During this period of quarantine and social distancing due to the COVID-19 outbreak, there are certainly more important things than gaming. But if keeping your gaming group together helps cut through some of the gloom and stress, or makes you feel less isolated, I want to do what I can to support that. With that in mind, I’ve extended the EpicTable trial period. Rather than the usual 30-day trial, you’ll have full access to all EpicTable features for the duration of this strange and unsettling time.

You don’t need a special license key or anything–just download the latest EpicTable release at http://www.epictable.com/download and install it. If you have previously downloaded EpicTable, and your trial has expired, that’s fine–this new trial will automatically apply once you install the lastest EpicTable release. You don’t need to uninstall first, just install it right over your existing EpicTable.

If you’ve never played pen-and-paper RPG games online before, here’s the quick gist: you get together with your friends on your online meeting venue of choice: Google Hangouts or Zoom or Discord or whatever, so you can hear and see each other; and EpicTable provides the virtual tabletop–a shared space for maps, handouts, dice, etc. For more info, you can visit help.epictable.com or the video tutorials and feature list here.

I wish all the best for you and your friends and families.
— John

John Lammers
EpicTable Creator
Realityforge

Check it out. It should solve your invitation problem.

While I was releasing a new version, I picked up a one-line change that solves an issue with the background of one of the panels not changing when you change themes.

This is, of course, a free upgrade, and as always, you can just run the setup program to install over your existing EpicTable installation. All your existing games will work as-is with this update.

Sorry for the disruption of service, and thank you to the people who reported it so I could get this fixed.
— John

EpicTable 1.3.6.2 is now available. It’s a quick fix for a mistake I introduced in 1.3.6 (originally released on 12/21 as 1.3.6.1). It addresses one thing and one thing only: an error in loading “count successes” dice rolls into the dice roll editor. If you don’t use this kind of dice roll, there’s no need for you to upgrade. (And in that case, let’s just forget we had this little conversation.) If you’ve not already upgraded to 1.3.6, go ahead. There are other worthwhile things there. As always, it’s a free upgrade, and as always, it’s completely backwards compatible. Just download it and run the installer.

— John

You know what else uses dice rolls? Mini-sheets. These are small, flexible sheets with key stats and rolls. I previewed mini-sheets awhile back, and they’re definitely going to be there.

Also, there are some improvements to how game objects and other resources are managed that I’ve wanted to do for a long time. I won’t hold up 2.0 long enough to do everything I’d like to do, but I think that at least these three things are must-haves for the new EpicTable.

Licensing, Backward Compatibility, and Other Stuff Not to Be Afraid Of

Licensing

In appreciation for your support and encouragement over the years–or over the hours, for some of you I’m making EpicTable 2.0 a free upgrade. The licensing model will be the same “kitchen table licensing” that EpicTable 1.x uses. That is, no subscription, no need for player licenses. It’s your table. Play your game.

Backward Compatibility

I’m going to do my best to make sure EpicTable 2.0 loads all existing 1.x games. If it doesn’t, I’ll consider it a bug and work to help you. You won’t necessarily be able to take the same game back to 1.x after you’ve loaded it into 2.0. (As of this writing, I do that all the time during development, but it seems like the kind of thing that’s going to bite me someday.) The other thing I know you won’t be able to do is have a mix–some people on 1.x and some people on 2.0 in the same game.

The Road Ahead

As usual. I’m not forecasting a date. I hope to be leaking some previews soon, though. And yeah, there’s going to be a beta. Details to follow.

So, with that preamble, let me introduce the EpicTable User Guide. It’s on the newly refreshed EpicTable Help site. It’s just starting out, but I’m adding to it bit-by-bit, and as I write new features, I’m adding draft documents that I can turn on as they’re released. You guys have been getting by with videos and exploration for too long. The User’s Guide is going to happen.

One thing that’s slowing me down a little… EpicTable 2.0. That’s right, there’s going to be a 2.0, and it’s going to change things a bit. So, if I’m light on screen shots or documentation is lagging in some areas, it could be that there’s some 2.0 documentation cued up. I’ll start leaking info about 2.0 soon.

EpicTable 1.3.6 is now available. As always, it’s a free upgrade, and as always, it’s completely backwards compatible. Just download it and run the installer.

What’s in 1.3.6?

• A fix for an issue a user reported that left a player unable to control his own character.
• Bugfixes for certain scenarios in the dice roller–fairly subtle stuff like exploding dice paired with dropping the lowest N dice, exploding paired with success counting in certain scenarios, that sort of thing.
• An expanded grammar for entering dice rolls from the chat window. You can find the EpicTable dice roll grammar documented through numerous examples on the new EpicTable Help site.

Check it out and let me know what you think!

— John

Based on feedback from a new customer, I’ve addressed a couple issues with sharing/unsharing maps and tabletops and the interaction of that with the two ways of opening a map or tabletop: “Open (Shared)” and “Open (Private)”

Fixes

Inconsistencies in Sharing / Unsharing Maps and Tabletops
Ensures that when you open a map or tabletop as Shared, it will be shared with all participants. Likewise, if you open the map or tabletop as Private, it will unshare it if necessary.

Compatibility

This release is a free update and is backward compatible with earlier versions of EpicTable. To install the patch, simply download the installer from http://www.epictable.com/download and run it. You can install it right over top of your existing installation.

This release addresses the following two issues.

Issue with custom data folder reverting to the default
The feature that lets you specify the folder where EpicTable data is stored had an issue that caused it to keep getting reset to the default location. I’ve helped a few of you address this manually to get past the bug. If you’re one of these folks, there’s no need for you undo any of that. This update will just make sure that the right thing happens the next time.

Issue with permanently removing maps and tabletops from the game
Some of you reported that you were unable to remove maps and tabletops from the game via the right-click menu in the Maps and Tabletops gallery. You were doing it right. There was a problem that is fixed in this release.

This release is a free update and is backward compatible with earlier versions of EpicTable. To install the patch, simply download the installer from http://www.epictable.com/download and run it. You can install it right over top of your existing installation.

This release was a little side-trek to address just this one problem, because one of you needed it for offline use as a convention. I have another update in progress with a lot more in it. Stay tuned.

This release has fixes for a few issues dealing with maps and a fix for a chat issue. Thank you to everyone who filed support tickets or used the error report dialog to send me reports, especially those who included their email address so I could follow up.

Read about exactly what’s changed at the What’s New? page and download the latest version of EpicTable from the download page.