PFS games online: Having Materials + Getting the Sheets out.

[Mordaith]

Thinking heavily about running a PFS game for a poor deprived friend in a far flung part of the country. Would open it up to other PFS members, thinking about running it over skype or Teamspeak or something like that.

My questions are - what about players needing to produce the materials? Is that waived in the case of online play - and people can just use the SRD?

And what is the best way to get Chronicle sheets to and from each other?

And finally - Dice Rolling - I'm so new to the idea of Online play. Are there any good programs for dice rolling?

[Chris Mortika]

I can't speak to Skype. I've been running a couple of Play-by-post games over the Paizo boards. It's a similar animal, but different in several important ways.

I just mail out the Chronicle sheets.

[Purple Fluffy CatBunnyGnome]

I've played a couple of times online, I would recomment using ttop -- go to chat.dmtools.com(might be .org i'm at work w/out the link) and you should find a link for ttop... if you have questions go into the chat room and the creator Pygon might be in there chatting, I know he generally doesn't have issues with people asking questions; there is a tutorial on using it though.

I've used skype and teamspeak both in the past... both are handy and it's just a matter of preference, although unless your players are huge mmorpg players, skype might be a better option just for familairty sake.

[Craig Stokes]

Just to throw out another option, take a look at Google+ Hangouts. I've participated in a good amount of gaming on that platform. Hangouts is Google's video chat solution and is pretty nice. Tabletop Forge (http://tabletopforge.com/) is a an RPG app that launches inside of G+ Hangouts and has a dice roller, maps, tokens, etc. Together, Hangouts and Tabletop Forge make a very good platform for online RPGs.

Re: Chronicle Sheets...you could fill out the Chronicle sheets, scan them, then email out to players. Perhaps there's an easier way though. I haven't played PFS online.

[Gwen Smith]

Several of the gaming consoles have associated chat and online play services. If your family members have a game console in common, you might check that out approach. (I think Xbox uses Skype already, but I could be wrong.)

[Lab_Rat]

Online Games in General - Check out the PFS online collective. You can pick up some good advice from GMs who have quite a lot of experience with PFS through online table tops. You can also use it to pick up some players. Your table will probably fill in less than 24hrs as they have a glut of players and few regular GMs.

Tabletops and communication - Most online tabletops have their own built in dice roller. Maptools, TTopRPG, roll20, infrno, and d20pro are a few examples of tabletops you can use. These are all different so try them out and see which you like. Keep in mind that players have different operating systems and some of these tabletops are OS specific. I have used skype for my experiences and it works very well for communicating. Some of the tables have communication built in.

Materials / source books - Skip it. There is no real way to audit this. What you can do is request everyone's character sheet ahead of time so that you can audit the characters. A popular choice is to use Google docs and just share the link. It also helps you in creating tokens, if the players are not familiar with the tabletop that you use.

Chronicle sheets - The best way is to have a digital copy of the chronicle sheet and sign it digitally. Then you can just email the sheets out and players can print them. Another option is to sign them by hand, scan them, and email them out. Lastly you can snail mail them and eat the postage.

[Mordaith]

Thanks for all the information guys. I was hoping to use this as a method of "Networking" beyond my local PFS games. I love talking/gaming with folks around the world and stuff.

I don't mind eating the postage on mailing by snail. I'd hate to have the onus be placed on players to print out their sheets. People just gotta wait, and as long as I record it all correctly - should be good.

I'll need to shop around for a Tabletop that will suit my needs. Thanks for all the great advice.

[Candle]

Mordaith wrote:

Thanks for all the information guys. I was hoping to use this as a method of "Networking" beyond my local PFS games. I love talking/gaming with folks around the world and stuff.

I don't mind eating the postage on mailing by snail. I'd hate to have the onus be placed on players to print out their sheets. People just gotta wait, and as long as I record it all correctly - should be good.

I'll need to shop around for a Tabletop that will suit my needs. Thanks for all the great advice.

I DM a Online Pathfinder group on a weekly basis, using Maptools as a virtual table top, although it is by no means the only easily accessible one out there.

For character sheets, I found this to be the easiest way to handle it:
Google Spreadsheet

Some of the formulas need minor adjustments, but overall it is fantastic. Your players can, as per Google docs usual, share and give you permission to edit the sheets and you can keep track of them easily.

[Seanicans]

I've been running maptools for the past 9 months with my mixed group of remote and local players. It is a great alternative to taking the time to draw on a battle mat and doesn't require costly tokens. Taking the images of the maps from the pathfinder society scenario PDF makes putting the background in MT super easy.

For the remote player we uses Skype, but free Skype only allows two way video chat. To get multiple people chatting I've used another program, Oovoo, which is alright, but preferred Google hangout the one time I used it.

For auditing characters, request a digital copy of their character sheet in advance (either google spreadsheet, or character sheet uploaded to an image hosting site etc.) then simply check the info on the SRD cross referenced to the PFS additional resources information. Heck, that's what I am doing with my local players.

I'm trying to figure out how to handle chronicle sheets for remote players also, I actually found your post by searching that haha. I'm leaning to saving the chronicle sheet as an image, then adding the pertinent information including my initials, saving as a PDF and emailing to the players. I would accept that as valid chronicle sheets as a DM.

[Rob Duncan]

Fantasy Grounds is awesome to use for this. Skellan runs games with this and a Teamspeak server.

FG is like $119 if you get the license that allows others to connect for free.. I don't remember offhand.

Teamspeak servers are like $4/month.

Roll20 and Google+ hangouts are also excellent choices.

[Skellan]

If anyone wants to play online using fantasy grounds, pm me and i will try and arrange sonething :)

[Mordaith]

I am hoping that with Paizo's play space is up and running that it will be PFS compliant. And it will take care of all of it. That would be nice.

If done one way, it could make reporting your sessions online even more important - as they could be linked to your Online PFS character.

[Skellan]

Online play is pfs compliant. You can do pretty much everything online that you can face to face, with electonic signatures and scanning etc. It just means players are spared having to look at me :).