The Future of RPG Gaming is on the Computer!

[RadiantPhoenix]

I suspect that a downward-pointing projector will be better than a horizontal computer screen, because it will probably be cheaper and less fragile.

[...You Lost Me]

A horizontally mounted, non-electronic, game board is a pain in the ass (neck) too. But we seem to get along.

[MfA]

Horrizontal computer screen? Full touch table? Fuck that. Don't ask people to buy new devices, make things for the devices they already have.

The device we already have is a table on which you can put down paper and plastic battle maps ... a very very good interface for which any alternative would have to provide some pretty serious advantages to get enough people to shift to make commercial support interesting.

Someone, probably the DM, runs a server for the game session on their smart phone / tablet / laptop / whatever, and everyone else connects to it as clients. Multiple personal windows into the game world work just as well as a larger shared one, and also open up options for asymmetric tactical information if you wanted to roll that way.

It also detracts from the social aspect of table top gaming ... tablets are nice for your character sheet and maybe DM to player memos, but for those of us who like maps and figures the central table top won't be replaced.

[TarkisFlux]

Horrizontal computer screen? Full touch table? Fuck that. Don't ask people to buy new devices, make things for the devices they already have.

The device we already have is a table on which you can put down paper and plastic battle maps ... a very very good interface for which any alternative would have to provide some pretty serious advantages to get enough people to shift to make commercial support interesting.

Someone, probably the DM, runs a server for the game session on their smart phone / tablet / laptop / whatever, and everyone else connects to it as clients. Multiple personal windows into the game world work just as well as a larger shared one, and also open up options for asymmetric tactical information if you wanted to roll that way.

It also detracts from the social aspect of table top gaming ... tablets are nice for your character sheet and maybe DM to player memos, but for those of us who like maps and figures the central table top won't be replaced.

I wasn't arguing that those things needed to go away, just that if you were going to build a new electronic interface you should build one that doesn't require additional hardware costs.

[wotmaniac]

Just gonna drop these of:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n94E3IeBquY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXsFNPO_gUM

[MfA]

I wasn't arguing that those things needed to go away, just that if you were going to build a new electronic interface you should build one that doesn't require additional hardware costs.

If almost everyone sticks to traditional battle maps then there is no commercial incentive to develop electronic content ... something has to entice a lot of people to start playing with a virtual table top.

Gaming over the internet won't be it, so the only alternative I see is a highly compelling user experience. A cheap table display could deliver that.

[TarkisFlux]

I wasn't arguing that those things needed to go away, just that if you were going to build a new electronic interface you should build one that doesn't require additional hardware costs.

If almost everyone sticks to traditional battle maps then there is no commercial incentive to develop electronic content ... something has to entice a lot of people to start playing with a virtual table top.

What the fuck are you on about? Gaming over the internet is not what you do with a bunch of tablets running personal tabletops. You game with them around a table in person (or over the internet too, because that's supported) and people migrate to them like they migrated to laptops instead of book piles and excel character sheets instead of paper (and you fucking ignore the people who haven't done that, because they're not your target market). The tablet has your character sheet on it, you move your guy on your tablet instead of reaching the table and spilling someone's drink, and the tablet handles the rolling for your attacks and spell effects and whatever else by passing the relevant bits on to the MC.

It's not just a VTT, it's your whole game. It's the DDI character builder + die roller + dungeon tiles / whatever + default beastiary info rolled into one nice client server package with some custom database on the backend to track monsters and durations and whatever else so you don't have to unless you want to override or something. But that setup also enables asymmetric information passing between players, so you get more in character targeting screwups or poor movement choices or whatever else because you can only see on your screen what your character would have seen. And that sort of accidental friendly fire is easily be billed as a 'roleplaying enhancement' if you want. Or you enable group vision / everything vision and play a more traditional battlemat style game. Or you play it in "mapless mode" and just use the tracking elements because you're playing theater of the mind or pushing minis on an ad-hoc map or whatever. And the cost of this is whatever the dev costs for that are, but it gets payed for with DDI style subscriptions that also give access to new content and whatever else. And it runs on things that people already own, so you have no hardware research or manufacturing costs to pass on to people.

Gaming over the internet won't be it, so the only alternative I see is a highly compelling user experience. A cheap table display could deliver that.

There are no cheap table displays. There are expensive flatscreens as tables and there are projectors. How do you propose to generate the market forces and penetration necessary to make them cheap when your only app is a dnd tabletop? Do we also watch pictures on these instead of our picture enabled flatscreen TVs? And do you have any plans to solve the input problem, or is the DM going to be doing PC action data entry all the time as well too because there's only one keyboard / whatever (touchscreen solves that, but is even more expensive)? And then you have to get people to buy those things, and you can't do as effective a subscription model with it because everything is stored on the one box.

Prettier stuff under my figure and a bunch of backend stuff like described above would be a compelling user experience, but not as much as an individual user experience with those things I think. The table model loses out on price and cost recuperation and flexibility and action input in varying degrees. It's a worse model all around, and that's why it has never taken off despite people trying to do it in various forms for the last 20+ years.

[MfA]

There's nothing "just" about the VTT and delivering content for it ... it's a lot of work and investment, especially for a company as inefficient as WotC.

They'll make an android/iOS version of the character editor no doubt because they can sell subscriptions with that to a significant part of the player base ... but after ignoring the people who are not the target market I don't think enough remain to make it interesting for them.

[TarkisFlux]

There's nothing "just" about the VTT and delivering content for it ... it's a lot of work and investment, especially for a company as inefficient as WotC.

They'll make an android/iOS version of the character editor no doubt because they can sell subscriptions with that to a significant part of the player base ... but after ignoring the people who are not the target market I don't think enough remain to make it interesting for them.

I can't tell if you're being short sighted or small minded at this point. Probably both. People paid for DDI and got broken promises (reportedly a lot for it actually), people kickstarted 2 VTTs in the last 18 months, and the older VTT communities have been growing rather than declining. These techs won't replace books and mats and minis, because some people much prefer those, but they could provide a lower cost of entry (coupled with lower long term production costs and a higher rate of return), could speed the game by offloading table looks and rules checks and bookkeeping, and could make things look prettier. Or they could just free people up to play with their minis more effectively. All examples to date are deficient for one reason or another and none of them are actually running the ruleset for you, and I'm looking forward to both of those things being corrected.

And yes, it's a lot of fucking "just" if your game is properly designed. It's a lot of database entries and code, and while it's non-trivial to do it initially I've seen more complicated client/server games come out of small dev shops with a couple years of work (see Artemis). I wasn't talking about WotC doing it, I was talking it being done at all by a company that cares about the product and doesn't have their head up their ass.

[MfA]

It's taking Paizo multiple man years and overruns and they are not as much of a clusterfuck as WotC, they also don't have a failed VTT in their past to make them hesitant about spending all that money for peanut income.

When VTT can become the table top for a large part of the audience the market will become much larger, till that time it's always going to be a niche in our already small niche.

[violence in the media]

I suspect that a downward-pointing projector will be better than a horizontal computer screen, because it will probably be cheaper and less fragile.

This is what we use in my group. Maps get projected onto a horizontal whiteboard and people move physical minis around for combats. Also, you can throw reference images for characters, places, items onto the screen so everyone can see.

Regarding programs and other online tools, it'd be nice to have something that allowed you to incorporate house rules and other changes. Using PF for example, you'd want something that let you put in and take out class features --to account for the million variant archetypes they have--without needing to have each archetype individually programmed or have situations where the most-recent program version doesn't have all the new archetypes or classes or whatever.

[Bihlbo]

One of the most exciting things I saw at PAX this year was Golem Arcana. It's a tactical miniatures combat game that uses microprinting on various surfaces (the map, the card with your figure's stats, etc) and a reader to interact with an app running on anything that can be connected via bluetooth. I'm not into mini combat games like Battletech, Warhammer, or Warmachine, but the exciting thing about it is how freeing it is to be able to do the entire game with a smart phone, a laptop, or a dongled PC, then play either with the person there in front of you or with people over the Internet without any real difference in play. I loved the innovation!

[TarkisFlux]

Oh, hey, look at that. Someone is doing most of what I was just talking about for a minis wargame, citing decreased barrier to entry, faster play, and decreased need for rules knowledge. Coo. Now I get to see if this takes off and I was right or not.

[shadzar]

The RPG industry needs to become an electronics company. The Future of RPG Gaming is on the computer.

No and No. that is called video games, and they have been around as long as TTRPGs almost. they have their own industry.

Most discussion of D&D occurs online.

that is simply because online is open 24/7 worldwide and you dont have to be dressed for it. you can eat anything you want and not be restriction to "no shirt no shoes no service" or "no food or drinks allowed except those purchased on site", etc. no one is going to run you out of your own home for eating a BLT in your underwear while discussing D&D, but Starbucks sure as hell will.

TTRPG industry just needs the proper tools, not these toys like fondle-phones and such. technology can be both, but today many people jsut have toys not tools. there needs to be tech tools to aid in modern TTRPGs, but everything shouldnt convert to just video games and fondle-screen apps (that are barely as powerful as an Atari 2600 game cartridge).