The great advantage of all this is that you can pull together a party from many different cities (and countries) into a play session. The hardest part is dealing with several time zones. The last time we played the GM was from, I believe, New Jersey, one player from Florida, another from Missouri, one from California, and me from Virginia.
Membership on the Roll20 site is free, but if you want to add the bells and whistles you can pay a monthly fee. I got the basic membership, but that allows me not only to play in other game maps, but I can create my own. So far I have created an outdoor map with roads, fields, a campsite, a stone circle and a small cottage. I've populated it with a couple of gangs of bandits, a giant, and some wandering animals like wolves and bears. There is also an entrance to a cave that will lead to a dungeon map, which I've sketched out, and I am now drawing on the VTT. Once I get it completed, I'll try my hand at being a GM.
Here's a small view of the outdoor map. I started out with a hex grid on a green (grass) background. Then I added roads, rocks, trees, bushes, and water. I've been working on this for several days. The tokens are all downloaded from Pinterest.
