Role Playing tools for online campaigns

[Snowmane]

I recently discovered two great tools for running RPG's online. Since I had a friend move to Utah late last year, these tools have allowed us to continue to include him in our games.

Obsidian Portal provides a lot of great tools for managing and documenting campaigns.


Roll20 is a great plug in to Google Hangouts for things like die rolling and maps for gaming sessions.

I've been having fun playing Fate based games using those tools (though obviously they support many more systems than Fate). So I thought I'd share them here, in case anyone might have a use for them.

[GodBeastX]

Maptool for life

[Snowmane]

linkage to MapTool for anyone would like to look at that as well. The fact that it's open source is cool for people with coding skills.

It has some nice features. I like how by using it you can let one player look around a corner without all the other players seeing what's there. But from a quick search, it appears that it doesn't support video conferencing so you'd have to have some other software for that or VOIP.

Still definitely a viable alternative to roll20.

[Kitsunestume]

Maptools FTW!

Roll20 is handy in it's browser use, but it lacks the robust interface and innate abilities of the significantly more complete Maptools. I've always found the distnaces in roll20 to be based off the shortest axis, rather than true distance, making calculating movement or attack ranges a more complex affair than simply dragging and dropping a ruler.

And the Maptools FoW based on placeable designs is also pretty useful.
Also, for VoiP, my experience is that a dedicated service is often best, such as Mumble or Skype, so the lack thereof in Maptools never bothered my groups.