When people think of Virtual Table Tops (VTTs, such as Roll20, Foundry VTT, or others) they often think of battlemaps. These allow groups of players to coordinate the actions of their characters with respect to either the environment or other characters. This can be useful in some relatively static situations, and obviously in battles where you need to know how your character is oriented vs. your opponents, but there are lots of times (at least for me) where my characters are not in a simple two-dimensional grid.
For instance, the characters may be making their way through a town, visiting a local tavern, or meeting up with a remote oracle. Although you could certainly create battlemaps for all of these situations, the battlemap really doesn't add anything. In a real sit-down game, you would be simply narrating the action, known as "Theatre of the Mind". You can certainly do this with a VTT too, by stopping the use of the battlemap and just narrating the location. But there are other approaches avaialble.
VTTs provide a great mechanism for immersion that are difficult to get with pen-and-paper games. You can display a video or a picture, along with appropriate background music or sound, to set the scene while you narrate what is going on. I do this often with tavern scenes, where I have a set of tavern pictures I display, along with sounds of crackling fire and a crowd in the background, while the characters interact with the barkeep or another NPC. I have a different set of pictures I use for a crowded village, or a city, or a marketplace, that helps set the scene in those areas, along with appropriate music or sounds.
A picture or video of a haunted forest, with haunted forest sounds in the background, does an amazing job of setting the scene for such a situation.
I personally have found the use of VTTs to be so much more engaging when you go beyond the use of them as just a battlemap mechanism, but using them to provide a multimedia platform to help you tell your stories.
For instance, the characters may be making their way through a town, visiting a local tavern, or meeting up with a remote oracle. Although you could certainly create battlemaps for all of these situations, the battlemap really doesn't add anything. In a real sit-down game, you would be simply narrating the action, known as "Theatre of the Mind". You can certainly do this with a VTT too, by stopping the use of the battlemap and just narrating the location. But there are other approaches avaialble.
VTTs provide a great mechanism for immersion that are difficult to get with pen-and-paper games. You can display a video or a picture, along with appropriate background music or sound, to set the scene while you narrate what is going on. I do this often with tavern scenes, where I have a set of tavern pictures I display, along with sounds of crackling fire and a crowd in the background, while the characters interact with the barkeep or another NPC. I have a different set of pictures I use for a crowded village, or a city, or a marketplace, that helps set the scene in those areas, along with appropriate music or sounds.
A picture or video of a haunted forest, with haunted forest sounds in the background, does an amazing job of setting the scene for such a situation.
I personally have found the use of VTTs to be so much more engaging when you go beyond the use of them as just a battlemap mechanism, but using them to provide a multimedia platform to help you tell your stories.