Hello everyone!

I wanted to share my set-up for those of you who are interested in playing digitally, without losing the magic of playing D&D live. This may not be entirely novel, but I had a hell of a time finding all of this information in the same place, so felt it might help those of you who (like me) are joining in on the game in the recent wave of D&D interest.

While I've seen some fairly involved set-ups with projectors and miniatures, I wasn't ready for that type of commitment (and frankly, don't have the space to give up for it!)

Instead, I've found that using a flat-screen TV in your standard ol' living room is easy (and awesome) for hosting your sessions. What I'll describe below is going to be how I am hosting the game, and is not meant to be the end-all be-all (share your critiques/tweaks).

Equipment:

• Television with an HDMI input
• Laptop (desktop could work, but might be more of a hassle depending on your set-up) with internet connectivity
• Chromecast ($30 dongle that plugs into HDMI slot)
• Webcam (optional for remote players)
• Group Microphone (optional for remote players)

With the equipment out of the way, will now provide a short how-to on getting the game on the TV.

1. Using Chrome web-browser, open two windows. Navigate to your web/digital tabletop of choice (I use Roll20).
2. Log-in as your DM account - This will be the window you use to control the tokens and game from your laptop.
3. Open another window in Incognito Mode. Log-in on a secondary account (which has been invited or can access the game you've set-up online). This will be your Player window.
4. Using the Chrome menu (top right button) "Cast" the second window to your monitor.

(Optional) One reason why I chose this set-up was to be able to easily have players join us who travel for work (most of my group have weeks out of town every now and then) or are otherwise unable to join in person. If you think this might be something you're interested in, plan to have a web-cam and microphone set-up to allow those who are remotely joining to see/hear what's going on. I use a cheap logitech webcam and a Blue Yeti microphone (the Blue Yeti is a little pricier than your typical mic - may not be necessary, but I had it for other reasons and it's great). Using the Mic/Webcam required a bit of fiddling with Roll20's video/audio settings to make sure we weren't getting double audio input. I actually use the built-in laptop webcam as well - that one's for me and the secondary webcam is for the players.

Not really sure what else to add, or whether anyone will find this helpful, so will go ahead and let comments/questions drive further updates to the post if there's anything that's missing.

Hope it's helpful!