And to add to what this user said, planning is also key. Its actually what led my to realizing that my (really bad) ADHD was exacerbating my depressions and anxiety symptoms because I didn’t have the native skills to deal with them. Not thinking about ADHD I just learned to plan literally everything as a coping mechanism for the anxiety. Weekends I’d plan the general things for the week, then every morning I’d write out a detailed version of that day’s tasks, each broken down by parts. If it’s a call I have to make, I write out a little script with key things I need to say/ask and maybe write out the whole sentence so I don’t have to think about it mid convo, I’m just reading. Planning for as many things as I could like that really reduced the stress-load I’d deal in most scenarios.

I cracked a molar years ago and I was too broke and underemployed to get it dealt with. As time went on it slowly rotted away in the back of my mouth. I was already depressed and dealing with it just wasn’t a priority. It just became a part of my life and I would chew on the other side without thinking and eventually the pain just went away because I was stubborn and I think my brain just stopped recognizing those signals. It was bad.

Last year I went to get it extracted and as I was talking to the dental hygienist about it she said something that I really liked and I was actually really surprised at the compassion from a dentist’s office.

I’ve always tried to be open about my mental problems because the world needs to lose the stigma we’ve placed on it. I’m not ashamed by any of it, but I definitely understand why many are. So when I told her that I’d spent several years dealing with depression and taking care of my teeth just wasn’t a priority at that time, she said “Hey, it’s alright. Sometimes we have to let some things go to survive whatever we’re dealing with. But you’re able to take care of it now and we’re gonna help with that.”

You did what you had to do to deal with your anxiety and you should be proud of that. It’s not easy, but try not to view the tooth as a reminder anymore than a messy kitchen is a reminder that you were too busy to do the dishes yesterday. It’s just a result of a thing that millions of people go through every day. You’re taking care of it just like you’d wash those dishes, and then you’re going to move on with the rest of your day. I still have that empty spot in the back of my mouth and honestly, I forget about it even as my tongue pokes at that empty spot sometimes. This is the first time I’ve even thought about it in months and months, and it’s been about a year since it was removed. As for after, depending on where it is, you might not really notice soon after. Generally there’s like this plug of congealed and scabbed blood in the spot that you have to be careful with the first week or so, but I didn’t experience any pain.

My own anxiety had my blood pressure sky high when they first went in and they couldn’t do anything yet so they gave me a while to calm down and one of the hygienists was there and explained to me what to expect afterwards. She assured me it wouldn’t even be noticeable and she was right. But you should be able to ask them as well to get a professional idea for your expectations to assuage your worry. But also, just from experience, I can say that it’ll be fine, you’ll stop noticing and stop thinking about it once there isn’t something in your mouth that you always have to be aware of.

You raise some good points about VTTs, but on the other side, I’ll say that it also provides some tools that can make an immersive experience easier. I DM’d the first time on roll20 and got really into it.

We were doing Phandelver and I made a bunch of custom maps to supplement the default because it allowed me to have different music for each map so I didn’t forget to change it for atmosphere.

I uploaded a bunch of custom .pngs for tokens and stuff on maps.

Made handouts for monsters and important NPS so the players had a better picture of it than the small tokens.

Sound effects for events.

You can set dark vision and view distance for each character so you don’t have to keep track of who can see what.

You can put AC and HP on tokens for players and enemies only viewable by the DM for easy tracking.

You can have tokens hidden on the map that only the DM sees and can change the layer when the trap is sprung.

It actually made my fist time running a game a lot easier and the tools enabled me to be more creative as I found new things I could do. Also, I’m bad at voices so I got a voice changer program and it was much better for them than my poor attempts at sounding creepy or scary.

Some of my favorite parts of One DnD are the things that Larian already changed. Starting proficiencies tied to class instead of race? Perfect. Physical features tied to race seems fine to me, i.e. elemental resistances or a free spell or 2. But linking proficiencies limited your choices when creating a new character. Some races were just built better for some classes and some are built really poorly for some classes. That was the first thing they fixed and it made me happy. WotC knows that the majority of people just want a streamlined way to have fun when playing without having to do hours of research and they’re clearly moving in that direction. If you want to have a fun game with a large player base, the entry fee needs to be reasonable. I love 5e but when I was first learning the rules and making a character, I realized that if I wanted to actually be happy with my character months later I would need to spend a lot of time planning. If you don’t already know all the features and how they work with/against each other, it’s real easy to find yourself with an ineffective member of the party if you’re just picking whatever feels fun at the time. That can put a lot of people off and the new edition is fixing a lot of that by basically including a lot of house rule stuff that people were already doing to make their own games more fun.

That’s correct that it’s considered an action in 5e. The idea is that your turn represents about 6 seconds. Bonus actions tend to be quick nearly instant actions or things that can be done while taking your action at the same time. And downing 8 ounces of liquid typically takes some time and can be distracting. But in a lot of games (The ones I run included) house rule potions as bonus actions because it’s just more fun to keep the game moving. BG3 does a lot of things that are more house-rule type things meant to do this exact thing. It keeps the game moving giving you more time for the fun parts of DnD. They give you access to a lot of spells earlier and make them easier to use to get rid of that early-level slog that’s common in most games. I personally love those early levels as it gives you a chance to develop your character before making them a straight-up killing machine. But that’s not really how video games are built, so I’m really happy with the streamlining they’ve done in the game. There’s even some stuff I’m going to bring into my own future games.

It really just sounds like DnD is not for you. Dice probability is the core that DnD is built around and 5 of your 8 points are just disliking that. But I’ve known people who do ttrpgs with no dice rolls. Just the GM making judgement calls that leans heavily into the group story telling process and not on the mechanics. And that’s the best part of them! They’re customizable. But I’m wondering why you even picked up BG3 if you disliked the game its built around so much.