Technical report:
-It works really well. It has a fairly steep learning curve, but there's a lot of keyboard shortcuts and manipulation tricks with the mouse. So if you put in the study time, you CAN learn how to work it fairly quickly. There's also a line tool that shows you units. If you have a grid turned on, you can figure Sneak Attack damage really easily with it.
-Conditional modifiers don't appear to be a thing, so it's up to you to enforce whatever rules you have. Dice are rolled and then added up manually, and you can't trigger stuff to happen on certain events.
-You want to physics-lock set pieces, by the way, so they won't move when things hit them.
Communication in-game is by a built-in IRC client, but the problem is is only scrolls up a limited amount and there's no way to set it to save accounts, from what I can say.
It's also fairly tiny, so until you start a map you've laid out, it looks like this. That's one drawback I don't like.
I also like the in-game tablet. Agrinja had the D&D wiki pulled up on his for reference.
Of course, there's fancy extras and lots of mod packs--the Paladin was able to represent an Enlarge Self by scaling up his model, and you can give individual models notations for name and information--how much damage, any status effects they have going on. I just don't advise you to go for the Apocalypse world mod pack.
Verdict:
If you've got the willingness to learn to use it, Tabletop Simulator makes a good D&D battlemat.
If you have a game group, it's a good buy because you can play chess, checkers, reversi, cards, whatever, when you're not gaming, so it's thing there.
Just makes sure you get it while it's on sale, and pool money to grab it in bundles to maximize that dollar.
Game report:
The players went with it pretty well. The one who wasn't so familiar with it got used to it and was rolling dice and asking "Can I get an attack bonus for my bow if I get on top of this thing, for shooting from a height?" REALLY QUICKLY.
They grow up so fast. ;__;
He jumps like a damned dragoon, and charges into battle fighting rather insane monsters with little more than his bare hands and rather nasty spell effects conjured up solely through knowledge and the local plantlife. He unerringly knows where his goal lies, he breathes underwater and is untroubled by space travel, seems to have no limits to his actual endurance and favors killing his enemies by driving both boots square into their skull. His agility is unmatched, and his strength legendary, able to fling about a turtle shell big enough to contain a man with enough force to barrel down a near endless path of unfortunates.
--The horror of Mario
Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath. He is a terrible person and a hack at writing and art. His cultural contributions are less than Justin Bieber's, and he's a shitmuffin. Go go gadget Googlebomb!