After years away from gaming, I came back and played with old friends. Covid ramped this up, and introduced me to Roll20. After two amazing campaigns as a player, I decided to jump back into GMing, but for SciFi. I chose SWN, and really took to the idea of scenes - so I think of it like a tv series.

I decided to utilize the api, and taught myself some JavaScript (big thanks to the community forum). It really opens up a lot of possibilities.

We use a 42” tv flat on a table as the main display, but each player has their own laptop/tablet. Players can freely move themselves across many screens like HUD, Battle console, planetary nav, system nav, engineering, etc. I’ve only posted a few here.

Small gif loops really bring a SciFi UI to life. I highly suggest them.

I’ve automated all ship combat actions. When ship combat starts, I click a button and the players are sent to console pages while the tabletop goes to the Battle Screen with the radar. Sounds and all that of course.

They just click the action the want on their console screen, enter modifiers, and get a result with sound and animations on the tabletop.
Ship dials propagate changes across all screens.
I’ve made stealthiness and movement a bit more important via house rules.

I’ve created so many custom sounds at this point, it’s hard to keep track of them all. Linking to those sounds in handouts is helpful.

I also make an end credits video for each chapter (every other session or so) using setInterval in JavaScript with multisided tokens. That’s a lot of fun, but it was a pain to set up right.

Oh, SWN is a fantastic tool too. It’s fun to world build again, to thread story lines, and learn new ways of telling stories. All the tech available now, if used well, can really amp your game up.

It’s all so immersive compared to what we had back in the 80s and 90s.

I’m loving all of it. I’ve put far too many hours into it, but I don’t care. It’s a labor of love.
I hope you like it.