Tabletop gaming no longer requires friends or family to gather in the same physical spot, and sit around an actual table. Board Game Arena and Roll20 have helped move board games, card games and role-playing campaigns into browsers. Players are joining matches, managing rules and continuing their games from across the world.
Board Game Arena provides digital versions of beloved board and card games, and Roll20 provides a virtual table for role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons and Pathfinder. Together, they’ve helped browsers support competition, open-ended storytelling, and a whole lot of entertainment.
Board Game Arena
Founded in 2010, Board Game Arena began as a French online tournament platform. Its catalogue now includes over 1,000 games.
The platform’s figures for 2025 showed that players spent more than 69 million hours playing on Board Game Arena during that year alone. Neither turn-based games or real-time tables require people to buy, set up or pack away a physical copy. The popularity of browser versions is clear: people completed over 78 million real-time tables and 17.5 million turn-based games. At the busiest point, more than 6,300 real-time tables were open at the same time.
Board Game Arena also reported major growth during the 2020 pandemic, when online players and communities increased by 600%. Asmodee acquired the platform in 2021, and BGA passed 10 million users in 2024.
Roll20 brings RPGs online
Roll20 provides digital maps, tokens, dice, character sheets, campaign tools and features like dynamic lighting. The platform supports Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder and more than 1,200 other game systems. The company says its services reach more than 15 million players, game masters and publishers.
Its founders wanted to continue playing Dungeons & Dragons after moving to different cities, then developed the idea into a browser-based virtual tabletop. That original use case pointed to how it would become such a popular platform – Roll20 has helped people play together when distance, schedules or any other reason makes face-to-face sessions difficult or impossible.
Two routes to digital play
Board Game Arena and Roll20 overlap in audience but not in design. BGA is closer to a digital board-game library. The software handles much of the rules enforcement, turn order and scoring, leaving players to concentrate on decisions and interaction.
Roll20 supplies the shared space rather than a complete game. A game master may prepare maps, manage non-player characters and interpret rules, while players control their characters and describe their actions. The platform supports the session without determining every possible outcome.
The convenience of browser gaming does mean that players should consider the privacy and security risks involved with internet activity. Luckily, a simple VPN download can reduce some of the concerns: a VPN extension for Chrome encrypts your internet traffic and enables access to dozens of servers in countries across the world.
The browser does, however, lower the technical barriers compared to dedicated gaming apps. Players can join from a laptop or desktop without hosting a server or installing an app. People can enter a public table in just a few seconds, and play games with players in various countries. That basic idea led to the “great year” for Board Game Arena, and there aren’t many signs of things slowing down. Whether it’s on a physical table or in a browser, people will be playing games forever.
