board games mostly for the
in-person/face-to-face interactions. I guess my point is that this all seems a
bit backwards. It seems they've digitized the human interactions and kept the
games manual? I still hope for a future where it will be common to play games
on things such as Microsoft PixelSense [1] (formally known as Surface). Or if
everyone I knew would hurry up and buy a tablet then we could have some even
more interesting games evolve.

[1] <http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/pixelsense/default.aspx>

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thomaslangston
> Digital versions of games are so much better and move faster. How many times
> have you played a game and then half way through you realize you forgot some
> important rule or have been adding some points up wrong?

The primary mechanic in pen and paper games is the players describing what
their characters do and the Game/Dungeon master explaining what happens as a
result. All the rules and math are just tools. In a pen and paper game they
can be laid aside at any time when they get in the way (and in my opinion are
ignored in a good game frequently).

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TillE
With regard to sticking to rules, it depends on the game. With D&D you're
explicitly told to break them as necessary ("Rule Zero").

In Burning Wheel, on the other hand, the designer intends you to follow the
rules precisely as written, and the result is a system where players have much
more freedom to do unexpected things and even drive the story themselves.
Because there are well-defined, mechanical ways to attempt just about anything
you can think of.

Video games don't come close to replicating either of those experiences.

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jyu
This is pretty cool. Instead of creating an individual board game replacement,
you've created an enabling technology to open up the whole space and going for
a marketplace play.

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silverlight
Yep! We're starting with tabletop RPGs because there is already a large
community that is trying to play those online using similar tools, but our
eventual goal is to enable anything that can be played via a physical tabletop
to be played online. We'd love to eventually partner with publishers so you
could be playing (for example) Settlers of Catan with just one click.

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shabble
I wonder if the Dice-o-Matic[1] creator offers an API?

Also, how much harder it would be to support multiple shapes of dice for true
authenticity.

On a more serious note, looks interesting (although I'm not really the target
audience), but you might want to throw some simple styling at it quickly
before the anti-Bootstrap people turn up on your lawn.

[1] <http://gamesbyemail.com/News/DiceOMatic>

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danielweber
Would this have any use for people who are already physically located in the
same space?

My players are having trouble keeping up with all their moves and the math for
4e.

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silverlight
There are several folks using in in-person via a projector or laptop hooked up
to a TV. We're also working on an mobile tablet compatible version.

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Robby2012
congrats! I don't like pen and paper gaming but it looks really great, good
luck!!!

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silverlight
Thanks!

