OpenRPG, play your RPG online

Last night I tested out OpenRPG as a player (Thanks Scott!).  I thought I should write up a review and share the experience.

What is Open RPG?
It considers itself to be a Virtual Table Top, and it comes close to the goal.  It is a free and open source application that facilitates playing any RPG over the internet.  Its features include: Map(Miniatures, Layers, White board, Fog, etc),Text Chat, Dice Rolling, Linked documents and free server access.

Installation
Installing it is slightly more complicated then one would expect.  It is built on Python, so you have to install it, its extensions then OpenRPG.  All the setups are 1 click simple.

The Interface
The interface is plan and a little intimidating at first.  It is split into 4 sections:  Top Left is linked documents,  Bottom Left lists who is at the table, Bottom right is the text chat, and dice roller area, Top Right is the game board.

I found the interface to be more then a little clunky, but I can not be too hard on it.  It performed well and It is free.

Documentation
I found the documentation lacking.  Clearly its a work in progress.  The manual is written by the developers, who didn't want to write it and presumed waaaay too much in their attempt.  Still at least there is documentation.

Joining a game
This was really very easy.  I launched OpenRPG, Selected the server the GM provided, then selected the room on the server and I was in.  I expected it to be much more difficult then that.  Kudos to OpenRPG, they did a great job.

Playing a game
We used Skype and so did not make much use of the text chat ability.  We did use the dice roller and it worked fine, but I personally prefer to roll'm myself.  One curious feature of the dice roller is that the GM can decide to roll dice and not show you the player(s).  Similarly the player can roll dice and hide them from the GM.  I don't see much use for that for the player, but I thought it worth mentioning.

The game board has some good features.  First its constructed in layers, so you have a back ground with images on top.  You can superimpose hex or squares and scale them.  Each uploaded image represents a figure.  You can assign a name to each image, scale it, set its facing, set its heading and all of that displays nicely on the game board.  Moving your images around was cumbersome at first.  I believe with more exploration we could have set the snap to match the hex/square grid, but we were short on time and wanted to get to playing. 

My favorite feature is the FOG.  This way GM can load the whole map, and fog out what you can't see (See Below).  Revealing whats needed as needed.  It is a good feature. 

GM Prep Time
I was not the GM and so I didn't have to prepare images or anything like that, but it looks to be straight forward.  Upload an image or give it a URL to your image on a photo sharing sight and whala, its in there.  We were not able to figure out how to save the Game Board, all though clearly you could do it.  We just could not figure out how.

In Conclusion
All in all I give OpenRPG a thumbs up.  Its free, It works and It performs.  I fully intend to use it again and often.

Ben, you are welcome!  Thank you for trying it out.  Couple of quick comments.

First, players can hide their rolls from the other players, by clicking on the "GM" tab, but not from the GM.  They could also send comments or questions to the GM that the other players would not see.

Second, I read some more about the "Save Map" function.  What it saves is the map settings, size, fog, color, hexes.  It does not save the Image which was loaded in the background.  At least that is my current understanding.

I agree that if we were using hexes generated by the program and not the ones that were part of the image I loaded as background, that the "Minis" would have moved better.

It is a bit complicated to download the program initially, but once it is downloaded there is not that much to do except load occasional updates.

Hoping to try it again, maybe with more players.

Scott.

I am sorry to report with work and holidays I have had no more opportunities to explore this application.  Its a shame because despite the lack of polish, it performed well and I think it will win me over with a few more attempts at it.