Arda on Tabletop Simulator

[CDavis7M]

I just wanted to share that Tabletop Simulator is a really good platform for playing Arda. TTS is PC/Mac software available on Steam. It is a physics-based "sandbox" that can be used to play any board or card game. As a "sandbox," you can do anything that you want--place any card anywhere, reveal cards, flip them over, etc. But then it also means that you can do anything you want, including stealing cards from other players, throwing cards off the table, building a house of cards, fail to stack cards properly, etc. It often goes on sale in a 4-pack. The card assets are openly available if you search "MECCG" in the "workshop."

The best part is that there's no clean up.

One of the guys here in California combined a few of the Steam Workshop assets to create a very nice play area. The board/mats are from "workshop" assets for the Fantasy Flight Lord of the Rings card game, and the cards are from the MECCG "workshop" assets. The sites were given names so they are searchable. We are using "Gandalf Gene's Arda deck" (viewtopic.php?f=37&t=2870).

[Yangtze2000]

Interesting! What would you say are TTS's pros and cons compared to Cardnum?

[CDavis7M]

Well, the biggest win for TTS is that it supports multiplayer, which is not possible in CardNum. So you actually can play Arda on TTS.

CardNum has many interactions scripted. Things like Revealed to All Watchers and Aware of their Ways. So it can be a much easier to resolve those. But occasionally there are bugs with certain things.

Whereas TTS is entirely manual. It always works the same as playing with actual cards since it is a sandbox. Which is both good and bad. It means that the cards always work how you want. Agents go to the right spot, cards can be played with companies, stacking off to the side is easy. Unfortunately that means that you can sometimes drop cards off the table and not be able to find them until you go looking under the table. It also means that you need to properly stack your cards into a deck, or else they are not a deck.

CardNum lets you zoom in on the cards and roll dice pretty easily. TTS could work very well but someone will actually need to go add all of the card text so that hover-over text works. At the moment, TTS does NOT have card names or card text. It is just a bunch of unnamed card images.

CardNum has a great deck editor. Where as cards are not even named in TTS at the moment. I have built a deck in TTS from a deck list. It was difficult. With Arda it is not a big deal because you are using almost all of the cards and just removing ones you dont want. And you only build the deck once.

I'm looking into adding card names and card text into TTS, but it is a big project. And maybe not worth it. For Arda, its not too difficult to just name all of the site cards.

[stavroguin]

One of the guys here in California combined a few of the Steam Workshop assets to create a very nice play area.

I cant see that place in the TTS's workshop. Could you share access to that customized playing area?

[CDavis7M]

One of the guys here in California combined a few of the Steam Workshop assets to create a very nice play area.

I cant see that place in the TTS's workshop. Could you share access to that customized playing area?

This play area is actually not listed under MECCG. I mentioned above that it is actually for Fantasy Flight's LCG. You can find the table listed in the Workshop as "Lord of the Rings: LCG Complete 4-Player." You can load that play area and then add in the cards from the workshop pack called "Middle Earth CCG Mega-Pack".

The version I play on was modified by another player here. I don't believe that it has been loaded into the Workshop directly. I believe that he is still updating it. I'll follow up if I learn more.

[CDavis7M]

PM me if you want the Tabletop Simulator savefile for this Arda setup.