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Ultimate RPG Gaming Table
Nyrath the nearly wise writes "RPGs like Dungeons and Dragons are traditionally played on a tabletop using miniatures. The problem is that the players are only supposed to see those parts of the map that they have explored. Gamemasters are reduced to drawing explored sections of the map on the playing surface with dry-erase markers or using cardboard tiles representing stretches of corridor. Some fellows have an expensive but elegant solution. They map out the playing area in a laptop using software such as Tabletop Mapper, which allows to game master to dynamically hide and reveal sections of the map. The laptop is attached to a 1600 lumen DLP projector mounted on the ceiling and projecting an image of the visible map onto the tabletop. The miniatures can then be moved on a dynamic map. The eye candy factor is vastly increased, gamemaster labor is reduced, and the players have more fun. The elegance is that this is an intuitive enhancement of the traditional gaming experience, instead of an unfamiliar new user interface to be mastered."
We played on the floor.
Bring on the 3d googles!
Visit Tim's Journal, yes?
a DLP rear-projection system. Doesnt't that make a little more sense, in a way? Then you won't have shadows over everything from people's hands. It'd look a bit better overall anyway.
Take off every sig. For great justice.
magnetic pieces that move themselves to voice commands - like Jumanji!
You are confusing me with someone who cares.
Wouldn't a better way of doing this (though probably much more expensive) be to mount a projector in the bottom center of the table with a screen, so that reaching across it doesn't blank out the map?
Problems are like gifts, it's better to give than to receive
1) Cost. The equipment and software necessary for this setup are beyond many gamers' means.
The software isn't so bad, if it's the mentioned dunjinni package @ ~$40, but that projector is the backbreaker. Even lores projectors are a chunk of change. I know, as I've looked at them for a variety of causes, but just can't muster the green, yet.
2) The task of scanning and editing printed maps is labor and skill intensive.
My hope is that you could help me and any others that wish to use this technique by publishing this letter or similar instructions and by making high-resolution maps, which do not contain DM-only information, available for download.
Ok, the map drawing/editing thingie doesn't strike me as bad, so long as you're a coder like me. I've already done a few simple applications which can paint hexes (so cartesian should be less difficult) any color and anywhere I like, I could even map brushes to create furniture or terrain. (the worst part would be shelling for the package I delveloped it in, which I have no intention of leaving it in, for what should be obvious reason.)
Back in the day, though, for RPG's we didn't even use maps, but had the DM describe where we were and what we were to see. Kept it simple, so long as you remembered.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Your parents sure let you do a number on your basement. It'll be a shame when they kick you out.
My cardboard cut out dragon and magic tin-foil Helmet of Smiting.
News Reporters Make Tasty Polar Bear Treats!
The last time I played D&D we didn't need no stinking miniatures, just some paper, dice and a shit load of caffinated beverages.
Imagination is a wonderful thing.
"Your party has left the linoleum plains and come to an area of deep pile shag ..."
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
19. Yeah, it won't suck too bad.
-Randy
Wouldn't it just be easier to run a multiplayer neverwinter nights session and project THAT on a table?
TODO: Something witty here...
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Any news on how much it'll cost to clean cheetoh goo off the lens?
Cool... so with the projector you also get realtime shadows!
And the DM can have the Dragon's shadow show up via hand puppet gestures!
Of course the Raging One Finger of Darnisus will probably be the most popular creature shadowed on the board.
Otherwise the Israeli Intelligence Services might be able to track your purchase and then you won't get a high-paying position with them!
News Reporters Make Tasty Polar Bear Treats!
If this isn't the dorkiest thing ever...I really have no desire to know what is. I mean...I'm in shock. I thought LARPers were bad. I have to go lie down now.
http://xkcd.com/386/
Most RPGs aren't played using miniatures, they're played using imagination, various comestibles, and if depending on the game some dice.
Once you're out of D&D land, miniatures make much less sense, as the games focus around actually playing through stories, not just hacking and slashing.
That rant aside, the map alone would be quite cool, though I've found that a piece of linoleum with hexes and a white-board marker worked particularly well, and is probably easier to edit than a computerised map.
The projector should be on the floor and rear project on the playing surface. That way you don't have the nasty shadows when are interacting with the miniatures.
Smite the Goblin with your Staff of Whacking!
(I noticed that in a Playstation magazine years ago.)
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
Speaking of nethack, does anybody know of a good java / online nethack for me to play at work?
...equip everyone in your party has a Cloak of Invisibility +5.
Look, the table is cool and so are miniatures, but "traditionally?"
First time I ever saw a miniature outside of Warhammer context was that HeroQuest boardgame. The first five or six years I roleplayed, it was pen and paper and books (hence "pen and paper RPGs" not "miniatures and paper RPGs"). And I'm pretty young--so careful how you throw around "traditionally" d^_^b.
Sorry, but no. Dungeons and Dragons was actually an evolution of a miniatures game. That means it's about as traditional as it gets.
Thinkin' Lincoln - a web comic of presidential proportions
... NERRRDDSSS!!! /ogre
A few years ago, I attempted to construct a landscape for Warhammer/Warhammer 40,000 games, and it was a lot easier than I thought it would be....my plan was to make a large field, split in the centre by a river (two fords for armies to cross) and some buildings here and there, aswell as rocks.
Generally for water, dried Poly Vinyl Acetate (PVA) adhevise serves well for water, obviously rocks and pebbles, aswell as grit can be used for its banks.
I had two buildings, ruined cottages beside my river, largely these were cardboard, I also used some black painted straws as chimneys, I applied yet more grit/soil to the base to make it look derelict, and painted the entire structure a sort of industrial brick work colouration.
Countryside was fairly easy, I actually used cotton soaked in dark green paint for bushes/shrubs, and simply used a combination of the gravel Games Workshop had and paint for the ground.
All this was done on a 6 x 6 foot cardboard slab , so a fairly small gaming surface overall, and it took me just under a month of evenings after college to accomplish, huzzah.
Wow, I remember D&D being an almost pure mind-game. This was back in 1985-90. There were some really good DMs, some who went on to be writers and at least one who went into film production. The most we did was darken the room and clear a spot to throw dice. No lead figurines, no physical maps, just dice and a character sheet. Maybe I'm just being an old fogey, but I think I'd prefer the old way than all these props.
This is only necessary for dungeon crawls. This is a very minor subgroup of RPG gaming. In fact, it's very hard to justify the "R" in the acronym in dungeon crawls.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
By contrast the best D&D that I played in, I admit to being a fairly mediocre DM, was in a group that played very fast loose with the rules, w/o miniatures, w/o maps. Just you, the DM and your imagination.
Who plays D&D with a table? What's wrong with the woods behind my parent's house?
LIGHTNING BOLT! LIGHTNING BOLT! LIGHTNING BOLT!
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Look, the table is cool and so are miniatures, but "traditionally?"
Yes, traditionally. D&D started out as a modified set of minatures rules (Chainmail). Why do you thin that AD&D (1E) had all ranges and movements in inches whcih were later converted to feet (which differed if you were indoors or out)? Miniatures were for sell at just about every place that sold D&D stuff. TSR put out lots of minis although I prefered Ral Partha. Warhammer started out as a game to use the minis that GW made for D&D. Not everybody used them, and they weren't required, but the game was still based on the concept of usign minis.
My DM made us draw a map, but first he made sure someone bought paper and had a feather quill and ink, then we looked for someone with mapping skill. :-)
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You need Slashdot's Makeshift Tin Foil Hat of Stronger Privacy. That way you can journey past the Immature Hackers, Dwarf Phishers and Overgrown Companies of Middle-Internet with ease.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
The Israeli army would not approve of your ingenuity.
The hidden area of the map contained scenes from what it would look like if u actually went outside.
Some people have waaaay too much time on their hands. I thought I was geeky for setting up a beowulf cluster in my basement.
D&D evolved out of a tabletop wargame.
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First time I ever saw a miniature outside of Warhammer context was that HeroQuest boardgame. The first five or six years I roleplayed, it was pen and paper and books (hence "pen and paper RPGs" not "miniatures and paper RPGs"). And I'm pretty young--so careful how you throw around "traditionally" d^_^b.
Holy smokes, I feel old. We played D&D in a sandbox in the backyard back in the day. Then they came out with this fancy pencil and paper stuff around '75 (if this old brain remembers correctly).
I didn't see pencil and paper PLUS miniatures until we formed a D&D club in junior high. We were given a $50 allowance per month from the school. Then, the big 'D&D IS SATANIC' scare rolled (cough) through and the school disbanded us.
Thankfully, they were so terrorized by the hoax that they let us keep everything we bought for almost 2 years.
We did put the miniatures back on a shelf though. Pencil and paper were back in style and the backyard, well, the rules got much too complicated by that point.
Anyway, t even 20+ years later, I 'traditionally' still see a lot people playing with just pencil and paper.
This is not a dream, not a dream...we are transmitting from the year 1-9-9-9.
Back in 1980 when I got started in D&D we used miniatures. The tradition started when the original game designers expanded upon the game Chainmail which they were playing with miniatures.
;-)
So, just because you are an inexperienced first level whelp doesn't mean that the use of "tradition" here has any less meaning.
P.S. I moved on to the Hero System long, long ago leaving D&D in the dust.
The expensive part isn't the laptop (which you can now get for around $500.00) but the projector. The least expensive projector I've found is around $1,000.00 now but doesn't do a good job in bright light (such as is found in a house). Also, you have to have a halfway descent amount of room to play/project the pictures.
:-/
:-( )
I experimented (once) with putting the projector (a REALLY cheap/bad projector I found at college) under a plexiglass table top but the dice rolling on the table top was so loud it made playing unenjoyable.
However, someone gave me an idea on how to actually do this cheaply only not being an electrical engineer I never did it like they told me to. Maybe someone else would like to try it? The idea is to take a thick piece of cardboard (like that found in really sturdy corrigated boxes). Draw a grid onto the cardboard box or get one of those cheap plastic layers which already have a grid printed on them (but aren't so hard as to be like plexiglass). Depending on whether you draw or overlay the cardboard you go buy a bunch of those tiny leds for toy trains and such and put one in each of the squares (centered). Here is where the engineering comes in: You have to have all of those wires go back to some kind of a black box which has a cable going back to the computer. Using the computer you turn on or off the various leds. I was told it wouldn't be that hard but I tried a small board (1ft by 1ft) and couldn't get the electronics to work. It was cheap though. The lights cost only about $30.00. The piece of cardboard was about $5.00 and I just drew the squares. The closest I came to making the whole thing work was when I just got a bunch of on/off toggle switches at Radio Shack, mounted them on a metal surface, and just flicked them on and off in whatever pattern I needed. It worked ok. Probably a bigger area would look a lot better.
I have also been working on an idea where laptops are used. The central server is the ref's machine and everyone else uses their browser to move around in the game. (Unfortunately, I just wiped my entire hard drive accidentally. Bought a new hard drive but referenced the wrong one when I went to partition it. I'm looking at recovery software to get everything back. I have never been so despressed as when I realized what I had done. And yes - I have backups but the last backup was about two months ago.
Someone put a black hole in my pocket and now I'm broke.
Aside from the startup labor of actually setting the thing up. The labor to earn the bucks to pay for it. The secondary problems of making certain that the people using it understand it. The extra gm labor of making certain that all of a sudden ever character hasn't acquired a phase door ability.
How is mapping on a laptop easier and less labor than using a pencil and graph paper ?
If you seriously really wanted to move players by magnets you could.
All you would need is a plotter, take out the pen, and replace it with a electro magnet. It would just go to where the peice was located, engage the magnet, and move it to the correct square.
Although This would not let you use rear or in this case bottom projection, it would still rock if you could keep it quiet!
Voila! You've got a rear-projection system you can set things on.
If the grease is light enough, your gameboard will also be projected onto the ceiling.
Variations on a theme:
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
Whats wrong with just using your imagination? Only the GM really has to keep track of things. Thats always fun. :)
Good lord. 30 years ago the military would have spent several (hundred?) million dollars on something like this.
And people are using this for Dungeons and Dragons?
Christ, we used to sprawl out in my friend's rec-room.
God I'm old.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
The point of RPG's is not to be able to prowl through the dungeons with all the objects and corridors mapped to 1 hex accuracy. As the overall name - Role Playing Games - says the point is immersing yourself into the character you're playing and having great fun in the process.
;)) but when an RPG session goes to the level where you need to draw every hex and play everything by the book the point is lost along the way.
I'm not trying to be elitist or otherwise uptight and I do not condemn hack 'n slash RPG's per se (actually I'm running a Conan RPG campaign
Overall, I think doing this is really silly. It would be orders of magnitude cheaper to download some Heroquest adventures from the net and play them if you want to calculate your move rates to extreme accuracy on a premade map. Personally I find maps drawn by hand on the spot/occasion quite a bit more interesting and they also give more room to use one's imagination - both for immersion and fun.
No RPG's aren't 'usually' played with figures. Those are called tabletop games. D&D isn' or wasn't for a long period either. Allthough D&D did originally start out as a pure non-RPG tabletop. That's why it sucks so much as a pen and paper RPG compared to pure RPG systems like Torg or hybrid RPG systems such as Midgard or Silouette.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Until the Call of Goatse rulebook comes out. Don't think I'd want to see THAT field!
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In fact, the shadowing can sometimes be an advantage since you can often see things projected on top of your hands, which would be blocked in the rear-projection case.
Troll.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
"Gamemasters are reduced to drawing explored sections of the map on the playing surface with dry-erase markers or using cardboard tiles representing stretches of corridor."
It's about time somebody did something nice for the gamemasters. They are the unsung heroes of nerd culture.
Now maybe they can project a map of how to get out of their parents' basement!
If you want to do minatures go and do Warhammer. Better yet, go off with those crazy wargamers who recreate things like the Battle of Waterloo in minature where the minatures really matter.
Looks like the game is going to get submerged in all the paraphenalia and you're going to spend your time worrying about the colour of your characters skin and whether it looks quite right 'in this light' (1600 lumens or so it would seem).
Wussy nancy-boys if you ask me. What is this world coming to!
"I prefered Ral Partha"
Woot! Ral Partha! Yeah those were my favorites too. The detail on the minatures was way better than the stuff TSR put out.
I wonder how much damage all that lead did to my body...
Sometimes my arms bend back.
While rear-projection does have its own benefits, I think the main problem with it for this gaming set-up lies in its focal range. In order to be capable of projecting images the size shown in the article, the projector would need to be fairly distant from the screen. If he was using the same projector he has for a rear-image projection, then he'd need to dig a hole in the floor of his basement...
I suppose he could break out part of the ceiling and project up to a gaming table in the living room... his wife might not be so pleased with that solution, though.
I have to disagree with a lot of what he says.
First, let me remind you all RPGs are really Telling A Story. The more you need to use visual aids, the less the players use their imaginations, and the less rich the experience. Basically, those who fall into the trap of using visual aids are very weak DMs who need to learn how to tell better stories, and find ways to make the gameflow help them in the combined story-telling experience, none of which involve heavy visual aids. That said, a little time spent on learning better phrasing and a broader pallette of descriptions for color, smells, texture, sounds, heat/cold, and such will serve you better.
By the numbers:
1. "RPGs like Dungeons and Dragons are traditionally played on a tabletop using miniatures."
Well, no, most players never use miniatures. Miniatures were common in table-top strategy games, but are rarely used by RPG players, except when they feel like it, or for those who have a lot of cash and want to impress their moms with how easy it is to walk on small pointy objects on the stairs other than 1d4 and 1d8.
2. "The problem is that the players are only supposed to see those parts of the map that they have explored. Gamemasters are reduced to drawing explored sections of the map on the playing surface with dry-erase markers or using cardboard tiles representing stretches of corridor."
While players may use graph paper or hex paper, very few use tiles or plastic sheets and markers. Most DMs do in fact use graph paper - it works, it's easy to find, and they know how to use it.
3. "Some fellows have an expensive but elegant solution. They map out the playing area in a laptop using software such as Tabletop Mapper, which allows to game master to dynamically hide and reveal sections of the map. The laptop is attached to a 1600 lumen DLP projector mounted on the ceiling and projecting an image of the visible map onto the tabletop. The miniatures can then be moved on a dynamic map. The eye candy factor is vastly increased, gamemaster labor is reduced, and the players have more fun. The elegance is that this is an intuitive enhancement of the traditional gaming experience, instead of an unfamiliar new user interface to be mastered."
This is incredible overkill.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
have you SEEN the table when we're playing? Apart for a 20x20 cm area to roll dice, I never have...
...a Smart Tech Smart Boardrotated 90 degrees. Not only can you write on them, but it will digitize the writing into the computer.
We built a table out of a large door that we coated with paint that was able to be drawn on easily with chalk. We drew a grid on it and voila...the DM could use chalk to his heart's content. One of the things I liked about pen and paper gaming was there was no high tech required.
Rear projection (RP) dims when viewed off angle. Since no one is directly over the table looking down, off angle means everyone. They'd be so far off angle it would look pretty lousy.
Also, RP systems may not be designed to cool themselves when on their backs.
Finally, no need to mindlessly feed the TI beast. Consider LCD projectors too. You may find you like them better.
The one thing I would change is that the DM has to tell the players to avert their eyes while he adjusts the mask to reveal selected areas of the map. It would be cool if the DM had a little better control over what went to the projector -- shut off the feed to the projector while changing the mask, or maybe have the software send only the unmasked layer to the projector.
Other than that minor gripe, I totally envy this system. Pretty cool gaming room as well. Even with the overhead ductwork. Nice jorb!
Does this look unstable to anyone else?
o n/ fig03_lg.jpg
http://www.d20srd.org/images/extras/mapProjecti
So what do I have to roll to "Save vs Overhead Projector" if that thing breaks loose?
When I was a kid, we played pencil+paper too (early 80s). And as a destitute 6th grader, the price of p+p was perfect! ;-)
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Dungeons-in-a-bag!
He wasn't joking you see... I remember my times of playing D&D and we didn't use miniatures at all. Furthermore, ONE of us was making maps (the dedicated mapper) as the dungeon master described it to us. It was much more interesting that way because, if the map was lost, we would have to map again. Very interesting possibilities.
And regarding computers, that was my plan back in 1992, use a computer to assist the dungeon master. Unfortunately, bringing my computer along with me was out of the question (no cheap laptops by then, at least for me).
Oooh! You rolled a critical miss on your saving throw against staying a virgin into your eighties.
Why not return to Bigby's Bed of Eternal Solitude and cast grasping fist repeatedly and often!
--- Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!! - Lego version of the Matrix
All this rig needs is an electric hookah on the table. Those guys are in loser heaven!
...we had to walk 13 miles through the snow just to get to the DM's house. Actually he didn't even have a house, it was a large refrigerator carton in the dirt. And we couldn't afford no special dice, neither. We used to make them with dirt clods and white-out until they fell apart, which was like every other round. Maps? Books? Miniatures? I wish!! Nope. We just made it up. All of it. Man, those were the days....
-- kortex "Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts"
W00t! Dungeons & Dragons rule!
Especially when played with MAME, though.
Debugging? Klingons do not debug. Bugs are good for building character in the user.
With todays exchange rates for the GBP i have about 50-60k in warhammer and warhammer 40k miniatures.
at the time i could field a 100k army in each dwarf, empire, skaven, skeles and nurgle, for regular warhammer and squat, slann, imperial, and space wolves.
Its all sitting in my old room at my parents house 1500 miles away, because it all toooo heavy to ship, (these were the lead ones) I recently got into painting diaoramas and I went and showed the guys at the local GWstore and thier jaws dropped at sing pictures of what I had, I swear I had more than they did, and no one could believe that i could field 100k armies, with todays 10k armies, and 2500 pt skirmishes that they have.
Yes I am a geek, and DAMN proud of it.
moo.
Dude, you guys were rolling in luxury! What a cool school you must have had to lay that out for you in a formal club. We were lucky to be able to come up with the occasional cash to purchase the new (at the time) crystal dice. Remember those? They wanted a couple of bucks per die and it took me forever (as DM) to collect enough to replace and supplement the plain brown dice that came with my red box.
It's funny that you mention the whole biblical scare thing too as we had a Southern Baptist neighbor that suddenly would not let her kids play with us because of that paranoia. We were fine upstanding members of the community and it was cool to have her kids hang out with us before she heard about the D&D, but then......
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
dry-erase markers? $4.95
laptop? $1999.95
software? $29.95
1600 lumen DLP projector? $2499.95
Realizing that you just spent $4500 in the most nerdish game ever? Priceless.
There are things that cannot be bought. For everything else, there's the Dungeon Mastercard.
Picture this - put a web cam RIGHT next to the projector, aimed down at the table.
Now, on each of your miniatures (the characters, the monsters, etc.) you put a tiny set of LEDs, blinking in a certain pattern.
The webcam can recognize each object by seeing the LEDs blinking in a certain order, and can even figure out which way they are facing.
Now, all of a sudden, you've got your physical objects mapped back into your virtual space. What's the point?
Ragnar (played by Dave) wants to cast a fireball spell. So Dave pulls out the "Spell" miniature, and the DM punches up "Fireball" on a list. Now, as Dave drags the spell miniature around on the board, a little (projected, virtual) dashed line stretches from the Ragnar miniature to the spell miniature. Around the spell miniature is an animation of a fireball exploding, set to the appropriate radius (20' in virtual space.) Dave can easily see if Ragnar's spell can go far enough, and how many people (good guys and bad) would be affected by different placements of the spell.
You also get to immediately measure how many distance increments your character is from the bad guy he's throwing a dagger at.
All sorts of things start turning out to be easy and cool.
Why bother with the physical objects? Because nothing's as cool as reaching out and grabbing something real and moving it interactively (which begs the question of why people play D&D instead of rugby). It's like a mouse to the power of 5. Plus, all the players can fiddle with measurements and stuff simultaneously.
Yes, you could also just pass around a wireless mouse, and move around virtual miniatures, instead. Probably pretty close to the same experience.
Instead of the "look-away" part of what these guys have to do, I think it would be awesome to have a dual-monitor set-up - but not many laptops let you drive two independent monitors. One monitor the players can see, one the DM can see. Drop in a wireless PDA or two for passing messages back and forth between players and DM (Rogue: "I steal the amulet!"), and you're cooking. *grin*
I didn't come up with this webcam + LEDs idea - I just have thought about how it would apply to Dungeons and Dragons. I first saw this kind of set up on a SIGGRAPH DVD, back in 2001. They were using it to play with how buildings would cast shadows and warp wind patterns. They also simulated a virtual holograph-making system. It was amazing to watch this video go. I can't remember the name of the group for the life of me. Can someone post a link? I gotta dig up that DVD!
Education is the silver bullet.
Dude, I don't even know what you are spelling wrong.
Now the only thing requiring our imagination are the hot RPG-playing girls that will be dying to have a go with this rig...
Wouldn't it make more sense to project it from beneath, ala a projection TV? Then you wouldn't have the irritating light glaring in your eyes at about 15 degrees.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Seems to be a good idea.
Hit a little too close to the belt? A belt made large with Cheetos and Mountain Dew methinks? Join the club pal. But please, lighten up, as it was legitimately funny.
Back in the day when my old gaming group used to do hack n' slash dungeon crawls we would have killed for something as neat as this. But, of course, being a bunch of kids we'd never be able to afford such a setup even if it was available then. Our DM either just sketched things out as we went along. For a while we had a table top painted with some kind of chalk board paint... But then we moved beyond the ol' hack n' slash stuff and moved more to the role playing side of things and it wasn't such a problem. And miniatures? Couldn't afford those on a paper boy salary. Plus, come to think of it the one kid I did know who had lots of those things came down with some kind of brain disorder from sucking on the lead things.
We *were* the characters!
MrCreosote Meow!Thump!Meow!Thump!Meow!Thump! "You're right! There isn't enough room to swing a cat in here!"
It would allow players to move computer generate pieces as well... There's a reasonable picture of it in action.
I used one back at uni, they work well but I suspect aren't cheap.
My players did not use miniatures in the early years. We couldn't afford them (the game stores were pricey for high school students) and there was no WWW to locate the lowest price retailer. However, as time has gone on and the immersive computer games have become more prevalent, players expect to be able to visualize the relationship of their characters to the world around them, and miniatures are a great way to do this. For those of you who play, how often in an encounter do you have players asking, "And how far away is Bad Guy #3? So he's 15 feet to the left and behind Bad Guy #2? From where I am, that means my view of him is partially blocked by Bad Guy #2, right?" And so on. Much easier to plop a figure down on a grid and say, "Here's what it looks like." Draw a line around the edge of the area and describe the line as "rough-hewn rock, looking like it has been clawed away by something big, because the claw marks start at the 9-foot height and drop down to about your kneecaps." Anyway, you get the idea.
Second, I'm one of the people who posted on Jans Carton's web site (TFA) as to how we run the game. Basically, I use a DLP projector onto the wall. Tabletop Mapper is too slow for the large maps I use for RttToEE, so I've started writing my own in C++ with Qt3. (I also tried http://www.openrpg.org/ OpenRPG 1.6.1 but had weird quirks getting it to work the way I wanted.) I'll post the GPL'ed source when I get it working fairly well. With my projector, the remote control can act as a mouse for a computer, so I'll just hand the remote to a player and tell them to "move their character where you want him". As much of the number crunching as possible will be done by the program, leaving the DM to concentrate on story and descriptive text.
I also have other props I use, such as HTML versions of papers found in a room, or pictures of monsters, or street maps of large towns and cities. As the characters explore them, sections are revealed and posted on the phpBB2 forum which hosts our game discussions.
And no posting here would be complete without mentioning http://www.dmgenie.com/ DMGenie and PlayerGenie. The one-man-show which produces this package does an amazing job! This program manages everything that a DM could want, although it is still a work-in-progress. The author spends plenty of time adding features. And it has a VBscript interface to allow end-users to customize things with scripts as a way to work-around as-yet-unimplemented features. This has been very successful so far. In summary, you thought playing D&D was geeky, but using a projector goes one better! And it has made our game run smoother during encounters, for the most part. YMMV.
When we played (admittedly a long long time ago), we used these things called "words" and "imagination".
Nobody drew maps unless it was absolutely necessary (which was rare).
Nobody collected figurines (that was considered "gay" using the lingo of the time) -- the character sheet was enough.
We would get completely lost in our imaginations for a few hours. Turning D&D into a boardgame would ruin this, and vastly reduce the complexity (which, come to think of it, is probably why it's done).
Young 'uns these days. Harumph!
"This is totally insecure, but very convenient."
Hey! How did you make that inverted b?!?
I waited until the traffic died down, to say that while I appreciate the ingenuity with the use of a projector (and there's lots of others cool things this approach could take), this is hardly the "Ultimate RPG Table".
No, my friends, this is the ultimate RPG table.
I am taken with how much effort and thought the creator of that table put together in planning, executing, and documenting his work. Truly, it's a work of art and quality far beyond a simple application of an LCD projector.
Best of all, it's a version 1.0 and additional refinements are to come.
Disclaimer: I don't play any of this stuff, but I know quality when I see it.
Well, this is old news now but for what it's worth:
:]
RPGs as we know them certainly did evolve out of table top war games, but not necessarily chainmail. Dave Arneson & Gary Gygax, co-creators of D&D, had both been playing table top war games for quite a while when Arneson started to develop a very small scale version of the table top battles normally using hundreds of miniatures centered around skirmishing instead. Rules got more complex as the number of protaganists decreased and eventually the scenes changed from outdoors battlegrounds to indoor dungeons and castles. Inevitably players ended up with a lot of rules and only one character each - the miniatures and gaming board became optional as Arneson and Gygax started to hammer out the original rules that would become D&D. Chainmail was a separate product and idea that was a natural corollary of their roots in the table top game world.
I remember being young and seeing those beautiful racks of orange spine 1st ed. AD&D rule books along with the big old Chainmail box in a local book shop - it was like a magic cave
Well, I hope that someone reads this old news and finds it useful!
This article is why Slashdot was invented. Kudos.
When did the future switch from being a promise to a threat? -C. Palahniuk
Back in the day... I told my players what they saw and they mapped it themselves using dry erase on a large plastic sheet.
btw dry erase can become very hard to erase when left for too long.
The problem with this and D&D3.5 in general is that it assumes that all the characters are going to be able to know exactly how big something is and how far everything is from anything. With graph paper they can draw an exact republica of you map. I say horse shoes on that!
I'd rather play a "Role Playing" game than a glorified strategy game. Characters should be able to know if an opponent is exactly within medium range, nor know that they have walked exactly 65 feet north down a hall. Who keeps designing everything down to perfect five foot squares anyways? Let the characters use their intellegence to have an idea about three dimensional space, but what fun is it to just give it away to them?
Why do you thin that AD&D (1E) had all ranges and movements in inches whcih were later converted to feet (which differed if you were indoors or out)?
This messed me up as a kid. It took a long time before I could correctly distinguish ' for foot and " for inches.
Using MacOS to drive your display: +5 HP, +10 Dexterity.
Michael.
Linux : Mac
I've been working on a similar scheme useing a converted overhead projector.
by useing one with an open head I can make it project on the wall (for movies) or down at the table (for gameing)
what's holding us up right now is we're working on shape recognition software so that the computer can detect the hands in the picture and recognise gestures for picking up pieces and moving them.
386 laptop $free
overhead projector (4000 lumins) $75
webcam $20
software $time
not a bad combo
Troll slain! But 5 minutes later, was resurrected by a succesful die roll!
Slashdot - News for Nerds. Stuff that matters.
Damn Straight ! This is why, through all the muck and mire, I continue to venture back.
Time travel is possible. We are quickly heading for 1984.
Finally, a D&D product I really would sacrafice my firstborn for! Bring out the goats and let the orgy begin!
Ah, give us a couple of decades to build Dream Park. We'll have this chump beat!
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
Give two things a try: try Klooge.Werks for dice handling, miniature display and map obscurement, and try Dundjinni for creating stunning--gorgeous--maps with little effort. These two products deserve tons more users, and they make the game easier to run for the DM and more fun for the players. And those of you talking about "roll playing" -- I hear you, babe. I try to run the most ROLE campaign I possibly can, and KW only helps me do that. Once everyone knows how to use the program, which can be done in a single half-hour training session, play is smooth and you can resolve combat quickly and accurately so you get to the interesting stuff.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
Maybe he should incude a way for his parents to enjoy the projector when they aren't playing a RPG in the basement.
In one of the Tom Swift Junior books, I think it was, they had a very immersive RPG with an advanced computer computing the outcomes of moves and such. The game seemed pretty interesting to me when I read it, but I was rather young, I do think.
Anyone else remember this?
Agyris Game Table & Home Base
After all that work you were all still D&D nerds who stayed at home Friday nights in high school depressed because no one liked you except other D&D nerds.
"Martha, call the exterminator! We have an infestation of geeks in the rumpus room!"
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Maan. Me and MY D'N D click must have done it ALL wrong generic mini's, fairly small map on the back of the char sheet that only was colord in when we explored that area, cafine, dice and pizza. Course it helped that the DM was a major babe.
This is even better!
No, that was "minitures" games. RPGs are played with character sheets, dice, and imagination. I used to play Rifts (by Palladium). Minatures are just pointless where you've got fighting machines travelling at hundreds of knots, firing at targets over the horizon and moving between sea, land, air and space within minutes of game time. In fact, I wouldn't have wanted minatures, or even best-in-the-world-of-50-years-later projection, animation and hologram devices. The point of role play is imagination and... strangely enough... role play. How can you achieve that when you're watching and directing the action rather than being part of it? Enhancing the imagination? I don't want players who need visual cues like that.
Maybe I'm just spoiled with PowerPoint, but I would think that this mapping software he uses would be a perfect match with dual-monitor support.
The software could provide one view of the map on the external display (the projector or a big screen TV or whatever) and keep a "game view" for the GM showing the entire map, info, stats, notes, whatever.
-David
I always looked to join rol and PC and I think it will be quite usefull for something like this somekind of specific map software. :)
I've used also Photoshop but I think that there is a lot of features you can have in a sofware for this.
As I didn't find anything I even has thougt to write some program myself so if you don't know any sofware for this any coments are wellcome
Whilst it is true as other folk have rightly pointed out D&D does comes from a war gaming background. The sentence infers that this is the norm to use miniatures.
I have never used miniatures in D&D or any other RPG I have played and also do not know of anyone (outside of the film E.T.!) who uses them. They may be handy if all you are going to do is dungeon crawl but for more sophisticated RPGing there is just no point. It is a ROLE playing game not a BATTLE game, there is more to D&D than hack and slash
'By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes'
Are you one of these guys that usually recite their own comings and goings instantly?
...
I was reading slashdot when I saw a comment that brought to me a funny idea
Your head a splode
This is a nice try, but I actually think that the winner to this title is the table by the guys at Agiris.
http://www.agyris.net/v3/ugt/
This is by far the best table I have seen.
Gee, that's great, but what does it have to do with the discussion? Other than you bragging about how many figures you have, that is.
Couple of guys came up with some different approaches using different software and cheaper projectors - including using Neverwinter Nights to generate the background.
http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=122099
Isn't the enemy on the ground.
Says the general about the Iraqui insurgent forces.
What the general doesn't say is that the enemy they wargamed against were orks.
Get half-inch particle board with evenly spaced holes that's used on workbenches for haning tools and such.
Spray it with flat black paint and use chalk. Works fine and much less toxic than marker
1. Normal people who enjoy the game, drink lots of beverages, usually alcoholic. Sometimes the game is serious and sometimes not. Normal lives exist outside of game.
2. Borderline psychotics who dress up and believe they ARE their characters. Drink lots of beverages, usually alcoholic and sometimes add "chemical enhancement" to the mix. Abnormal lives exist outside the game (to them...is there outside?)
....while former DM's and now Techno geeks everywhere have a collective sigh of: "DAMN! Why didn't I think of that!?"
The truth does not change by our ability to stomach it -Flannery O'Conner
Wouldn't it be vastly cheaper and easier to just omit the projector?
Have a laptop/PC with TV output, output to a 27 - 37" plain old CRT or TV, and just sit the sucker on the ground facing up, then toss on a piece of tempered glass as its tabletop surface and go.
Or if you enjoy building stuff, build an MDF "table" around said TV.
Which makes most C-RPGs even worse - esp the MMOG junk. I never really had the benefit of the experiences you're talking about, but I heard about them like some distant imaginary land when I attended Gen Con a few times.
:-PP
Games with imagination? Storytelling? Where did it all go?
My brother had a run-in with a gaming "Cat of Doom". Our Maine Coon Cat, that we had as teens, liked to come in through our bedroom window. After doing whatever cats do it would then head for his Avalon Hill "Barbarossa" game board and proceed to jump on it and make himself at home. His bottle brush tail was not only excellent at sweeping whole Soviet and German corps off the table but the occasional armored division would cling to his fur. He eventually gave up trying to keep him off the board and ended up using that blue sticky putty to hold the counters in place.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Oh baby! They (Ral Partha) put out some great stuff. My favorites were the Tiamat figure and the skeletal war elephant (complete with riders and platform). I especially liked buying figures with nice big shields (if you consider the size of a small bean big) so I could paint authentic heraldric symbols from my Kingmaker game onto them using a brush consisting of a few hairs.
I could crank out close to a figure a day sitting at my paint stained desk by the glow of my desklight with my Testors bottles, half drunk on thinner fumes and a small TV going by my elbow. I even mastered the arts of dry brushing, washing, and matt finishing. Maybe I'll go back into it when I'm an old retired fart.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
The devil is very pleased at your devotion to his game! Now I order you to use pages torn from a bible as character sheets.
Hugs and Kisses,
Lucifer
I know the guy who made that table, and I've played on it. The table is great and all, but let me tell you that the GM is the real gem. Imagine the consideration, imagination, and effort he put into that table, and then apply it to the world he created, and his gaming sessions.
Heck, everything the guy does is like that, I met him through work. Great guy.
Too bad he moved away. =/
Miniatures rules are in the original D&D and in 1st edition AD&D. In 2nd edition, TSR bifurcated their RPG and miniatures gaming lines inot D&D and Chainmail. There are ancillary miniatures rules listed in the 2nd edition DM's guide. The Dungeons and Dragons boardgame is essentially a lightweight miniatures game. Al-Qadim and Dark Sun heavily suggested miniatures, and included extended rules for them. The original Greyhawk and Dragonlance settings gave extension rules. Spelljammer required miniatures, and shipped with haxmaps for gaming. There were miniatures extensions listed in The Manual of The Planes, and Planescape had not only a rudimentary miniature system but also a miniatures rules expansion system. There are miniatures rules in the 3rd ed game.
And I'm pretty young--so careful how you throw around "traditionally" d^_^b.
That doesn't make sense. You're young; you have no idea how the game's traditions work. Remember, D&D is almost 40 years old, and you apparently aren't. Miniatures have been featured in almost every campaign setting TSR has ever made, and other than second edition have been at least partially in every core rules system other than 2nd edition, which simply put them in an extra book for the purposes of making more money.
Yes, RPGs like D&D are traditionally played on a tabletop using miniatures.
StoneCypher is Full of BS
Sorry. Chainmail was the set of miniatures rules extracted from 2nd edition AD&D. D&D evolved from an older british game called "Tunnels and Trolls," arguably hybridized with a little known Conan-themed RPG called "Royal Armies of the Hyborean Age," and was the first thing gygax/TSR made.
Why do you thin that AD&D (1E) had all ranges and movements in inches whcih were later converted to feet (which differed if you were indoors or out)?
Because 1st edition AD&D was the first D&D to directly integrate the miniatures rules partially developed by the Dungeons and Dragons Master System and Immortal System crusade rules. Please remember that AD&D was almost 15 years into TSR's gaming line; it should not be used as evidence of how things started. If you look, original D&D was in fact in meters, not inches, not feet.
Miniatures were for sell at just about every place that sold D&D stuff.
When 1st edition AD&D was new, there wasn't a single store in New York City which carried TSR products. Back then they were still a wholly mail-order supplied operation. Where are you getting this stuff? Miniatures broke into the market through miniature train and toy stores; there was no such thing as a fantasy gaming store. You're claiming that a product which created that kind of store showed up in those stores before they existed.
TSR put out lots of minis although I prefered Ral Partha.
Uh, no, you didn't. The miniatures made under the TSR name from 1988 on were made by Ral Partha. You might as well say a 1997 Toyota Celica is better than a 1997 Geo Prizm - they're the same damned car, and they're the same damned miniatures.
Besides, Ral Partha didn't start until 1984; 1st edition AD&D is from 1973. Your timeline is a decade in disjoint.
Warhammer started out as a game to use the minis that GW made for D&D.
Games Workshop started making miniatures for TSR in 1989. Hogshead has been publishing warhammer since 1977. Where are you getting your information?
StoneCypher is Full of BS
At least this just pertains to the map. However, if they ever start making me 'roll' on a screen allowing everyone else to see what I actually got...my characters are going to be faaaaar less effective than they are now with all of my magical 17-20 rolls! ;)
"How like you to drag your keyboard to a gun fight." - Aaron Bedard (BANE)
Sorry. Chainmail was the set of miniatures rules extracted from 2nd edition AD&D. D&D evolved from an older british game called "Tunnels and Trolls," arguably hybridized with a little known Conan-themed RPG called "Royal Armies of the Hyborean Age," and was the first thing gygax/TSR made.
Sorry, where are you getting your information from?Chainmail first came about in 1971 and was the basis for D&D. The version you spoke of was a totally different product at a much later time.
http://www.acaeum.com/DDIndexes/SetPages/Chainma il.html
As for T&T being first, Andre may claim that but nobody else remembers it that way. Every site I've read on the history of RPGs puts T&T as #2, some with descriptions on how Andre did so due to reaction to D&D. Event he Flying Buffalo site says this is the 30th aniversary of T&T which would be 1975 where D&D first arrived on the scene either in 1973 or 1974 depending if you list EasterCon or GenCon as its first appearence.
Royal Armies of the Hyborean Age was done by Lin Carter & Scott Bizar for Fantasy Games Unlimited in 1975, four years after the original Chainmail.
Because 1st edition AD&D was the first D&D to directly integrate the miniatures rules partially developed by the Dungeons and Dragons Master System and Immortal System crusade rules. Please remember that AD&D was almost 15 years into TSR's gaming line; it should not be used as evidence of how things started. If you look, original D&D was in fact in meters, not inches, not feet.
Masters rules for D&D didn't come out till 1985, well after the AD&D core books. Immortals didn't come out till 1986. the first AD&D book, The Monster Manual, came out in 1977. That was four years after TSR was formed, six from the original Chainmail, and a year before the D&D Basic set.
http://mistrealm.com/DnD/History.html
When 1st edition AD&D was new, there wasn't a single store in New York City which carried TSR products. Back then they were still a wholly mail-order supplied operation. Where are you getting this stuff? Miniatures broke into the market through miniature train and toy stores; there was no such thing as a fantasy gaming store. You're claiming that a product which created that kind of store showed up in those stores before they existed.
I don't know about New York, but every little book store in the south carried the D&D stuff by 1980 when I started playing. This included the Grenadier boxed set of (A)D&D minis that came out in 1980 that was plaed with the D&D books on the shelves. I bought mine at The Book Rack in Bartlesville, OK starting in 1980 or so.
http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~tpope/sol/grenadier/his tory.html
When I found Ral partha miniatures which may not have been till 1984 (and by then I was going to Tulsa to The Game Store which had a large RPG selection as well as chit games), I remember prefering them over the old Grenadier minis.
Games Workshop started making miniatures for TSR in 1989. Hogshead has been publishing warhammer since 1977. Where are you getting your information?
GW started making fantasy minis in 1981,...
http://www.solegends.com/citf/citfa/index.htm
...well after D&D came out. Warhammer didn't comeout till 1983.
http://exodite.home.comcast.net/gw_products.html
I don't recall Hogshead having anything to do with WH till they bought it in 1995. Perhaps you have some sorces that I can't find reference to.
http://www.goblin-online.net/wfrp/history.html
Space pen urban legend.