Hello there, my fellow Star Wars gamers. I'm seeking some words of wisdom from some of our more experienced online players. I have never played a tabletop RPG online before, and like a kamakasi pilot, I'm diving head first into the challenge of GMing an EotE adventure virtually. My friends are scattered all along the east coast, so a virtual tabletop option is our best bet for now.

That being said, I've been doing some research and I see there are two main camps with regards to virtual tabletops. MapTools vs. Roll20

I'd like to hear your experiences with the different systems.

• Pros vs. Cons of each.
• How well do each of the systems lend themself to SW: EotE?
• How easily can players create/maintain their own tokens and stats?
• How have you handled communication with players? (Skype/Ventrillo/Google Hangouts?)
• How have you managed to get the artwork from the adventures into the system?
• How have you managed dice rolls?
• How have you managed turn order?
• How do you keep track of the health of your NPCs?
• How easily have your players adapted to the playing online?

I know this feels like 20 questions, but I like to make as informed a decision as I can. Any wisdom and experience you can share would be wonderful, and greatly appreciated!

Rolld20.net and Fantasygrounds (not free) are the only ones I know of.

Rolld20 is pretty good, though I can't really spell out the pros and cons all that much. I haven't had a chance to use Fantasygrounds yet, but it seems very modular and powerful.

I took a look at a review for Fantasy Grounds. It looks promising, but the reviewer mentioned the amount of work setting up a campaign is pretty huge...and even moreso if you're using it for a non-supported system. I don't have much programming experience, so I'd need to wait on that one.

I recommend Roll20.net combined with Google Hangout. You can launch your Roll20 campaign in Google Hangout, which has its advantages. For one thing there is an Edge of the Empire dice roller plugin for Hangout. If you do a search of these forums for the dice roller you should be able to find it.

Here is a super awesome screenshot, which features me smiling creepily at 2am (I was testing it out).

Basically you get your video, voice and text chat, the dice roller, and easy to use tools to make maps, tokens, and notes for your characters.

If you trust your players to roll properly its easy. We use Skype or Hangout with video and have maps online etc.

Easy to run as you dont need micro tactical movement etc.

Wow, i didn't know about combining roll20+google hangouts, and also a dice plugin. I might have to pursue that.

I just use Skype, and trust my players when it comes to rolls.

Dylan, thanks for the screenshot. I'll have to look into that tonight when I get home. Where'd you get the charactersheet? Is that part of Roll20?

Dylan, thanks for the screenshot. I'll have to look into that tonight when I get home. Where'd you get the charactersheet? Is that part of Roll20?

The character info. you see in the screenshot is part of Roll20, yes. It's vague enough to work with any system, I just put in Edge of the Empire information. The graphic is a custom token I have been using privately for that player (he's a Droid Technician) and was made with TokenTool.

You can however upload any kind of handouts you want, and determine who can see them and edit them.

In my signature you can find the official character sheet that I made form fillable. You could fill this out for your players (or have them fill it out), and upload them to Roll20 so that any point a player could check their info, if they don't like using the default character sheets in the program.

Perfect! I'll be purchasing my Core Rulebook tomorrow and, using the tools you've helped share, I'll start piecing together my first adventure for my players soon.

Any other tips from the experts?

So, for thouse of you who have run a campaign using Roll20, I ahve a few more quick questions.

1) Can anyone tell me if there's an easy way to shift my PC's tokens from one map to the next as our adventure progresses?

2) Have any of you found a script to incorporate the custom dice roller within Roll20, instead of the one within Google Hangouts?

3) Does it show full roll results to the whole party, or just the final summarized results? That's one element of the Google Hangouts roller that I'm not really thrilled with.

Any additional feedback would be greatly apprecaited. I've been debating the possibility of learning MapTools as it seems to be more encompassing, but I'm not sure I can get past the learning curve quickly enough, as our first session with the Beginners Box Game is in a week.

DylanRPG, I love that your Droid character's motivation is for Love!

I ran an EoE Beginner Game in Google Hangouts and Roll20 last night with some success. I will try to address your questions. I have to admit that I am a newbie, and have not used MapTools, so admittedly my perspective is from roll20 only.

• Pros vs. Cons of each.

roll20 is very flexible overall, but does have a bit of a learning curve. All things are possible, just may take some time to figure things out in the Virtual Tabletop (VTT). For example, how to handle Destiny Points - I used a Card Deck and had two sides to the cards (one for light and one for dark side). Very simple, just needed some help from a fellow player to figure out how best to implement.

• How well do each of the systems lend themself to SW: EotE?

I think roll20 and Google Hangouts lend themselves very well to EotE. With the integrated dice rolling API (someone will have to be a mentor status to be able to access) it is very quick and easy to evaluate the dice rolls. However, there is a bit of manual typing required for the dice rolls. Otherwise, the rest of the system is a straightforward table top, where you can add maps and tokens.

• How easily can players create/maintain their own tokens and stats?

Very easy IMO. I setup characters and journals beforehand with key stats (Wound, Strain, and Crit) and then each player was assigned the journal and token on the map. They could maintain and easily did so throughout the game.

• How have you handled communication with players? (Skype/Ventrillo/Google Hangouts?)

Google Hangouts and roll20 integrated is good. However, there can/are some browser issues. For the most part Google Chrome seems to work the best, as well as Firefox. I have had some issues with the combination of IE, Google Hangout and roll20.

• How have you managed to get the artwork from the adventures into the system?

The prep time seems to be the killer. I spend alot of time with the artwork from pdf to jpeg, and then upload to roll20. As a normal subscriber you have a limit in what you can upload. To be honest I cannot remember that limit. As a mentor, I have a higher limit (1 gb maybe??) but I am no where near that limit.

• How have you managed dice rolls?

See above, I used the integrated dice app in roll20. Google Hangout also has a very good app for the dice, however, you still have to manual canx out success/failures, adv/threats, etc. The integrated app does it for you.

• How have you managed turn order?

There is a turn tracker that is very intuitive in roll20.

• How do you keep track of the health of your NPCs?

Just like the characters, each NPC has the ability to be edited by the GM. In addition, you can control if the players see the stats of the NPC or not.

• How easily have your players adapted to the playing online?

For me, it is my only option to play the game as I have yet to find a suitable game group. Playing online is great, but comes with limitations and most of those come in the technological range. Connectivity, technical experiences, and hardware all come into play. If you are playing with a set group of people then these can be hashed out early in one of the first sessions. If you playing with a different group each time, you can struggle with getting these issues sorted out. For example in my game, I arrived early (30 min) into the hangout, but could not start for an hour after schedule start time as people were trying to connect, or getting there settings right on their mic...etc. You can get my point.

If you are interested, drop me a PM and we can meet online virtually and I can walk you through my roll20 game that is setup.

I wish you the best in your decision and let me know if you have any questions

Erik

So, I have to say, I'm geeking out a bit. I stumbled upon "Frameworks" within MapTools. This past Sunday a new version (1.5) of the custom SW: EotE Framework was uploaded to their forums. I was able to download it today and try it out and I have to say....I'm really impressed. The dice rollers are well designed and the built in character sheets and corresponding tokens are really well designed.

So, I have to say, I'm geeking out a bit. I stumbled upon "Frameworks" within MapTools. This past Sunday a new version (1.5) of the custom SW: EotE Framework was uploaded to their forums. I was able to download it today and try it out and I have to say....I'm really impressed. The dice rollers are well designed and the built in character sheets and corresponding tokens are really well designed.

Glad you like it. The framework he's talking about, just in case you want to grab it:

http://forums.rptools.net/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=23988

We had a few problems with it crashing on us last night, and there's not an easy way to troubleshoot it to see what's causing the problem, but when it's working...man, it's amazing just how much work has been put into it.

Thanks for the kind words. I'm still tinkering with the framework in my spare time. I just uploaded 1.6 which tweaked a lot of stuff and basically made it easier for me going forward to add things to the framework. I'm really trying hard to lockdown equipment, talents, and a ship sheet as my next big addition to the framework.

Awesome Daelkyr! I'm excited to give it a try next week when my crew play our second session! Keep up the great work! I can't wait to see what other mischeif you'll be bringing our way. We have a few stability issues, but I'm guessing that was more Java and less Framework.