All I can say is I bounced off of it hard, so to speak, a couple of years ago. For remote play (which lacks the social dynamics in gaming which I require), what works best for me is an audio-only set-up; maybe I'm just too old scho0l for anything more technologically involved than face-to-face / voice-to-voice gaming. Anyway, my remote play experience is very limited so I've nothing helpful to add.

Yeah, I get what you're saying. I'm going to try dndbeyond with a discord bot that supports five rolling and stuff (avrae I think) and see how that works and then just use teams or something.

Me and some mates play every other Sunday. I'm not a DM, but as a player it's pretty good. Can't speak for how busy it is for setting things up as a DM.

We use it in conjunction with Discord, and that set-up works pretty well.

:nerd: :up:

I've now found a combination that looks pretty good. Which is dndbeyond.com with a Chrome extension "AboveVTT". That last one is in alpha but works well. Saves me a ton of work compared to roll20.

:cool:

Another fun resource is artbreeder.com to make portraits for your characters.

See for instance my new character:

I've always found that character art, like detailed maps and miniatures, are distractions which tend not to help suspend my disbelief. I prefer Theatre of the Mind play: wholly imagined visualizations through shared verbal descriptions and narration (with as few numerical designations or "stats" as possible). More like an improv radio-play procedurally mediated by (dice) mechanics than a film, television or video game. Not "better", mind you, just preferred by me; I simply don't see the point, Benkei (though I suppose your PC art does look intriguing and intense. :cool: – is he for D&D? "Human"? "Half-Elf"? "Magic-User"? "Rogue"? (I don't know the character classes any more, not since the '70s ... ("zero-to-hero" "murderhobo" "hexcrawling") skirmish games like D&D have never been my jam. :yum:)

I recognise most of what you say. We do like visualising our characters and NPCs in our group. I think the visual aid does help with imagining how they talk and their mannerism. And our combat was always theatre of the mind but when things became unclear we'd be able to draw a map. That's what the VTT is for if we go online.

And probably 5e isn't the best to begin with but with time strapped players, it's better to use what we know then learn a new system. My character is a tiefling sorcerer named Leithe, an acronym for The Lie. Black Dragon draconic ancestry.

I'll be DM. The players will get trapped as their real selves in a virtual world by me, making my character both PC, DMand antagonist. The game will focus around self-actualization of the character or the player. Each has expressed their dreams and aspirations, anyone taking steps to fulfil them will get either XP or other benefits - making them more powerful but either in magical in game ways or "real life" scientific ways as they distort the virtual world, depending on which actualisation they pursued (which can also happen accidentally). They are unaware of this mechanism at first and will have to discover it. Depending on which way they move (actualising as character or as a person) will get them either stuck in the world or free from the system in the long run. It's intended to raise the pill question I suppose. Since my self actualisation is "playing god" Leithe wants to remain in the system as much as possible. And that's where he starts lying, trying to nudge players to actualize as characters instead of themselves.

Trippy :cool:

That's really cool! I have a one-shot coming up, I'll probably have fun with the breeder and see if I can some up with something fun. I only have a basic idea of a character for it: someone who thinks they are really wise, but is in fact thick as bricks. I swear when I create characters I base it mostly around whatever stupid voice I think is appropriate at the time. Especially for one shots lol.

I've used dndbeyond for guides and stuff, but I didn't realize they had a online board as well.

D&Ding as "group therapy" both online and off ...
https://www.theguardian.com/games/2021/nov/30/a-safe-haven-how-dungeons-dragons-is-slaying-social-anxiety :nerd: