I’ve been thinking about trying to use “maptool” as my Digital battle mat for my ICRPG/Mythic project.
I like the concept of having no frilly extra stuff like dynamic lighting or 3D elements. Just a top-down battle mat, tokens, Dice, and Character sheets is all I really need.
I wanted to know the communities opinion on the tool and if there might be a better option I could look at.
I use https://standardaction.net/
Which is also simple. I highly dislike roll20 for their… huh, stance on some subjects. And Fantasy Grounds is just not polished enough and seems to be too complicated for me.
But I’ll look up MapTool for sure!
Look at this thread:
MapTool is kinda cool. It is open source and totally free but it is even more complicated and awkward than Fantasy Grounds. At least it used to be that way when I was contributing code to it (which was over 10 years ago). I didn’t look at it in the last few years so I don’t have an accurate picture of it as of today.
I don’t usually recommend it to normal people but you can make it work if you set your mind to it. Some (or most?) of its user base migrated to FG a couple years ago. It is hard to believe but FG is more streamlined and easier to use than MapTool in general.
This all depends on your needs of course. For ICRPG, MapTool can be a great. For D&D and such, I’d absolutely recommend FG. Again, check the thread I linked above.
The best thing is, MapTool it is totally free so you can try at at no cost to you other than time. And time you will need to learn the program.
I ran an ICRPG game with it last week(Flash Gordon) for 4 new online players and it worked well. This reddit post helped me get it up and running
I also recommend Thomas Chapmans excellent YT Tutorials:
I’ve previously used Roll20 and Standard Action but with a little effort MapTools is worth the investment in time and effort. Also check out their forums and Discord for more help.
@BlazingPolyhedron Thank you for mentioning that. Simple is what I need. I’m way behind the tech curve when it comes to digital image manipulation and so on. It’s frustrating to see everybody souping up these hotrods so easily, and meanwhile I’m still trying to discover the wheel and fire.
Pretty sure it says more about me than the technology that I’ve struggled so much to grok Astral, Roll 20, and even the most recent one I’ve been looking into (the actual subject of this post, lol Maptool).
Anywho, I’ve set up an account with Standard Action and hope to kick the tires on it later today—those are the parts that touch the ground and go roundy-roundy, right? 