[audiodude]

A bit tangential, but I'm not sure I could ever play D&D on a VTT. I understand the allure of playing over the internet in general, because you can pick outlandish times and don't have to be geographically collocated. But for me, D&D is more than moving tokens around, it's primarily about the roleplay, about acting out a character and seeing someone's full facial, verbal, and non-verbal responses. If I want to push tokens around I'll play some multiplayer RPG computer game.

[bigstrat2003]

Like YakiSauce said, for most people playing on roll20 (or similar) it's not their first choice. They can play online, or not at all. For what it's worth though, roll20 does support video as well as voice, for exactly the reasons you mentioned. I'm guessing other platforms would as well.

[YakiSauce]

For us, we'd definitely prefer to play in person if we could. But like you mentioned, geography can be a real restriction. The times we have managed to play in person have been great.

[wolverine876]

Another way to look at VTTs is that they take care of the grunt work and give you more time for the things you want.

[nmeagent]

Why not do both? I run a five-player in-person D&D 5e campaign with a VTT (Foundry) and it works out pretty well for us. We offload much of the bookkeeping, tokens, maps, etc. to the VTT and still keep the in-person RP experience.