Hi guys...I'm wondering if you can help me by sharing ideas or techniques you've used if you share the same problem I have.

My problem is that I have an interested group of friends, but the problem is they don't live locally any more and the only way we can hold sessions is online.

So how do I go about doing this? Any tips? Can anyone direct me towards any resources? Thanks in advance.

Personal anecdotes about similar situations are also appreciated. I just want to be able to frame the idea in my mind before I go about doing it. If I'm gonna make it happen, I wanna do it right

Roll20.net used on its own or with Google Hangouts is pretty good. There is a thread that goes into great detail if you search through here.

I have enjoyed playing RPGs over Skype (type chat) for years. The chat logging is really great. For maps we typically use roll20. And for online Edge dice rolling, I frequently use Orokos.com's roller.

I use Ventrillo for voice, I have an app called reflector which allows me to share my ipad screen and use the FFG dice app. I use PDF, PowerPoint and other odds and sods as required.

And the glue for it all is TeamViewer, so that can share various components on the screen. I do wish I had dual screens as I could then just share one and use the second for my own information screens.

For initiative I just use the margin in the PowerPoint with the map and put little placeholders in order, so players, players, npcs players... I also have the tokens scanned in and destiny points when a player uses on I delete the player point and cut and paste a dark pip back.

In some regards stick to stuff you know, it is much harder without the body language, so slowing yourself down with unknown software is going to require some forgiving and patient friends.

We use Google Hangout with great enjoyment. We use the eote dice roller app that works inside of it, as well as things like hangout toolbox. The toolbox allows us to place banners under our camera which we use to put our character names and pictures on. You may check out this thread for a lot of information http://community.fantasyflightgames.com/index.php?/topic/80113-playing-remotely-try-hangout-eote-tools/

Hangouts work nicely though. We did a livestream of one of our games. It was a new GM running his first one off session. We wanted to test out the livestreaming to youtube in order to archive the game online for us. I think we are going to do all of our games this way so we can have them saved =P Might not be the most dynamic game you'll ever witness lol, but it will give you an example of what it's like on hangout. There's a few new players in this game as well, so yeah....anyway, you can check it out if you like. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4lT4z7e8uo

We use Skype and Maptools (rptools.net). Maptools is a much more robust rpg mapping program and if you search their forums you will find frameworks for EotE to streamline the process.

Best results I've had is Teamspeak/Ventrilo/Mumble for voice, and Roll20 from everything else.

Skype also works for the former, but is a bit wonkier and clumsy to work with - but does carry the benefit that it's easier to send "under the table" messages to other players - something Roll20 supports natively though, anyway.

Hey guys thanks for the replies...Very useful information here. I started trying a run with just skype and the online dice roller