Love this app!
I’ve been using Vorpal Board for D&D remote sessions for years and it works great! (Only tip is to make sure all players use Chrome and have the latest software update for both Chrome and Vorpal Board. It’s also great for remote play for card games and board games! Highly recommend!
Unusably unreliable.
I’m a lifetime VB Kickstarter backer. During the pandemic years, VB had major technical problems: disconnections, major lag, not everyone could see the scanned assets etc, random problems that would prevent the completion of a game session. So my group could not use it reliably. When it worked it was amazing. But that was maybe 25% of the time. Recently, the connections seem stable and the glitches are minimal and rare. Extra features have been added and, in my opinion, VB now is now ready for the masses to enjoy and use as originally intended!
And then I get kicked in the junk again: it won’t work today. Just won’t work. The phone cam and website won’t link up. Worked fine the last several times and then, today, for no reason, it just won’t work. 30 min of troubleshooting and nothing. I am done. I quit. You broke me. I did the lifetime pledge on Kickstarter because I believed in the product. I hung in there for years waiting for it to be usable. And it still is not. I had 4 friends lined up for a game tomorrow and now the stinking thing won’t work. Sigh.
Pros: (when it works) excellent image quality, good zoom feature, simple to use and get others into games, it “does what it’s supposed to do”. Cons: does not work often enough to be a real problem, occasional lag, occasional disconnects, time consuming to upload digital assets, especially if requiring cutting out edges of tokens or models. Still missing a few seemingly easy and obvious features like colored backgrounds for assets (to easily see who’s who and make them stand out from the board) and dedicated separate life counters (they do have a counter feature but it’s an overlay that goes on a digital asset )
And then I get kicked in the junk again: it won’t work today. Just won’t work. The phone cam and website won’t link up. Worked fine the last several times and then, today, for no reason, it just won’t work. 30 min of troubleshooting and nothing. I am done. I quit. You broke me. I did the lifetime pledge on Kickstarter because I believed in the product. I hung in there for years waiting for it to be usable. And it still is not. I had 4 friends lined up for a game tomorrow and now the stinking thing won’t work. Sigh.
Pros: (when it works) excellent image quality, good zoom feature, simple to use and get others into games, it “does what it’s supposed to do”. Cons: does not work often enough to be a real problem, occasional lag, occasional disconnects, time consuming to upload digital assets, especially if requiring cutting out edges of tokens or models. Still missing a few seemingly easy and obvious features like colored backgrounds for assets (to easily see who’s who and make them stand out from the board) and dedicated separate life counters (they do have a counter feature but it’s an overlay that goes on a digital asset )
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Improved to 4 stars!!
I’m a lifetime VB Kickstarter backer. During the pandemic years, VB had major technical problems: disconnections, major lag, not everyone could see the scanned assets etc, random problems that would prevent the completion of a game session. So my group could not use it reliably. When it worked it was amazing. But that was maybe 25% of the time.
Nowadays, the connections seem stable and the glitches are minimal and rare. Extra features have been added and, in my opinion, VB now is now ready for the masses to enjoy and use as originally intended! I’m happy to upgrade my review to a solid 4 stars.
Pros: excellent image quality, good zoom feature, simple to use and get others into games, it “does what it’s supposed to do”.
Cons: occasional lag, occasional disconnects, time consuming to upload digital assets, especially if requiring cutting out edges of tokens or models. Still missing a few seemingly easy and obvious features like colored backgrounds for assets (to easily see who’s who and make them stand out from the board) and dedicated separate life counters (they do have a counter feature but it’s an overlay that goes on a digital asset )
Overall, it’s coming along nicely and I’m happy to be using it more often lately.
Nowadays, the connections seem stable and the glitches are minimal and rare. Extra features have been added and, in my opinion, VB now is now ready for the masses to enjoy and use as originally intended! I’m happy to upgrade my review to a solid 4 stars.
Pros: excellent image quality, good zoom feature, simple to use and get others into games, it “does what it’s supposed to do”.
Cons: occasional lag, occasional disconnects, time consuming to upload digital assets, especially if requiring cutting out edges of tokens or models. Still missing a few seemingly easy and obvious features like colored backgrounds for assets (to easily see who’s who and make them stand out from the board) and dedicated separate life counters (they do have a counter feature but it’s an overlay that goes on a digital asset )
Overall, it’s coming along nicely and I’m happy to be using it more often lately.
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Buyer Beware
I’m a lifetime Kickstarter backer. I want to love this product. However, over the course of several years since release, the product still does not reliably do what it claims to do, even at the most basic level. For example, even using the most basic feature of video streaming a board game (no scanned components at all), the video feed often freezes, sometimes freezes for only one player, has major lag, etc. When adding scanned components, 50% of the time or so, one or more players can’t see the components, can’t interact with the components, etc. Last time I tried to play, I was the host and I couldn’t interact with the scanned components but my remote player could. Weird. We gave up and switched to using FB messenger video to finish the game. I own the product for life and hope to one day be able to use it but that day is not now. I’ll come back and try again every few months but for now, if you’re going to try this product, choose the ONE MONTH option and see if it works. To be fair, for the 50% of the time when it works, it works GREAT. the problem is that sometimes it will work great for 2hours and then freeze up or have various weird problems, rarely the same issues. When I contact the developer via their discord help channel, they just say, “that’s weird, do you have the updated patch, is your OS updated, etc”. Yes. I’m updated. Furthermore, I don’t love their promotional videos showing large groups playing complicated games like d&d or big board games. That is so far beyond the amount of risk I’m willing to take with this product, I can’t comprehend anyone attempting that or making it to the end of a session without major problems. We tried a 4-6h board game once and by hour 3 we just aborted because one remote player couldn’t see the board anymore.
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Great Way to Game
I stumbled onto Vorpal Board earlier on in the pandemic and was sad I didn’t find it sooner. Being able to scan board game components from your collection and connect and play with people online, safely from your home was a fantastic find.
The Vorpal team is constantly updating features and adding new functionality. My only pro-tip is to remove you case before using your phone to stream or scan as your device can get quite warm. Otherwise, it’s been a solid year of great fun with board games!
The Vorpal team is constantly updating features and adding new functionality. My only pro-tip is to remove you case before using your phone to stream or scan as your device can get quite warm. Otherwise, it’s been a solid year of great fun with board games!
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