I'm looking to start a game up in the next couple of months. I've got people from all around and was wondering what is the best platform to use. I initially just thought of FaceTime or Skype or something along those lines, but that doesn't allow for a map. What is the best system for online play?

If you want a map (which you really don't need of this system) then I suggest Roll20. If you forgo mapping, you can use the dice bot in Discord.

Discord and dice bot keep it simple

I've shopped around lately trying things out and ran into EpicTable that I really liked. Had what I needed compared to others that had TOO much.

I use discord for voice and roll20 for rolling. I think you need a roll20 membership to be able to roll star wars dice. A cheaper way is to use a discord dice-bot and either roll20 sheets to keep them all in one place. Of course you could also use OGGDude's for sheets if you want to just pass around the sheets. I like roll20 because I use a MacBook to play and I don't like having to download new character sheets every session.

6 hours ago, TheLostKing said:

I think you need a roll20 membership to be able to roll star wars dice.

You do. If you play star wars a lot it's all good. If you play other games too, its even better. One nice thing is the paid account holder doesn't also have to be the GM. So you can set up a Star Wars game for you to run, and a D&D game for someone else to run and you to just play in.

6 hours ago, TheLostKing said:

I like roll20 because I use a MacBook to play and I don't like having to download new character sheets every session.

As a GM it's also good to have the players sheets available when you're planning an adventure. It stinks when you do something like say "Ok, Gimme a Hard Knowledge:Lore or Outer Rim check" only to find out you forgot no one in the party has anything in either of those skills. as a good GM that shouldn't be adventure ending, but it's awkward when you did something like set up the players to be called to evaluate an artifact as "experts" only to find out the players knew literally nothing about it.

I play online with buddies around the country using Discord for voice and Roll20 for the tabletop. Of course, I already use r20 for D&D online, so I'm already paying the subscription so that isn't a concern of mine. The integration is fairly smooth, though I wish that there was a better way to do the talent trees (like having actual talent trees that you could mark the talents you pick up on).

Even though you don't need a map to play the game, I tend to do things like load pretty background pictures that can represent the area that my group is adventuring in. I also have a section where I can depict the range bands and players can put tokens on, then move them around as they move in combat. I mostly do that, though, because the players I have are used to D&D style tactical combat and so having a visual representation of things helps to keep them engaged and focused which can be difficult compared to playing in person around a shared table. Just my two credits worth...

If you're looking to do play-by-post, RoleGate is a newcomer in that arena but already has SWRPG dice available! Sure, it has a funny name, but it's got options for public chat function so your audience (if you choose for your game to be public) can interact with you, built-in character sheets, a nice act/chapter/scene break down and more. It's pretty cool.

I'm with the others for Roll20. You can do a lot with it if you have a subscription.

Character sheets - Not as slick as Oggdude's, but it has spaces for pretty much everything you need.

Dice roller - You build your pools on your character sheet and click a button to roll your dice. After displaying the roll, it reports the result with dice cancelled out, which really helps with big pools. It does trip you up the first few times where all threats/adv and success/fail are exactly cancelled and you're sitting there looking for the results line, but it doesn't display because there's no uncancelled symbols to print. A really cool thing is the GM has a special character sheet called "-DicePool" that adds to whatever the PCs are rolling. So you can do all the blues, blacks, purples and reds pool building yourself and just have them click their skills to add their greens and yellows, though PCs can add these on their own, so you don't necessarily have to. A nifty feature is this can take into account modifiers from talents (though the PC has to have put the modifier on their char sheet) and will add blues or yank out blacks as appropriate. All the sheets come with a Destiny button that flips a light side point, except "-DicePool" which flips dark side.

Map - It's got a GM-visible layer and the ability to use fog of war and dynamic lightning, so that the PCs can discover the map piece by piece, without being able to see too far ahead of what they already know about. The PCs each get their own text color and can type and position their notes and such, or click on the map to "ping" a point on the rest of the party's screens to point out what they are talking about.

Handouts and Shared Content - While this isn't as powerful as I'd like - with some frustrating limitations, it is still cool to be able to provide handouts to the party, so long as they're text, a single image or a combination of the two. A big perk is they're permission-based, so you can give the handout to all PCs, some, just one, or no one at all (I use these for all my notes). They can be grouped into folders for organization, though the grouping interface leaves much to be desired. I also like to snip the stat blocks for equipment from Oggdude and paste them in handouts so the PCs can pass equipment around without hounding me for its stats. And thanks to the permissions, they can't see the stats (or even the existence of the gear) until I decide they have it.