Originally posted by Maladominus:
Heya Bhoins!
Good to hear that your Klooge T20 is still going! Like yourself, my own GRIP-based CT campaign (our Terra Incognita campaign) has been going on strongly for the past 4-5 months now. We've been playing every week, almost non-stop.
I completely agree with you, in this era, FTF gaming simply is not convenient anymore for adults who have jobs and/or families, not to mention that all their childhood gamer friends have all gotten married and moved somewhere else. In other words, FTF gaming is "best" if it can be done. Barring that, online tabletopping is the "next best". =)
If you recall, you were partly responsible for getting me excited about using GRIP as the software for my own CT online campaign! 
Of course you tried to talk me out of it later on. LOL. For now, GRIP is doing ok for our group's needs. In the near future, I'm considering migrating our campaign to more modern software.... my eyes are on Battlegrounds RPG, which very much resembles the Klooge you use.
Grip still has the best dice set on the market. I looked at Battlegrounds RPG, is it significantly cheaper than Klooge? Oops found the cost, it is cheaper. Though more expensive to get up and running than GRiP. (29.95 vs. 40 or 35 (Klooge/Grip) for the GM, 12.95 while on sale, 14.95 after the initial sale vs 15.00 or free (again Klooge/Grip) per client.
I ask because with a huge user base like Klooge, or GRiP, or at least an active helpful userbase you still are going to be blazing alot of trail. Even as mature as GRiP is, some might say it is an old dog and won't change, I still had to do lots of coding. Fortunately the userbase knows what they are doing and has some experience in making things work. Klooge, T20 had, as far as I can tell never been done but I got lots of help from both the developer and the user base. Matter of fact things I was trying to do caused a rewrite of several sections of the code so they would work. Things like ammunition expenditure at a rate of greater than one per attack, hadn't been addressed before because nobody thought about it. But then it was like, hey why didn't I think of that. (From the developer actually.) The dice roller still isn't as mature. but it is good.
With brand new software, you will be blazing more trail.
It isn't as much fun going where no one has gone before, if you have to do all your own coding.
What I don't see in Battlegrounds is a description of the character sheets. GRiP spoiled me and Klooge has definitely added to that spoilage. I don't want to have to look at a sheet of paper, figure out what my modifiers are and roll the dice by typing in a formula. I want to push a button and let the computer do all the work.
Decrement my ammo, tell me if I hit, and let me roll damage. Keep track of everyone's HP, etc. Now as the Referee I need it to do this for everyone. After all the reason to use the computer isn't just to communicate, but also to be a GM Tool.
One of the drawbacks of Klooge is you have one character sheet. Everyone's is the same. While this is nice to bring in Human NPCs, for other things it isn't so nice. As someone once pointed out that the Ship is probably the most important NPC in a Traveller game. You can't put a starship into a Traveller Character sheet. (After all it is alot bigger.
) But you pay your money and you make your choices.
So if you have gotten used to GRiP look carefully at the Dice and the Character sheet implementation before you go out and spend money. And I don't see anything that it does that Klooge doesn't, except not use java and snap to grid.
Interesting, though it bears watching.
