How to Play a Tabletop RPG Online With Friends

Your group is spread across three cities now, and the table everyone used to sit around is gone. The game does not have to go with it. Playing a tabletop RPG online works, often better than people expect, but it breaks in different places than a game at the kitchen table: sound, scheduling, attention and too many tools. This page covers the practical side, from choosing tools to time zones and absent players, and ends with a checklist for the day before your first online game.

What an online table has to replace#

At a physical table a lot happens without anyone arranging it. You hear each other, you see the map, you watch the dice land, and somebody's rulebook is lying open. Online, each of those becomes a separate job, and each job needs a tool or a decision:

• Talking. Voice, text or both. This is the channel everything else hangs on, and the one that breaks most visibly when it goes wrong.
• Seeing the same thing. A map, a handout, a picture of the monster. Some groups need a full virtual tabletop; plenty need nothing, because they play in the theatre of the mind.
• Rules and characters. Sheets everyone can open, a dice roll everyone trusts, and the rules within reach.
• Running the world. Someone, or something, describes the scene and decides what happens. Usually a human Game Master; an AI narrator is now an option too.

The most common mistake in a first online campaign is picking a separate tool for each of those four jobs on day one. Five tabs, three accounts and a plugin install is a lot to ask of a friend who just wanted to roll a d20. Start with the fewest tools that cover all four jobs, and add one only when something is actually missing.

The tool categories, side by side#

Online RPG tools fall into a handful of categories. The product names come and go; the categories stay. Most groups that play well online combine two of them.

A few honest notes on the familiar names. Roll20 runs entirely in the browser and has a free tier, which makes it the easiest full tabletop to get a group into. Foundry VTT is a one-time purchase that you host yourself, on your own computer or a server, and players connect through their browser; it rewards a GM who likes configuring things. Owlbear Rodeo is deliberately light: a map, tokens and not much else, which is exactly why some groups prefer it. D&D Beyond is not a tabletop at all; it keeps characters and rules in one place and pairs with any of the others. Discord is where most online groups already talk, whatever else they use.

The AI-narrated category works differently. Instead of handing a human GM better tools, it takes the GM's chair itself. That suits some groups very well and others not at all; the section on it below says which. For a comparison of the AI options specifically, see the best AI Game Master tools.

Voice or text: choose the channel first#

Before any map or rules tool, decide how the table will talk. That choice shapes everything else, including how long a session feels.

• Voice is the fastest and the closest to sitting together. Jokes land, arguments are settled in seconds, and two hours covers real ground. The cost: everyone has to be free at the same time, and the loudest voice easily owns the evening.
• Text is slower but quieter, and it gives shy players the same weight as loud ones. People write more deliberate actions when they have a moment to think, and the log becomes the campaign's memory for free.
• The usual hybrid is voice for talking plus a text channel for everything that should not interrupt: rules questions, links, "back in two minutes", a roll someone missed.

Whatever you choose, a few audio basics save a lot of irritation: everyone on headphones so nobody's speakers echo back, push-to-talk or mute for anyone in a noisy room, and one quick sound check at the start. Cameras are optional; without them, many groups find people listen to the story more closely.

Setting up the first online session#

The first night online is mostly about removing friction. The game itself is the easy part; the evening gets lost to somebody's microphone, a missing link or a character sheet nobody finished.

• One tool per job, decided in advance. Send one message with every link in it and nothing else: where you talk, where the map is, where the sheets live.
• Characters finished before the night. Building characters together on a call is slow and dull for everyone waiting. Do it in a short separate call, or in writing, before the first session.
• A session zero, even a short one. Twenty minutes on tone, on the content lines everyone wants respected, and on how often you will play. Online groups skip this more often than in-person ones and pay for it later.
• Start fifteen minutes early. Call it a sound check. That is where the microphone, the browser permission and the wrong link get fixed without eating into play.
• Say how long you will play. Two to three hours is the comfortable range online; screen fatigue arrives sooner than at a table. Promising two hours and playing four is how you lose a player a month later.
• Open with a problem, not a place. Attention wanders faster online. Put the characters in trouble within the first ten minutes.

Scheduling across cities and time zones#

Distance is not the problem; clocks are. Friends in the same country usually just need a regular slot. Friends on different continents need arithmetic, and the arithmetic changes twice a year.

A concrete example: London and New York are usually five hours apart, but for a few weeks each spring and autumn the gap is four, because the two countries change their clocks on different dates. A game set for eight in the evening in London starts at three in the afternoon in New York, and in the week the clocks change somebody turns up an hour early or an hour late. Write every session time in each player's local time, or in one agreed reference zone, never as a bare "eight o'clock".

• A fixed slot, the same day every week or fortnight. Recurring beats negotiated. Groups that schedule every session from scratch play less and less often.
• A quorum rule. Agree in advance how many players are enough to play, for example three out of four. Without one, a single cancellation cancels the evening.
• Rotate the bad hour. If one player always gets the late-night or early-morning end of the slot, move it every few months so the same person does not carry it forever.
• Shorter sessions for wide gaps. Across six hours or more, a ninety-minute session that actually happens beats a three-hour one that keeps being postponed.
• A cancellation deadline. Twenty-four hours is common. It keeps the GM from preparing for an evening that never comes.

Keeping remote players engaged#

Online, a player who is not in the current scene is one tab away from something else. That is not a character flaw; it is what screens do. The fixes are structural:

• Call on people by name. "What is Mira doing while this happens?" At a physical table a glance does that. Online you have to say it.
• Keep turns short and move the spotlight. A long one-on-one scene is harder to sit through on a call than at a table. Cut between characters more often.
• Give everyone a job. One player keeps the shared notes, one tracks initiative, one tracks the loot. People with a job stay in the room.
• Open with a two-minute recap. A recap from a player rather than the GM doubles as a check on what the table actually remembers.
• Take a break every ninety minutes. Five minutes away from the screen does more for the second half than any plot twist.
• End on a hook, not a fade-out. Stopping in the middle of a moment is what brings everyone back next week.

Between sessions: async and play-by-post#

Not every scene needs everyone online at once. Play-by-post is the oldest form of online roleplaying: the GM posts a scene in a forum thread or a chat channel, players reply with their actions when they can, and the story moves a step at a time. It is slow; a single fight can take a week. But it survives schedules that nothing else survives, and it produces some of the most carefully written play there is.

It works best with a few clear rules:

• A posting rhythm. For example, everyone posts at least once every 48 hours. The exact number matters less than having one.
• The GM moves on. If someone has not posted by the deadline, their character does the obvious thing and the scene continues.
• Keep combat out, or keep it simple. Round-by-round fights by post are where these games stall. Resolve them in bigger steps, or save them for live sessions.
• A bridge, not a replacement. Many groups play live once a week or fortnight and handle shopping, travel and side conversations by post in between.

Some platforms build this in. At a Thavernia table, for instance, each player writes their character's action in their own words whenever they log in, and the Game Master's turn runs when the host triggers it, so a loose rhythm spread over several days works without a separate forum.

When someone cannot make it#

Someone will miss a session. Online groups miss more of them, because cancelling costs one message. Decide in advance what happens, so nobody has to negotiate it at five to eight.

• Play if the quorum is met. That is what the quorum rule is for. Postponing for every absence is how campaigns end.
• The absent character stays passive. Present in the story but making no decisions, taking no damage, with their share of the loot held. Handing them to another player tends to end in resentment.
• Or give them a reason to be elsewhere. A watch to keep, a wound to rest, a letter to deliver. Short, inside the fiction and easy to undo next week.
• Send a recap afterwards. Three lines in the group chat. The player who misses a session and then feels lost is the one who drifts away.
• Fill the seat if the platform allows it. On an AI-narrated table an AI companion can take an empty seat, which keeps a small party from being too thin for a fight.

Where an AI-narrated table fits#

An AI-narrated platform is one option among these, not the default. It fits a particular kind of group: friends in different places who want to play regularly, where nobody wants to prep or run the game and everyone would rather play a character. Here is how it works on Thavernia, since that is the one we can describe precisely:

• Browser only. Nothing to install; your friends open a page and join.
• Up to six seats. Human players and AI companions count together, and up to two of the seats can be AI companions. Four friends with two companions works, and so do six friends.
• Three ways in. Invite someone from your friends list, share an invite code whose requests the host approves, or post the table on the community page so others can ask to join.
• Voice and text built in. Group voice chat in the room, with mute, deafen and a choice of microphone and speakers, plus an out-of-character text chat. Discord becomes optional.
• Everyone sees the same thing at the same moment. Dice are rolled on the server and every player sees each roll; the narration streams live to the whole table.
• Spectators. The host can open the table to watchers through a link. Watching is free for members, though it needs an account.
• One language per campaign. The table plays in the language chosen for the campaign: Turkish, English, German, Italian, French or Spanish.
• Map or no map. Fights can use a tactical grid or stay narrative; grid combat or theatre of the mind explains the trade-off.

The same honesty applies here as anywhere: an AI narrator removes the prep, not the people. It will not read the quiet player's mood or build an ending around a joke from three months ago the way a good human GM can. If someone in your group loves running games, give them a good virtual tabletop instead.

A first-session checklist#

Go through this the day before your first online game:

• One message with every link. Voice, map or platform, character sheets. Nothing else in it.
• Every character finished. Sheets saved somewhere everyone can open.
• The time in everyone's local time. Check twice in the weeks the clocks change.
• The length agreed. Start time, end time, one break.
• Tone and lines agreed. Two sentences from a short session zero will do.
• Quorum and absence rules agreed. How many players are enough, and what happens to a missing character.
• A sound check fifteen minutes early. Headphones on, microphones tested.
• An opening with trouble in it. The first scene starts with a problem.
• A way to keep playing between sessions. A thread, a channel or a platform where actions can wait.

If your group is leaning towards the AI-narrated option, one person can try the whole loop alone first with the three free turns, no account needed, before anyone else signs up.