So, recently me and my gaming buddies are preparing to do some experiments with playing tabletop RPGs over the ’net.

There are actually a number of software tools that are built to facilitate it, some of them are even free (and often opensource).

A pretty common characteristic of these programs is that they are built with very tactical games in mind, the sort that needs miniatures, a battlemap, and lots of minutia such as areas of effect, facing, status of the minis, and so on.

For our experiment we will use MapTool, a free java app that features a shared map, chat, dice rollers. We will be playing Spirit of the Century, instead.

The game can be tactical in its own way, but it does not strictly need minis, and so on.

What we will really need is a table instead… after all this is a tabletop game!

I’ve set up a “map” with maptool that will work as our shared tabletop: each player will have the “variable” part of his charsheet on it, so that wounds and consequences can be written on them, and a set of chips representing the game’s Fate Points, so that the players can bid them, and see at a glance the points.

You can see the Fate Points virtual chips here: Fate Point Chip and a sample setup of the table in my rpg pages.