About me: My name is Michael. I’m a 30-something gamer living in Colorado with my wife Barbara and our four cats. When I’m not playing and blogging about Dungeons and Dragons, I work in finance and enjoy traveling, golfing (badly), skiing (even worse) and playing board games (I’m not so bad at that).
Contact: You can always leave comments on the blog (I love those!) or send me an email at [email protected]. You can also follow me on Twitter as OnlineDM1.
Online Dungeon Master 
Michael,
Just saw an announcement for D&D Virtual table from Wizards.
Here’s the link:
http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/26286405/The_Dungeons__Dragons_Virtual_Table
Comment by Andy — November 18, 2010 @ 12:10 PM
Awesome! I’d love to get in on that beta. I’ll definitely try out the Virtual Table when I get the opportunity to do so. I love MapTool, of course, but if the Virtual Table turns out to be better I’ll be happy to switch.
Comment by OnlineDM — November 18, 2010 @ 2:49 PM
Hey, I was looking at your blog and noticing you had experience with MapTools. I was just curious what you did for visual aids. I currently use Fantasy Grounds 2, but we find it kinda buggy and were thinking of switching. One thing I do like though is being able to have a library of images and flash a couple up during the game.
Comment by Craig — May 8, 2011 @ 12:02 AM
If I have an image I want my players to be able to see, I simply put it in a directory that I’ve mapped in MapTool and drag it to the tabletop. It’s extremely easy – I’ve done it on the fly many times.
I haven’t tried Fantasy Grounds 2, but I know a lot of people like it. For me, though, I’ve been completely happy with MapTool, and since it’s free I’ve seen no reason to switch to anything else.
If you need any assistance with MapTool, just let me know!
Comment by OnlineDM — May 8, 2011 @ 12:10 AM
If I drag an image onto the tabletop it seems to show up as a token – and is very small. Is there a way to just drop an image onto the tabletop without resizing?
Comment by Craig — May 8, 2011 @ 12:42 AM
This, I can help you with. Before you drag the image to the tabletop, change the layer that you’re dragging it to from Token (the default) to Object or Background. On those layers, the image will be pulled onto the map at its native size, whereas on the Token layer it’s automatically resized to fit in one square.
Comment by OnlineDM — May 8, 2011 @ 12:48 AM
Ah… perfect. Do all the players need the repository before I can do this, or can it be on the fly from my archives?
Comment by Craig — May 8, 2011 @ 12:29 PM
Just had a friend connect to my server and test – answered my own question.
This program is awesome, easily comparible to Fantasy Grounds II, if somewhat more complicated to use.
Comment by Craig — May 8, 2011 @ 12:50 PM
Great – I’m glad it’s working out for you!
Comment by OnlineDM — May 8, 2011 @ 1:59 PM
Are you planning on having more one shot D&D games for newer-ish players any time soon? Thanks!
Comment by dingolove — October 24, 2011 @ 6:58 PM
Yeah, I think I’m about due for one of those! Send me an email ([email protected]) with information about when you’re available to play and what kind of character you might like, and we’ll go from there!
Comment by OnlineDM — October 25, 2011 @ 7:11 AM
Michael,
Here’s another interesting technology to check out.
http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2011/12/epawn-arena/
While I love this and would love to have, I’m thinking the play area may be small for a DnD encounter. But the possibilities could be pretty cool.
Andy
Comment by Andy R Ross — December 15, 2011 @ 9:09 AM
Yeah, I think the Microsoft Surface attempts are more promising for D&D just because of the size, but this is similar. I don’t know that it’s something I’d personally use (the projector’s fine for me), but I’d certainly love to try it out if anyone had a setup like this one!
Comment by OnlineDM — December 16, 2011 @ 12:40 AM