Google Meet
Google Meet is an online teleconferencing app from Google, primarily aimed at remote workers and businesses who need a platform for online meetings. But tabletop roleplaying gamers have co-opted its tools for play! As a reliable application for voice and video chat, it's a common choice as a supplementary program to a virtual tabletop, so players can see and hear each other while having access to a shared VTT space. For games that don't require a virtual tabletop, Google Meet can function as the only platform necessary! Google Meet has chat, screen sharing, integration with and access to the rest of the Google suite, including Docs, Sheets, and Drive, so the session, campaign notes, rules PDFs, and automated character sheets can all be facilitated with Google. You can even schedule sessions in Google Calendar! For Premium users, it's also possible to share audio and video, to play music for everyone in a meeting in real time. Google Meet is a "freemium" program, meaning it's free to use, but has premium subscriptions available. For TTRPG players, because meetings with more than two people are limited to an hour, one person may want to have a subscription to ensure play is uninterrupted.
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How to Use Google Meet
To use Google Meet, you'll first need a free personal Google account and to be signed in. If you're hosting a meeting right now, you can start one right away. You can also schedule a meeting for the future, and even create recurring meetings that can go right on you and your players' calendars so you never miss a session. All of these will create a link you can send to your players that will take them to your meeting.
Before you join the meeting, you'll have a chance to set up your audio and video; make sure your browser is able to access your microphone and webcam and your inputs and outputs are properly set. You can also blur your background, use virtual backgrounds, or add filters to your video, or turn it off entirely. Once you're ready, you can join the meeting.
Inside the meeting, you're still able to adjust and mute your audio as well as start and stop your video, but you can also turn on live closed captioning, react with emoji, and present. Presenting, or screen sharing, lets you show everyone in a meeting a tab from your browser, a window on your computer, or your entire screen. You can also share your computer audio in this way. You can also use the "raise hand" button to indicate you have a question or comment to make, a potentially useful tool in an RPG session! Other options allow you to control the screen layout, text chat with everyone in the meeting, and more!