I figured I'd post this here as well~

Fantasy Grounds has just launched recently on Steam and they currently have very good EotE support. Thusly, for anyone liking the thought of having access to the Steam community while RP'ing around the galaxy, I just posted a Steam guide for anyone that has never touched Fantasy Grounds before.

Hopefully there will be a guide covering how Fantasy Grounds handles dice & combat in the near-future, but for now, this should get some new players started & learning.

http://steamcommunity.com/app/252690/guides/

They also have a demo of Fantasy Grounds on the Steam page that should work perfectly fine with the guide too, so hopefully we'll get more people playing EotE.

(I've never really seen any guides explaining how to set up MapTool or Roll20 in the past, so I'm hoping this makes it easier for people to get into & discover Edge of the Empire)

Maptools has a wiki and tutorials actually.

Does Fantasy grounds have anything that is worth spending money on when you have two highly modular programs you can download or free? I honestly haven't looked into it that much.

I think it's mostly a simple matter of preference. To my eyes, this GM screen (my screen & map - I drew the white text/red lines):

Looks a lot more organised than this one:

I think even SmiteWorks - the people behind Fantasy Grounds - are aware that you totally could go out and get a free program if you wanted to, but I'd make the argument that most people would think the top image looks a bit less.....spreadsheet-y than the MapTool one does. SmiteWorks has made a few posts over on Steam even suggesting users try out the free stuff and see how you like it compared to Fantasy Grounds.

The part where Fantasy Grounds seems to have the advantage is all of their licensed material (would be awesome if FFG got in on that for Star Wars). They have a TON of licensed adventures and fully-automated tabletops for a bunch of different RPG series. In this case however, Edge of the Empire isn't one of them, it's simply a user-created ruleset much like what MapTool seems to have going.

I'm aware there is wiki stuff for the free programs, but nothing that ~I personally~ was able to find on my own regarding Edge of the Empire. Googling "MapTool Edge of the Empire tutorial" or the same search for Roll20 was always just giving me videos of people ~playing~ EotE sessions over the internet - not how to actually set the session up.

Daelkyr's work with EotE's MapTool ruleset seems rather impressive, but there is absolutely NO explanation whatsoever over on his forum thread for getting it running. Reading it, there's lots of "programmer speak"......I don't doubt that someone who is well-experienced with using MapTools or Roll20 in general could figure out how to run an EotE session with a bit of experimenting, but for someone like myself who is 100% new to this "Virtual Tabletop" stuff, MapTool and Roll20 scared me away because it was too confusing trying to figure out how to start something, and Fantasy Grounds had me up and running an actual game session ~perfectly~ from the time I downloaded it in the afternoon to the early evening when I invited a friend to join me.

(And all I can find for Roll20 just searching around is the mention of a dice script and ~nothing else~. If anyone actually knows of any tutorials specifically for Edge of the Empire on the free VTT programs, why are they not in big bright lights & posted at the top of this forum?)

I play EotE on Roll20 three times a week. What exactly do you need help with? We use Google Hangout, which supports a Roll20 App and an EotE Dice app that is posted on this forum http://community.fantasyflightgames.com/index.php?showtopic=80113

I have messed with the campaign tools and found to to be insanely easy to setup. Roll20 has its own wiki filled with useful info, and any questions you have can be answered on the forums.

I play EotE on Roll20 three times a week. What exactly do you need help with?

Nothing anymore, like I said, at this point it all pretty much just comes down to personal preference.

One way or the other, it's good for people to have many different options for playing over the internet with their friends~

Question--does every player need to buy it, or can players get some sort of free client? If only the GM needs to pay to take advantage of making the campaign, that'd be worth looking at, but if every player has to drop $30, that's a lot less attractive.

They have multiple payment models and a free demo at the moment.

For anyone planning to GM for years to come, I know they have an option that allows your players to connect to you for free with the demo - ONLY the GM is the one that has to pay in this case, but it is a fairly expensive fee (that goes on sale from time to time).

I figure that is worth it however, if you are planning to have like 8 different people connecting to you weekly & all of your friends live too far away to be constantly driving over to your house (if you consider gas prices and the cost of feeding everyone too). You could obviously just use MapTool or Roll20 for free, but Fantasy Grounds will be getting Steam Workshop support soon, and that will open the door for a myriad of AMAZING custom, auto-updating rulesets & other minor content.

Steam currently only has a "4-pack" listed like they always do for multiplayer stuff (four copies at around $30 on sale to gift to your friends) - the GM license option is supposed to be getting added to Steam shortly, but you can also grab it ~now~ off of the official Fantasy Grounds website & then type the registration code into your Steam (demo) copy.

The FG website also has a cheaper $25 (is not on sale right now) option if you ~only~ want to join as a player and ~not~ do any GM'ing.

*

http://steamcommunity.com/app/252690/discussions/2/558756168175980960/ - here is a great breakdown of the GM license. I think it also demonstrates why we desperately need to beg FFG to license SmiteWorks to add official support for Edge of the Empire (I think they code everything themselves) - their work is really high-quality.