Quote from: mcbobbo;592300Dirty secret - I'm never happy as a player.

It's a psychological issue, I'm sure.

But I have considered it, if for no other reason than to observe how other players are being successful.

That being said, does anyone have any play logs they'd be willing to share?

I think I actually have all 130+ logs.  I can probably get a sampling to you easily.
and the synopsis pages, though not as complete, are Here on this very site.  Many of the early ones are cleaned up logs.

Quote from: mcbobbo;592300Dirty secret - I'm never happy as a player.

It's a psychological issue, I'm sure.

But I have considered it, if for no other reason than to observe how other players are being successful.

That being said, does anyone have any play logs they'd be willing to share?

Here's an old favorite of mine, the Dark Heresy one shot on IRC (it was supposed to maybe be a campaign but that never happened). I played Judge Thorr, the Arbiter who had quasi-legally exchanged his starting armour for a motorcycle which later proved to be super useful for heretic crushing and dynamic entrances.

Quote from: mcbobbo;592294I'm not dismissing the advice, as you're obviously correct.  But the "how" is pretty enigmatic at this point.

What your budget? And how are your technical skills at dealing with computer issues? And how well can you draw or produce graphics?

The answer to all these question determines what mix of techniques and technology will work best for you.

Right now things are still in a state of flux. The tech is far more diverse and easier to use than the days when it was just GRiP, IRC and OpenRPG.

What we don't have a no-brainer solution for playing tabletop games on-line. Similar to how Skype and Google+ are no-brainers for people to talking talking to each other via voice and video. It used to be a real pain in the ass to set up a Voip connection.

The upshot of all this is that only right answer is "it depends".

Quote from: estar;592335What your budget? And how are your technical skills at dealing with computer issues? And how well can you draw or produce graphics?

I rather think you're going in the wrong direction by supporting my addiction to technology, but...

Budget - let's say $300, max.

Skills - it's my career.

Draw - negative on that one.  Not even stick figures.

That being said, I feel I should point out that my time/energy budget is pretty low.  Wife, kids - one of them special needs -job involving a commute, and all that.

Quote from: mcbobbo;592358I rather think you're going in the wrong direction by supporting my addiction to technology, but...

Budget - let's say $300, max.

Skills - it's my career.

Draw - negative on that one.  Not even stick figures.

Fantasy Grounds Ultimate License $149 - Can have player use the demo version to play in your games.
http://www.fantasygrounds.com

Fantasy Grounds Ruleset for the game of your choice Free to $30.
http://oberoten.dyndns.org/fgwiki/index.php/Category:Rulesets

All in one Printer with letter sized scanner $75 - whatever brand you like if you don't have one already.

Total $255

Options

Dundjini Mapping software - $40 - create battlemaps by dragging and dropping clip art.
http://www.dundjinni.com/

There also Campaign Cartographer, Fractal Mapper, Pymapper, Hexgrapher AutoRealm, etc, etc. Some $$$ some free.

Token Packs $20 - whatever strikes your fancy on RPGNow. Devin Nights has 20 set of tokens for free here.
http://www.immortalnights.com/tokensite/tokenpacks.html


Wacom Bamboo Pen Tablet - $90
http://www.amazon.com/Wacom-CTL460-Bamboo-Pen-Tablet/dp/B002OOWC3I/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1350656892&sr=1-1&keywords=bamboo+pen

Workflow
Install Fantasy Grounds
Install your ruleset (FG comes with D&D 3.5/Pathfinder/4.0)
Install Skype


Create a campaign using the desired ruleset in Fantasy Ground. This will create a folder with in the FG Data Folder. There will be an image folder underneath this.

You will need to open port 1802 on your router/firewall.
You will need to give your IP address to your players.

You will need everybody to download the free demo version of Fantasy Grounds to connect with you.

Have your players setup and connect through Skype. Use Google Hangouts if that your preference.

To prepare for your session.

Do whatever you do normally on paper and scan it in. Save it as a jpeg into your image directory. You probably want to use 72 to 150 dpi for the image size to cut down on download time and screen size.

You can also scan (if print) or copy (if PDF) any maps or graphics in a published module you own. Save it as a JPG and stick into the image directory.

You can create blank images inside of Fantasy Grounds and use your mouse or the Bamboo Tablet to draw on it like you would a dry erase board. You have letter tokens (circles labeled A to Z) you can use to point out stuff as you can't point with your finger.

You can then share the image with your

If desired you can use the token as miniatures. You can use them in the same way you would normally use miniatures. Some folks will use them as a tactical wargame, other a loose indication of where everybody is, others still just as an indication of marching order.

The first two features of Fantasy Grounds I would learn beyond the above are:

Having the players fill out the character sheet that comes with the rule set. Note you can help them with this as both you and the player can edit the sheet at the same time.

Using fog of war on any scanned map. This overlays a brown layer on top of the map. The players only see the brown layer. You see the underlying map as if a brown transparency is on top of it. You then can reveal, by selecting an area with the mouse, a limited portion of the map to the players.  This is one compelling advantage that using a VTT has over sitting around a table in-person.

Conclusion

This represents what I call the Cadillac experience where everything is setup to mimic a normal tabletop game as closely as possible.

Any mapping or graphics option I listed above I tried to limit to stuff that involves just copy and page.

There are alternatives to everything I posted above.

The minimum setup is to just use Skype Video or Google Hangouts with video enabled, trust everybody die rolls, and hold up whatever you want to show to the camera.

Did you see the screenshots I posted?

Would Fantasy Grounds be a cut above that experience in some way?

Quote from: mcbobbo;592876Did you see the screenshots I posted?

Would Fantasy Grounds be a cut above that experience in some way?

Yes it is a step above Roll20 in looks and utility my opinion based on looking at your screenshot and their website.  But just a step above. The best thing to do is download the demo version, fire up a player instance, a gm instance over the home network and play around with that.

https://www.fantasygrounds.com/screenshots/

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_type=videos&search_query=fantasy+grounds

Roll20 advantage is that it is server based. Meaning everybody including you can use a webbrowser to connect. If you have  a flaky home connection it may be the only way to game tabletop over the internet.

If you do have a good internet connection and like customizing stuff, then Fantasy Grounds is the best VTT for that right now. I use it for Original D&D and GURPS.

And Fantasy Grounds still has the best dice roller for VTTs in my opinion.

Battleground, FG, Roll20, etc all have advantages and disadvantages as well as still evolving. Which is why I said earlier the VTT market hasn't matured yet.