I see a lot of groups both boardgames and rpg are turning to online/apps to resolve their gaming fixes. Even our own little group has dabbled with Roll20 and discord to try and fill that gap. I have to say that I personally felt our test of roll20 was clunky, awkward and in no way feels anything like playing at the tabletop. Discord failed for us as a group with awful echo effects in the audio to the point of making it utterly useless, this may be down to settings and/or equipment but when you compare to things like teams which just works you do wonder.
Roll20 provides some tools to enable a simulation of the tabletop but it does fall a long way short, I'm sure the modules built for the platform will be a lot slicker but the interface detracts from the play for me, though the banter over the chat remains mostly the same
Boardgames fair a little better with the applications providing a full virtual board and takes care of making the mechanics work to the game rules, I have not used any but again would feel that whilst practically working it loses the essence of moving bits around the board and interacting with people. I appreciate that we all have to adapt to new reality for a while but as much as I love playing these types of games not sure if these substitutes will really work for me. Luckily there are still quite a few games in the collection that work as 2-player so Caz and I can hopefully play games together, which we normally don't many chances other than at Raiders.
I'm glad that others are keeping their groups going through these and other methods, for me as well as everyone else I am just eagerly awaiting the time we can all get back together to enjoy this great hobby.
