We've been using these tools for a while now for our weekly game.  There are a couple of us that play remotely and we use Google Hangout to do so (although the last couple of sessions we all played remotely using Hangouts and the tool).  It has been working quite well and I thought I would make it available to the community.

It consists of Destiny tracker, a roller (originally coded by our GM and posted in this forum a couple months ago) with the results communicated to everyone in the Hangout including the roll results that appear as an overlay to the video stream.

You can give it a try here:

This is what it looks like.  It is displayed as a side-panel next to the video.

This is brilliant.  Why no one has said this is brilliant up until now, I don't know.

Why is it brilliant?  Because it works right along with Roll20 via Hangouts and THAT means we can use the proper dice with it.

See, brilliant.

Wow! That's great.  I can't wait to get home and give it a shot.  Thanks for sharing.

<- that's for you

Hey guys,

Could you expand on how to use the Hangout tool with Roll20?

I am very experienced at running online WFRP3 via FG2 and Maptool, and have tried EotE with Maptool as well. It works, but Maptool is not very user friendly, and I am looking for a better software (until one day hopefully someone do an EotE FG2 ruleset).

So, do you load both Google Hangout and Roll20 in two browser tabs and shift between the two for every roll? Is there a way to get the Hangout toll within Roll20 browser window? Or can Google Hangout be used solely to share maps? I am a noob with Roll20 and Hangout, but eager to understand how you are using those software to run your EotE games.

Thanks in advance

Cheers

Ceodryn

Alright, I am answering my own question. I hadn't realized that Roll20 campaigns could be launched using Google Hangout. 

However, it remains that I am curious how people are using Hangout and/or Roll20 to GM and play EotE. Screenshots would be worth a thousand words!

Cheers

Ceodryn

Yes, basically Roll20 is an app for use in Hangouts as well as being available on it's own website. 

Essentially, you (or your GM) lay out whatever graphics elements you want to use on a series of pages just like you would set up a regular campaign for that Zebras & Zeppelins game that everyone loves so much.  Being an Edge of the Empire Game you wouldn't needed gridded maps or anything necessarily, but in return you could do some really interesting, story enhancing things with Roll20 and EotE.

For instance, creating Epic location scenes within the app to give players a sense of place.  Like maybe a screen cap of your favorite place in SW:TOR used as a backdrop so folks know exactly what the particular section of Tattooine they are in looks like.

You could lay out a static 'opening crawl' in Roll20 to start your adventures with.  You could design your own card deck within the app and play Sabaac while you wait for people to show up, or as part of your game itself.  Wookieepedia has many fine images that might allow you to display what particular adversaries look like.  There is all sorts of stuff you can do, because Roll20 is pretty flexible.

And now, with the dice app above, you can actually execute the whole game in the Roll20 app without having to rely on people rolling off screen and relaying what they rolled.

There are a fair number of Roll20 videos up on YouTube if you need more concrete usage examples.

Thanks for the positive feedback.  

My group uses MapTool. I'll have to check out Roll20.

Currently the tool helps track the Destiny Pool and Dice Rolling.  If you have any suggestions on EotE specific features that I can include I would be happy to consider them.

I play some games over Google + Hangouts.  How can I install this as a tool?

Just click on the red Google + image in the original post and it will open a Hangout with the extension available.

From then on you will have that extension available until you choose to remove it.  

Hi Tommy,

I actually think your tool should stay slim, to be most useful. Really it already has what is most needed. Maybe an initiative tracker that works like the initiatitive is meant to work in EotE would be good, but many other tools (maptool,Roll20) already have a tracker. Personally, I just put tokens on a map to do the initiative.

One nice feature would be to make your tool take less space. In Google Hangout, with Roll20 launched, it leaves little space for other app.

Thanks again for doing that tool

Cheers

Ceodryn

That was my thinking as well, Ceodryn. Keep these tools focused on EotE specific and rely on well established tools for general purpose gaming tools. 

As far as the size, as far as I can tell there is no way to control the width of a Google extension. It is either full page or that width side panel. I will do some investigation on this.

Hi TommyC,

I have now been using your tool with Hangouts and Roll20 a few times, and it works really well. In regards to "making it slim", I was just wondering whether  a graphical redesign, that is reducing the size of the dices and font of the number of dices could work. However it isn't a big deal, we didn't really miss the space once we get used to zoom in Roll20.

One feature that would be nice is the ability to clear your dice pool. After I roll, if my next check is very different, I have to make sure I don't retain any of the old dices and I have to click (-) several times. A button to clear all the pool would be great.

That is all, great tool, and with Hangouts and Roll20, EotE becomes really fun!

Cheers

Ceodryn

It's not a full clear, but clicking on each die clears it to 0.

Is it possible to get this tool onto your PC? As a stand-alone software?

I play with a group but with the lack of dice out right now, this would be really useful to use when the dice rolling gets pretty high. (Hate doing rerolls especially when trying to keep track of a lot of advantage/threat)

I also would like to avoid creating a google+ account.