Starting to finalize characters and graphics, and work on programming and setting up adventures in the Roll20 framework. So far, I have the initial intro adventure (Fast Food Fight) all set up and ready to go (its only a single scene), and most of the first full adventure. I am planning on using the content from Shadowrun Missions, Season 4, which will require some updates (it was written for SR4, we are using SR5), but there is plenty of content and material available.
In order to build the maps, I was originally thinking of drawing each, using basic shapes available in Roll20. However, I happened upon a set of tiles and generic map sections, which work far better. The generic maps fill in for most of the normal location, and as needed, I can quickly build the other sites with the tiles. And the overall look is much cleaner than the basic graphics I could create.
As an additional advantage, this gives me access to bonus layers – a basic blueprint format which the group can use legwork to research pre-mission, and a gm-layer to include notes on wireless devices, alarms, other systems. This makes it very flexible, based on character actions.
