So, given the current situation and the thread on Foundry VTT, which options are actually proving practical for running STA on VTT?
I note Astra are offering free “pro” membership until the end of April, but have no indication as to whether it would work with 2d20. Has anyone used this one?
I’ve been setting up on Astral and will probably try it in a couple weeks. It’s a selectable game, but it haven’t seen what that actually means.
I don’t think I’m going to ask my regular at home players to import characters or use the dice on the site if they don’t want to.
Interesting - I tend not tot like signing up to a new website without knowing I’m going to use it, so I shall be interested in knowing how you get on (subtle hint) 
I use roll20 for my game. I know there are user created ways of running 2d20 but I favor everyone using real dice at home and telling what the results are. I use icons to show the Momentum pool, so everyone knows the deal. I also use battlemaps showing zones and icons of friends, foes and PCs. Players also have paper versions of their character sheets at home. This makes it difficult to share supporting characters, but otherwise the game runs very smoothly.
Garrett
I use VTT and digital content (power point presentations) all the time for star trek rpg.
We use a projector when playing, and use the free map RPtools.
I also use Star trek online to create my deck plans and tokens.
Below you can find the ones I already created.
I’ve been thinking of using the following programm
Thanks to everyone! This has been really useful…
I’ve opted for Roll20 for now, on the basis that the STA character sheets and dice macros are available for free… But I’ll look at others if it doesn’t work out.
@barefoottourguide I’d be interested in knowing how your Momentum solution works. I’m using a dedicated token with status bar (and another for Threat) for now, but not sure how I’ll get on with recreating it every “page”!
@Sunspoticus I nixed FG on the basis that you need a subscription to do anything with it and it’s relatively high. I don’t mind paying when I’ve settled on one, but need a few weeks to see if it works for me. Would be interested in hearing more though. I do like that the whole thing is themed.
I use a single token for both Momentum and Threat in Roll20. I edited it for the bars to be viewable and editable by all players, using a red, yellow, and blue as the colors for the bars. Bar 1 (blue) is Momentum, with a max of 6. Bar 2 (yellow) is Bonus Momentum, max of 6. Bar 3 (red) is Threat, max of 50 to keep the bar visible to all.
Once you have it set up, all you have to do is copy it and paste it on a new ‘page’ if you move the players view to a new one. One way to handle this would be to create a ‘Token’ page, where you store all the tokens you may need. (Player tokens with name bars and red bars linked to their character’s stress; ship tokens with blue linked to shields, yellow to power; NPC tokens with names only visible to you with red bars linked to stress, Supporting characters) With a Token page set up, you can copy player character tokens from the token page to whichever page needed, and if set up right, any changes made on any of the pages will affect the tokens on all the pages.
Thanks! That all makes a lot of sense… I hadn’t considered a staging page for the tokens (the whole journal/art catalogue thing doesn’t quite do it), but that’s ingenious. I appreciate the advice on what should be visible where.
I was looking at one token each for Momentum and Threat, but hadn’t considered the bonus momentum option. I like the use of all 3 bars…
Awesome
I am a Fantasy Grounds junkie and fanboy. It makes life so much easier as a GM. But every ruleset has to be judged on its own merits because some are better than others. Once the 2d20 set comes out I’m planning on running Conan. I’ll update everybody on what I think about it then.
If it’s any help, I have a wide selection of tokens available that I prepped designed for roll20.
Including ships, named NPCs alive in the 2370s and representations for different factions. NPCs have a alert status based around blue, yellow and red so you can easily differentiate between minor, major and notable.
The Momentum/Threat token that I use I borrowed from TheBalzan. (In fact most of the tokens I use I borrowed from him. He has a great selection of tokens up there.) The only downside is, you may have to subscribe to Roll20 to utilize a good portion of tokens.
Base free embers can only use 100 MB worth of space for uploaded tokens and images, the next step up allows for 3 GB.
Thanks for the tokens @TheBalzan!
I’m going to run via Astral on Tuesday. Roll20 continues to underwhelm me.
I picked up Hex Kit in the “Stay at Home” bundle, and that’s pretty nice for some sector maps. I’ve attached the one I’m using. Feel free to use it. Astral help page on importing/sizing
I’ll report back on how it actually goes. Anyone else have tips or tricks to share?
Two weeks ago, I tested Star Trek, using a video conference application that allowed sharing a screen and used Gimp (a free and open source Photoshop alternative) to share a map, using layers to drag tokens around. We trust each others and rolled physical dice, telling the results (which is not too different from our behaviour at the table, where normally nobody cares to wacht other people’s falling dice).
Yesterday, I tried D&D 3.5 that is a bit more… map-heavy in playstyle and tried out Planar Ally that worked quite fine. The one thing that did not work was adjusting the grid to the grid on my map, but with STA’s concept of zones this isn’t even an issue.
Planar Ally is free and open source software for Linux, Mac and Windows. It runs locally on your PC (you might need to enable port-forwarding on your router) and is accessed by all players via browser. It features a grid including measurements (did not work for me, obviously), beacons, different maps with different layers (layers not tested) and individual line of sight / fog of war for every player. I liked it and will give it another try. The documentation, however, is quite basic.
Immediate brain dump after using Astral. We used Discord for audio, which was a tad flaky tonight. Maybe due to increased load with everyone stuck at home. 
Astral worked well. I don’t think any players did a tutorial, and I did part of one. With a little fumbling, we made our way just fine. One player even took some notes on their important character sheet, which was not uploaded in advance. He was able to upload it and deal with it on the fly (worth noting that 80% of people involved are employed at a software company).
The only minor gripe I have is that I couldn’t figure out how to get tokens to work independent of the map grid. It squished my ship token, since it was rectangular. I did find how it could take 2x1 tiles, but that was too big, and then stretched. Probably something I can either fix or definitely something I can live with.
How does it compare to Roll20? Well, I last ran on Roll20 several years ago, with another unsupported system. (STA is unsupported on Astral, not sure of it’s status on roll20. The game I ran before was ED: RPG, actually, which also has connections to Modiphius, right?) I found that experience unpleasant. Back then we had frequent problems with the site, had to switch back to Discord for audio, and several people had to reload the game. My experience more recently as a Shadowrun player was similar. Not as bad, but not something I felt was polished or easy.
Astral was easier, IMO, than roll20. It was generally stable too. I had one error before the game started when I was trying to update things too fast, but then, no issues.
Between the ease of use, stability, and free premium features for now due to COVID19, I would recommend Astral, and would choose it to GM with over roll20.
(Also, want to take a moment to note that I am just a guy, and not affiliated with anyone. This is just my opinion and generally positive experience.)
I took this (the threat/momentum token) a step further and put together a character called Point Pool, then assigned the token to that. That way you can just drag the token off your journal tab each time you need it, and you can also set up macros to report the current totals if it isn’t on page at any point.
Hi folks, sorry to ask and then disappear - the whole lockdown thing has somewhat disrupted my neurons…
I opted for Roll20 in the end, as it’s the one most of my fellow local players are using, and I’ve had a little bit of experience as a player with it. I will be GMing STA for the first time in about a fortnight using it, so I shall see how it goes! Biggest issue so far is coordinating tokens and characters - I think I get what they’re trying to do, but it’s not intuitive. I’ve not seen any stability issues yet.
Advice with Roll20 does seem to recommend using something else for audio - we’re already using Discord heavily, although I ran into some odd problems with that last week (we think maybe ISP traffic shaping), but any audio conferencing system would probably do. I do recommend a decent PC and internet connection though! My 8 year old two-core HP just couldn’t hack it, especially on wi-fi.
STA is fan-supported on Roll20 - the character sheets (plural - there are options for starships as well) are very well done, except that for some reason indvidual PCs have entries for momentum and threat. The dice rollers are confusing but comprehensive - and produce formatted results. Modiphius has the deck tiles up for purchase on the system as well.
@mattcapiche I’ve opted for the same single token for both momentum and threat - I made it open to the players so they could adjust it as they spend.
@Hunting_Phoenix you get the same token distortion issue in Roll20 - but you can resize the token to specific pixel dimensions after its loaded.
I may still take a look at Astral depending on how the first Roll20 session goes.
Thanks again, everyone!
What is the issue you are having with tokens and characters? I have no doubt someone on here may be able to help you with it! 
