Actually with Klooge if you have a scanner you can use a rough pen and paper sketch if you want. Any PNG, JPG, BMP, GIF works as a map. You can use any art program, to include MS Paint, to create quick and dirty maps. Just like the old days with face to face games. Personally I use CC2 with Cosmographer and used them for GRIP as well. If your scale is consistent in Klooge you import the map, you put it on the screen, you draw a line and tell klooge how long it is and you have a map. And on your map you can easily measure distance, range, etc. In GRIP the import process takes a little longer and is a little more tedious (and your graphics choices are a bit smaller but still varied) but still not that difficult once you get the hang of it. In GRIP you also get the familiar grids on your maps, In Klooge you can have the grid but for distance it isn't required. You set up what the players can and can't see and add icons.
My first icons, besides the ones I downloaded from the GRiP List were scans of cardboard Heros from various sources. GRIP is limited to 32x32 pixel icons (in ico format and it takes a little while to get them set up as you use five icons per icon to show damage status.) For Klooge you use, again any pic you want (I create mine in
DAZ Studio) and I use 800x800 because it allows very nice detail, but png's of the same icons you use in GRIP would work (remove the damage bar as Klooge adds that for you).
Your first session will be a little more difficult that a FTF session, provided you aren't writing the definition yourself (and for T20 you aren't anymore), but after the first few sessions it is actually easier to run a session on one of these packages than a FTF game as the computer and the built in character sheets do most of the work. No more scratch paper to see how much ammo is left in the 30 round Gauss Pistol Mag, the 40 round Gauss Rifle Mag, the 50 round ACR mag, the 15 round auto pistol mag and the 6 shot magnum revolver. (I know what you are thinking punk, did he fire six shots or only five.) No more notes on whose turn it is in combat. Depending on your system, no more calculations of all those mods to see if the target is hit or not.
But the biggest advantage is that you aren't limited to the people that you know that live near you that may or may not be able to get over on a regular basis, because of kids, or other family commitments, or because they no longer live in the same town.
Your notes are organized in your computer instead of on the miriad of scraps of paper most Referees tend to use. You can, with the right software, simply scan published adventures in or pull text out of a PDF adventure
You can even use these systems, provided you have an interface at the house to allow you to show your map on a larger screen TV, to play and make your life easier, in a FTF game. (ScreenMonkey allows you to do this on one computer, the rest require a second networked computer (with appropiate licensing, if any).
For those of you that are afraid of using one of these tabletop systems take one out for a test drive. Come sit in on one of my sessions. Or one of the GRIP games. (Do hold technical questions to the end though during a session, please, after all gamers are playing here.) Remember these games are meant to be played not merely discussed. And nothing will help our little hobby more than introducing new people to it. (In fact only one of my players is an experienced Traveller hand and only two have ever played an RPG before.)
(He does reviews too)
