You can get by with 3 or four people. A few can be kids! It is intended to be played in person, but we started playing it remotely for "team building" in mid 2020. It works great over the internet, if everyone is technical enough to run two clients: one for your station and one for the "main" screen. If you have multiple monitors it works well. We've found all remote or all in person work well, and mixed makes comms frustrating.

There are still lots of people playing DnD so not all hope is lost. Or just do 6 kids and play with them, true it’s a long term investment just for one game :D Seriously though the instructions say you can play over internet too.

I mean, it’ll be fine again when they’re older, they won’t want anything to do with their old man. But right now it takes all the time you have ;)

Ah, but then you might want them around. Better to play games occasionally, give you a chance to hang out for a bit.