Hello all,

My friends and I have recently moved from the beginner game to actual created stories of our own. But we've recently recieved request from friends from out of town who would also like to play with us. We are unsure of the best way to go about setting this up. we would like to encorporate video and audio. We use drawn out maps and game pieces to represent PCs and NPCs. Our game would rather use our table top maps rather than build the maps online. Im looking for some help if anyone knows of a good program to use that we can all be in one room together online, use the same dice, and be able to have multiple camera imputs (GM and Map). we know there is the app so the out of towners can roll the dice, but I'm just looking for more ideas of how to set something like this up. Thank you very much

Take a look at roll20.net, you can scan and up load your maps, has a character sheet along with voice, cam chat and a dice roller.

Roll20

or

Maptools+Skype

Maptools is free for everything, but I've had technical issues with it usually relating to firewalls and ports.

Roll20 is freeish, with basic and player accounts being free. Coupled with Google+ you can get the dice roller and be ready to go. If you want to use all the tools it's $100/year, which gives you access to integrated dice, character sheets, and a dozen other features that aren't required but are handy. Only issues I've had with it are tablet users don't have voice comms (easily fixed with skype). Also there's Android and Apple Apps coming out soon that may resolve that issue.

thank you, i'll check out roll20. not sure we are willing to pay $100 year, but we will check out the site. we were also going to try to skype. keep the ideas coming. thanks again

You don't have to pay to use roll20 as a GM/player. It is an option, but not a required one. Everything works just fine if nobody spends a dime. You can still import/draw maps, and get pretty much everything you need for a Star Wars game.

Yeah the $100/yr is for the full featured thing that include APIs, integrated character sheets, and that sort of stuff.

For free you can create and run campaigns, get video and voice comms, and everythign you need to run a basic campaign. If you run it in Googlehangouts you can also pull in this die roller:http://game2.com/eote/# and you'll be fine. Only issue will be Hangouts makes space limited, but smart graphic design will get you by.

If nothing else you can do the free roll20/hangouts thing first, and see if you like it. If you don't you can give Maptools a try. If you do and are willing to shell out, then you can go paid.

I used MapTool for a number of years, but it's not for the faint of heart I know that there's at least one SWRPG framework available for it, though. I don't have any experience in Roll20, but from the video I saw on it, I'd say that MapTool has almost all of those features (except integrated voice/audio, one of its major drawbacks), plus a whole bunch more. And it's free. It even has light sources and has the ability to block off line-of sight to make pretty realistic progressive map reveals.

But it does have a pretty steep learning curve. It's definitely not for everyone. And I'm guessing that for a one-off game with out-of-town buddies, it's probably not worth getting into, unless you just want the basic features.

It even has light sources and has the ability to block off line-of sight to make pretty realistic progressive map reveals.

Roll20 can do this too, but it is behind the paywall.

Also check out Fantasy Grounds, it's an online tool like roll20/maptool and it's got an (unofficial) Edge of the Empire ruleset developed.