hello all,,

I am looking for a game to run over Google Hangout for my out of town buddies. I wonder if Rogue Trader would be suitable. I am wondering how battlemap dependent is the game and how complex are the fights in general.

I have both the core book and Into the Storm but I never ran or played the game. Nevertheless, the setting is amazing! This said, anyone ever ran Rogue Trader over skype/google hangout or any other online methode?

Sorry for the late reply, but I've been playing our game via Skype and it works pretty well for the most part. You'll need to decide how to handle dice rolls, however. There are applications to facilitate that sort of thing, though, such as Fantasy Grounds.

My group uses skype and another program called TTopRPG which is a free download off the net. It takes the GM a bit of time to set up, because it uses maps and icons, and so I grabbed a bunch of portraits off the various RT, DH and 40K sourcebooks I have on PDF and put those portraits into the program. Then I use AutoRealm, another free web download to create the maps, and save them as jpegs. The GM has complete control over what portions of the map are visible to the PC's, and the maps are easily scalable to whatever size you decide represents 1 'square', be it 5' or 1 VU. We have icons and maps for both ground-based exploration and combat and icons for ships out in the void. Our opening game involved our RT Captain being kidnapped (as the player had to bail at the last moment) and the PC's rushing to rescue him, both on the ground and then with a stern-chase in the void. Worked beautifully.

The only trick was that I had to figure out how to open a port on my router for the other players to log into my computer, but once it was set up, TTopRPG saved all the settings so we didn't have to monkey around with it again after that.

The program itself is intended for use with d20-based games so there are plenty of preprogrammed functions that we don't use for RT, but it's straightforward to setup macros for all your die rolling. For example, each PC has a set of skill tabs that they can edit or modify. So when the Rogue Trader takes an aimed shot, he clicks the "Plasma Pistol Full Aim (60%)" button, which rolls the to hit roll, lists what the basic threshold for success is and then I have it roll damage in case the hit was successful. The program also has a text-chat function in case you're not running skype or similar, and it also allows for private messages to and from the players for shenanigans. There are a lot more functions in the program, this is just a bare bones description.

In short, it provides chat, a "whiteboard" for placing maps and icons, allows die-rolling of whatever type you need, and allows gamers who are otherwise physically unable to make it to play.

Disclaimer: I'm in no way affiliated with TTopRPG, I just think they did a really good job with it. This is one case where you get waaay more than you pay for (free).