We are the creators of Tabletop Simulator just released out of Early Access AUA!

I've probably referred dozens and dozens of game designers at The Game Crafter to use TTS. A few of us even use it to remotely playtest our games and there's an idea for a paid service to get a playtest. Some of those have even been uploaded to Steam Workshop (like my game, Sneeze.

The process involves lots of duplicative steps. And keeping them in sync requires some amount of work by the designer.

Have you considered how you might make TTS even more usable for would-be game designers or users of sites like www.thegamecrafter.com to get their games on TTS?

// edit: fix links

Very cool site!

We'd love to know how to improve the experience for game designers and support www.thegamecrafter.com! Let us know at /r/TabletopSimulator

Why the requirement that you own Superfight as DLC on steam to even join someone else hosting the game? I could understand the host having to own it to be able to set up a game of it, but why the requirement that everyone in the session own the DLC?

Maybe the way Payday 2 and Talisman: Digital Edition handle DLC made me expect better than "oh, every person must chip in $5 or else you can't play this online"

By having everyone pay to play we can split up the price to each person. Instead of making the host pay the lump sum (like in real life). Publishers don't want to completely devalue their physical business.

The host always has the options to gift copies to friends making the payment model more similar to real life.

Any chance of having a timed trial, or other ways of trying the DLC before buying?

Steam now has a refund option. If you dislike the content you can always refund!

...fair enough. I'd have a long paragraph or two explaining my view on doing it this way, but that's probably better reserved for the tabletop sim subreddit.

as a more general follow-up question: is there an official recommended size for table images for both the large rectangular custom image table and the new square custom image table? The only thing I could find for the first of those is the size of 4400x2600 pixels.

Feel free, we love having an open discussion about the game!

Square custom table works great with any square image. I'd recommend either 4096x4096 or 2048x2048. Ya the rectangle custom table should work great with 4400x2600.

What was your inspiration for creating the simulator? Did you guys have far-away-friends that you missed gaming with?

What's your favourite game to play?

If you could add any game in existence, what would you choose?

Wolfire's desperate gods was the inspiration for TTS. It had the same core concept of physics based tabletop gaming, but it was applied to only one game. I wanted to take the same idea, but expand it to work for anything Tabletop with Steam Workshop integration.

I have way to many favorites, but a good classic one I always fall back to is Catan.

I'd probably want to add Munchkin to TTS if I can add any game.

Will you eventually allow users to create their own animated rpg models?

The biggest issue with animations is finding a good format for importing during runtime (while the game is in progress). It's definitely on the wishlist, but can't promise anything.

How you are going to convince players to buy the DLC over continuing to use existing mods?

I think players naturally want to support content that they enjoy. Besides the fact that will have better assets (no scans).

It's the same thing with piracy, we don't spend any energy stopping that. Some people won't pay for any content no matter what, why make the experience worse for your paying customers with DRM? Also I'd rather people have fun with our game rather than not if they can't afford it.

Is it possible to play dnd on the TTS?

Yep we have an entire RPG kit. Check out our tutorial video for RPGs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTpAKFHMxTg

Holy damn, you're just 2 guys? You're doing an awesome job for it!

I'm curious, how does the near future for TTS look like? Will crossplatform play between Steam and Mobile versions be possible, or will they be too different to manage it? The possibility of having mobile users, desktop users, and VR users play the same game together at the same time sounds amazing, but also pretty hard to pull off.

On that note, are there plans for a 64-bit version further down the line?

Thanks for the support!

I can't say for sure yet on crossplatform play for PC and mobile, since we haven't started development on it. We definitely would like all version of the game to play together so we will work hard to try to achieve it!

64-bit is definitely a possibility but there are extra development pains that arise when having to target 2 version 32-bit and 64-bit.

Did you got a large Hiccup in sales for getting out of early access, or it was pretty flat?

Double/triple our sales so far but that mostly due to increased visibility on the front page of Steam.

Will you expand the content creation part of TTS? Like easy to mod models and dice?

Yep dice for sure is on the list. Not sure what you mean by models? You can already import any 3d model.

It's great to see your first steps towards involving publishers to publish on your platform, Is there any other publisher deals in the works that you can speak of?

We are in contact with a few publisher, but nothing we can talk about yet. We are also actively looking for great games to add to TTS. Our goal end goal is to have TTS be a platform for playing as many games as possible.

If you have any games you'd like to see in TTS let the publishers know! :)

Love the work you guys have put into this game, I have been hoping for months now that mac and linux will get tablet support. Is there any time table for the addition?

Sorry for the Tablet delay for Mac and Linux players - we aren't happy that it isn't in by release. We have just run into some technically problem porting it over to the other platforms and we didn't want to delay our release over it. It's coming but I can't say when!

I'd like to congratulate you guys on the release! I remember seeing your game on Kickstarter and getting very excited! I was one of the first backers.

What I want to know is: How does it feel having a game on steam? How does it feel going into full release? How does it feel knowing that so many people love your work? What will you do now?

Thanks you very much for believing and supporting the project so early on!

It's been any amazing year beyond anything we could have ever asked for. When I was initially coming up with the price of the Kickstarter at $3,000 - I was so worried that we wouldn't even make it, let alone completely blow past it. It's incredibly rewarding releasing every patch and seeing all the great positivity from the community! I pretty much obsessively read everyone comments good or bad, but it's made the game better for sure.

Some while back a user suggested (on the steam forums, can't remember who, sorry) to include macro functionality and similar semi-programmable functions. There was no official response to the thread so I fear it might have gone unnoticed.

• Will you be adding mini-programmable zones and semi-automatic deck rules? (or at least some form of more automated deck control with a bit more programming/rule-setup before the game, but less micromanagement during the game)

By this I mean for instance; a user draws a card from a "free-for-all shop" in the middle of the board, as soon as a card is drawn from that area a new card will be added from a face-down trade-deck. This is just an example but I'm not sure if that made sense or not :P

We are still very much interested in adding scripting support for TTS to automate gameplay mechanics. It's on the wishlist, but I can't promise anything.

As a kickstarter backer do I not get DLC automatically? Do I get the mobile version automatically when it comes out?

While we very much appreciate all of our Kickstarter backer, we did not promise any additional DLC for free. But you will get the mobile version for free! You helped support the games development and saved $10 dollars on the release price.

In this thread you commented:

why make the experience worse for your paying customers with DRM?

On that note, any plans to update your non-Steam (DRM-Free) version?

The game is so heavily integrated with Steam and Workshop that a non-Steam version would just be a lesser experience. Any reason that you would want a non-Steam version?

I understand you are a small dev studio, but if you have previously sold / released a DRM-Free version, don't you think it's dishonest to only update on Steam from now on?

We haven't ruled out a non-Steam version, I just don't see the reason when it's just going to be a lesser experience.

Will you be addin a "draw" feature, as opposed to "deal" where you quickly can click draw, and the user that clicks will get one card placed in their hand? If this is the plan here is a followup question; Currently the context menu is either on or off for players (such as deal, reset, search etc). Could you add a individual on/off tickbox for each function?

If you click the little arrow next to deal you can deal to individual colors or to all colors (which should function similar to draw).

Individual contextual menu settings it not a bad idea, I'll add it to the list!

Do you prefer playing table games virtually or in the real world?

Real life is always better imo! But unfortunately it's not always possible.

Cleanup and setup is way better in the digital world though haha!

Have you guys gotten any DMCA claims or cease and desists because of copyright material on the workshop? If so how are you dealing with them?

We have gotten quite a few DMCA thankfully Valve handles all the claims and pulls down offending content.

Hey Guys!

I have to say, I am a huge fan. We use TableTop Simulator religiously on my show "Game the Game" on Geek & Sundry, it's livestreamed on Twitch every Thursday.

My question is... are you being approached by publishers yet to put together 'official' content for RPG systems? What I mean is that a lot of VTT's have 'exclusive' adventures or materials that are used in their systems. Would you be interested in something like that?

Also, follow up. Would you like to come play with us on Twitch sometime?

Awesome thanks for playing our game, I'll have to tune in!

Nothing RPG related so far has come about just yet but it's definitely something we are interested in pursuing.

Sounds like fun shoot us a email: [email protected]

Don't you feel you are kind of like the mafia in that you profit from people buying your game to play what amount to pirated versions of commercial board and card games and only get serious about policing the workshop for items that you have as paid DLC ?

We don't police the Workshop ourselves we leave that to DMCA notices that Valve takes care of.

Regarding the Superfight DLC, the game boxes state that the main game contains 500 cards and that the expansions contain 100 cards - however, in the Tabletop Sim version's decks there's only 492 core cards and 97 expansion cards in both expansion sets.

That's a fairly small number but I'm still curious - what happened to those extra 14 cards?

We have included all the actual cards. There are some blanks in the retail version of Superfight.

What is it like having such amazing steam friends?

Also, did you ever think that TTS could become this big?

Pretty terrible... lol.

Hardly thought TTS would get this big. I was worried about reaching the 4k Kickstarter goal initially set.

What do you eat for breakfast?

I skip breakfast :(

What advice would you give to people wanting to make video games and possibly have it as their career?

Get into modding and don't stop when you you run into inevitable show stoppers. You need to have passion or maybe obsession about creating the best thing you can create. It's pretty cliche response, but it's all true.