If your players prefer facial cues or are just used to video chat web apps, then [Jitsi][8] is an excellent substitute for in-person gatherings around a table. Jitsi is mostly like every other video chat application you've ever used, except possibly even easier. You can set up a room, invite friends, keep out strangers, and play for hours. Muting and going off-camera are intuitive, the interface is attractive, and new features are being developed and introduced regularly.
![Jitsi][9]
CC BY-SA Seth Kenlon
Both Mumble and Jitsi have clients for both desktop and mobiles, so anyone can play no matter what device they're on.
### Character sheets
I've already posted about my [digital character sheet][10] solutions, but any RPG player knows that there's more to managing a character than just stats.
During a game online that spanned several sessions, I found there was a lot of downtime between games. It occurred to me that, while I found it unreasonable to demand that my players calculate encumbrance during a live pen-and-paper game, it's pretty easy to request them to track encumbrance when everything's digital.
There are plenty of spreadsheets available online, but the open source option is [Ethercalc][11]. With instances all over the world, it's easy to find a free Ethercalc host. Alternately, you can use Podman or Docker to easily install and run your own instance.
![Ethercalc spreadsheet of inventory][12]
Seth Kenlon, CC-BY-SA 4.0
Ethercalc provides the essentials: a shared ledger so players can track the items their party is carrying (and who's holding one at any given time), the weight of each item, and the value. Items get entered as the party collects loot during the game, so they know when they're too burdened to pick up something new.
Between sessions, the shared spreadsheet can be referenced and organized so that the PCs know what to sell or stuff into a bag of holding or what they can safely drop when better loot presents itself next session.
### Maps
Mythic Table is an open source shared mapping system for tabletop games. That means you can load an image to serve as the map of your game and move digital tokens on the map to represent where players' characters are located.
Since [last I wrote about Mythic Table][13], it's run a successful Kickstarter campaign to ensure its continued development. It's also gained several new features, most notably a "fog of war" feature that allows the dungeon master to blank out the map and reveal only the parts that players have explored.
![A dungeon map rendered by Mythic Table and user interface choices for chat, maps, and characters][14]
Seth Kenlon, CC-BY-SA 4.0
I've been running two games on Mythic Table for the past few months, and it's been an excellent and straightforward map system. Conveniently, it also features a digital dice roller, so if your players lack dice or you prefer to roll dice in the open, you have a shared dice pool.
You can try Mythic Table at [mythictable.com][15] or visit their code repository on [Github][16].
### Open gaming on open source
The open source tools I use are universal, so they work with whatever game system you decide to play. Because they're all open source, they can be used online by all your players regardless of what OS they use, and they can all be self-hosted.
If you're a programmer as well as a gamer, visit their Git repositories and see if there's anything you can contribute. If you're a gamer or a gamemaster, try the tools out the next time you sit down at a digital game table. You might be surprised at just how few online accounts you actually need to have to use some of the best applications available for gaming.
[1]: https://opensource.com/sites/default/files/styles/image-full-size/public/lead-images/header_dice.png?itok=dOMrHopO (Dice as a random number generator)
