Who is where? Who is next to who? How many are left? Who is grouped up? How many can I hit with grease? Can I reach them with a move action? These questions must be constantly and continually addressed by the players and the DM during theater of the mind combat. In pure theater of the mind combat it's easy for players to lose track of what's going on. This style isn't for everyone but it works well for me. I'll take screen captures of Dyson maps and paste them into the text chat of Discord instead of using a virtual tabletop. I find they take more work than I'm willing to put in as a lazy dungeon master.

Online programs like Roll 20 and Fantasy Grounds offer excellent virtual tabletops for online play and many groups love and swear by these tools.

I've been running combat almost exclusively in the theater of the mind while playing online. While there are many solutions out there, I've found that playing D&D over Discord offered the easiest setup for players and the easiest prep and play time for me as the dungeon master. Since all of my in-person games have moved online in 2020 I've become fascinated with the best practices for playing D&D online. New to Sly Flourish? Start Here! Text-based Combat Tracking for D&D on Discord

Darkest dungeon 2 discord