There are a number of different platforms supporting video chat and assorted additional features. Two of the biggest ones are Zoom and Discord. UK Freeforms has an account with both so games can be run in either.

Zoom

Zoom has video and voice capacity so is ideal for running small games where everyone will be in the same space and you can easily manage people talking over the top of each other.

It has some limited text capabilities and you can change your online name to your character name with ease. You can also get players to set backgrounds that may help theme your game.

Some of the downsides are that it provides only a single stream of video so there are no areas for “might I just have a private word” and everything you do can be seen/heard by the other players. There are also no ways to add randomisation methods like card drawing or dice rolling.

Discord

Discord has video, voice and text (private and public) capacity and you can set up many areas within the server that players can go to. This means that private chats are possible and you can have more players in a game.

There are bots to allow you to add pronouns to players and characters and you can change names as needed.

You can also hide rooms representing in-game areas until they are discovered by characters (this can all be set up ahead of the game). There are bots for adding mechanics for skill tests etc. (we have added these to the UK Freeform servers.)

Since players are spread around different channels, you may need more GMs so more than one area can be covered at once. This also means that GMs can’t listen in to all of the game.