silverlight

There is some automation going on (for example, we have a robust dice rolling engine that supports calculation of a lot of mechanics), you can store macros of frequent rolls/attacks, etc.

However, we found that VTTs that try to automate everything just end up ruining the one thing that makes RPGs so special: the GM's ability to completely control the game, bend or break the rules, etc.

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.

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.

Thanks!

Sounds like a great idea to me! :-)

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!

I agree. Although it seems they recently (a few months ago, anyway) took out the ability to message members on the site, which seemed odd. Why would you not want people communicating? Now if I want to get in touch with someone I have to either track them down outside Github to find a Twitter or email address, or I have to comment on a Pull Request or create an Issue or something.

Very cool! Is it possible to use an existing StatsD installation if we already have one running? Or is it pretty much an "all or nothing" package?

Can't wait for WebRTC to start getting wide support. Can't get here fast enough.

Where? I didn't read anything about him Pre-clearing the address with GMail as a verified email...

Is this also affecting Google Hangouts? Or just Talk?

Looks like this took Trello down, too...

Is this always going to be free? Because there are other competitors in this space currently with premium solutions...

You are my hero.

We're incredibly pleased to enter the next phase of our development, and the support of the Hacker News community during our Kickstarter campaign is a big reason why it's been possible.

For those more interested in the technical details, check out our Acknowledgements page[1].

[1] http://help.roll20.net/acknowledgements/

I bet that's exactly what Blackberry thought right before the iPhone came out, too. Not saying it will be that level of game changer (or that it even exists), but I think we've seen incumbents are notoriously bad at predicting when a new technology or competitor is about to take their business away from them.

Thanks so much for the kind words!

We're using this to power Roll20[1]. The whole team has been very responsive and supportive of any and all questions. Congrats!

[1] http://roll20.net

In regards to 2), something that I really enjoy when reading books on my Kindle is seeing the "popular highlighted passages". It basically shows you in your text where the most popular highlights are (so usually thousands of people have highlighted that passage for it to show up to you). I would love if they would expand that out further and allow popular comments/annotations as well (opt-in, of course)...although I'm sure there are a whole breadth of filtering and spam issues to deal with.

That's not correct (at least not according to my understanding). GPL license "attaches" itself to any project that uses it. So by including any GPL licensed library, you must also release the source code of the thing you are including it in. The LGPL allows you to use the library in a project and only commit back changes to the library but not open source the project you use it in. So if that's your intent (to just make sure that library-level changes are contributed back, but not to only restrict usage of the library to fully open-source projects), I would suggest going with LPGL (or, again, MIT, if you want people to be the most comfortable including your library in their projects). More info here:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/94346/can-i-legally-incor...

Have you considered MIT (or at least LGPL) instead of GPL licensing? Only other open source games or apps will be able to make use of this as-is. Of course that's certainly your right to do, just wanted to ask.

What does having the Representative's name in italics signify? (Please don't say co-sponsor...)

I will try and put together a writeup when I get a spare moment. Yes, we are using the JSON object syncing functionality.

I'd say you just gave a pretty good summary if our core philosophy. Here's a comment I made on Reddit along those lines: http://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/rcw9t/can_we_have_a_dis...

Great, added there as well, thanks!

Thanks! I'm glad to know there are so many others out there who share that perspective.

I'll drop you a line! Thanks :-)

I was wondering who had that :-). We were originally going to go with d20.io but couldn't figure out if it sounded good or not, and so now that is our shortening URL instead. I checked before using roll20.net and nothing was set up on roll20.com, so we moved forward.

We've posted to /r/rpg and /r/dnd, but linked directly to the site (http://roll20.net) instead...just as a sort of mini A/B test to see if it made a difference :-). If you know of any other subreddits feel free to spread the word!

Thanks for your support!