Application solidifies its status as the preeminent long distance gaming solution
Wichita, Kansas (January 29th, 2013) - This week two major announcements regarding the
popular online roleplaying program Roll20 became public. The first involved the newly launched
TSR company endorsing Roll20 as their “official tabletop,” the second pertained to the lead
developer of competing game space Tabletop Forge announcing he was halting production on
the program to instead help with future enrichments to Roll20.
“The most flattering part of all this is that they both came to us,” said Roll20 co-founder and lead
developer Riley Dutton. “It really helps make us feel like we must be doing something right.”
The new TSR was formed by Jayson Elliot to cover multiple aspects of gaming, beginning with
the launch of “Gygax Magazine” next month. Elliot was one of the first adopters of Roll20 in
the Kickstarter phase. Additionally, a feature by Roll20 co-founder Nolan T. Jones’ brother,
Nevin P. Jones, will be in the initial issue of Gygax Magazine covering Nevin’s first roleplaying
experience which was accomplished using his brother’s application.
Tabletop Forge was begun as a Google Hangout application by Joshuha Owen with the
purpose of helping the vibrant Google+ roleplaying community to better realize their games.
The Google+ page for Tabletop Forge boasts over 11,000 members, many of whom supported
the program’s KIckstarter last year. However, Joshuha decided that the community would best
be served by a single HTML5 solution.
“There are lots of options for roleplaying over the internet, but it became redundant to have
both Roll20 and Tabletop Forge, as in many ways they were serving the same community and
had similar features including a common goal of being lightweight and easy to use," remarked
Joshuha. As such, the creators of both programs say they will be treating all Tabletop Forge’s
Kickstarter backers as if they had made their pledges to Roll20, migrating Tabletop Forge
assets to Roll20, and be working with a multitude of RPG artists to bring their content to the
platform.
Roll20 began as an effort to keep developers Dutton, Jones, and Richard Zayas in touch via
long distance gaming. Their project went public with an eighteen day Kickstarter campaign in
April of 2012. Since then it has attracted over 100,000 users as a free service. The program
continues to be funded by subscribers who receive features that assist advanced gameplay.
(the bolding is by me. This is exciting news, and my understanding is that Josh will be adding his programing skills to those of the original Roll20 developers to make things even better. Just think, I started playing around with Roll20 after leaving it behind 6 months ago just this past Sunday. It's come a long way.)
(oh, and yeah, that stuff above? it's an official press release dealie)
(oh, and yeah, that stuff above? it's an official press release dealie)
When projects like this start sometimes they click and sometimes they don't. Clearly Roll20 clicked and Tabletop Forge didn't. Last summer, my reaction to Roll20 was meh. Then I looked at it in December and it is not meh now. I was impressed at how far they came and wished I backed their kickstarter instead of Forge.
ReplyDeleteSo pending the details, I am happy with this. The only thing I will miss out of Forge is the Google Drive integration and I hope they transfer that over.
I think the people that need to worry are Fantasy Grounds because if 2013 works out for the Roll20 they are going to have some serious competition.