Which Online Virtual Tabletop Do You Use?

[Eyes of Nine]

Currently I've settled on running Map Tools

Is this the Map Tools you mean? MapTool

Or this one?

MapTools - Tools and information for using UTM, MGRS and latitude longitude coordinates

maptools.com

Assuming the first, but intrigued if it is the 2nd.

 

[MNblockhead]

Map Tool. Sorry. My world building has progressed to the point of using GIS tools in my games. Though, funnily enough I do have QGIS installed on my work laptop. It would be interesting to play around with how to use it in my world building. If I was doing a modern or SciFi game, I could totally see using QGIS for marking up maps.

It would be most impressive if you are doing a modern game like Delta Green or futuristic game like Shadow Run. There are lots of free satellite images, you can match these with various overlays and shape files to show and reveal things and you can mark up the maps. If you want a large region, continent, or the whole world to be your area of exploration, using QGIS would be an awesome way to display that and reveal information about locations as you explore.

If you are homebrewing your own worlds, it would be a lot of work, but if using the real world and pulling from open source images and data, it is just the learning curve to learn the software, but after that it would be quick to load maps, shape files, and data and to mark things up.

The image files, howver, are huge. Like I just opened one set and the main B&W sattlelite image is half a gigabyte. The overlay file is 161 MB. You'd need a good amount of space on your hard drive and you'd only be sharing via screenshare.

I'll probably never do this, because I only have time for my D&D campaign and I'm looking to decrease my prep time. But I can imagine some cool things one could do with a QGIS or some other GIS software. QGIS is open source. If interested, you can download for free here: Discover QGIS

Good sources of free GIS file sets can be found here:

Free GIS Datasets - Categorised List

(large, well-categorized list of sites offering free GIS data)

10 Free GIS Data Sources: Best Global Raster and Vector Datasets - GIS Geography

Turbo-charge your search for free GIS data with this list of 10 free, downloadable global GIS datasets from highly reputable sources - vector and raster.

gisgeography.com

GIS Geography's list of the 10 best sources of free GIS data

 

[Hawkwind]

Just found this online , its google slide for running Indexcard rpg complete with a dice roller.its is easy to hack it for most other games

GSVTT v1.2

20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 GSVTT v1.2 Google Slides VTT Map by Fantastic Maps (Cropped) Character tokens from ICRPG CORE This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. Initiative tracker Reorder Character Sheet slides to...

docs.google.com

 

[el-remmen]

I use ZOOM.

I have a paid acct, a two camera set-up (one on the battle mat and one on me with the big classroom sized dry erase board I have in my game room behind me), we use the chat feature for sharing names of people and places and other important details (or secret convos), I use the share screen function when I need to share a map or image, and I let my players roll their own dice because if I did not trust them to not cheat I wouldn't be playing D&D with them in person or remotely.

I came up with this system after my first in-person game had to go remote b/c of covid, but then I started a second remote-only game with friends from around the country.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

I recently switched from astral tabletop, which is what I switched to after a couple years of using Roll20 begrudgingly, to FoundryVTT.

It's technically still in a pre-release state, but it is easily the best virtual table-top experience I've ever had. I can do as much with it as I did with MapTool way back when that was what I used, but it has an interface that meshes well with my brain and my players only need their preferred web browser to connect in.

 

[Ulfgeir]

My group uses AstralTableTop, and then Discord for voice.

 

[Zaukrie]

I recently switched from astral tabletop, which is what I switched to after a couple years of using Roll20 begrudgingly, to FoundryVTT.

It's technically still in a pre-release state, but it is easily the best virtual table-top experience I've ever had. I can do as much with it as I did with MapTool way back when that was what I used, but it has an interface that meshes well with my brain and my players only need their preferred web browser to connect in.

Tell me more. I really want to see it in action, not a tutorial....

 

[Zaukrie]

My group uses AstralTableTop, and then Discord for voice.

What do you like about astral?

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

Tell me more. I really want to see it in action, not a tutorial....

There is a video on youtube in which someone runs through the setup of the warhammer ruleset, and is very informative of what the VTT can do.

Let's see if I can link it: vid

 

[Ulfgeir]

What do you like about astral?

It is relatively easy to get started (at least for a player), and they do have support for a number of different games.