Slashdot Mirror
Surfacescapes D&D Demo
Jamie found a video showing an unpolished idea demonstrating the use of Microsoft
Surface for D&D. Looks like they are using 4th ed as the basis for the system.
This comes from the Surfacescapes team at Carnegie Mellon, which strikes me as a very good place to be a nerd right about now... provided you make your saving throws.
Some proper Nerd News.
...for security vulnerabilities?
Wrong wrong wrong.
If they want this technology to take off, they need to get the porn industry on board. Seriously, the possibilities are endless.
If you can roll physical dice onto the Surface and have it read the values, that would be perfect! At least offer the choice. There is just something about rolling your own set of dice that makes D&D special. -HEX-
Horror & SciFi Erotic Nudes
A "virtual 20 sided dice"? No, no, no. This is *not* the way to apply computing to roleplaying. The computer can hide the dice rolls, in fact it can hide the whole "combat system" from you, and just allow you to roleplay.
Now, I *would* like to see augmented reality applied to board gaming. Something that combines the tactile experience of playing with wooden pieces, with the convenience of computer gaming. For example, what if you could play Acquire, and see the current stock value hovering over the company tiles, rather than having to stop to count?
It's a pretty cool proof of concept, but I absolutely shudder at the amount of additional setup time something like this would require for campaigns.
I've run a couple of 4E campaigns after finally letting go of my 1E rules, and not to put too fine a point on things... combat takes way the hell too long when you're forced to deal with miniatures and it just bogs everything down -- don't get me started on the amount of stickers and markers that are required for bookkeeping now.
A couple people at my table like the more strategic combat options that minis offer, but the majority prefer that the story advances more than a paragraph per play session. As the DM, I'm one of them. I'd rather roll initiative and talk through fast-paced combat.
WOTC wants to sell their absolutely hideous plastic minis, and lots of them, so it's in their best interest to make the game mini focused. There are so many rules that depend on movement and proximity that you've basically got to remove the entire combat system and house-rule over it if you forego the minis.
I've seen some folks that use an LCD projector and Photoshop in lieu of a battlemat, but that's still an enormous amount of prep time for a campaign.
then I just closed the window. I hope their D&D table isn't as horridly optimised.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
When I started, I didn't have much spare cash, and it was hard to justify investing in Microsoft Surface for a pet project. (Not when I was already in process for a do-it-yourself kitchen, bathroom, and stone patio set of projects)
For my gaming group, I designed a do-it-yourself surface structure. It's a simple design, but robust enough that you can easily customize it for your own needs.
Once I finish up and polish the plans, I'm going to publish them on my site, along with a components list of what I found worked (and didn't work), for putting together a pretty nice table that could seat about 6 comfortably.
The main goals I had in mind when developing the surface was (in no particular order or completeness:
1. Portability (We didn't always play at the same location)
2. Universality (I didn't want it to matter if you played warhammer or dnd or battletech, etc)
3. Unobtrusiveness (Don't let the tool get in the way of the game)
4. The surface had to improve the gameplay experience (sister requirement of number 3)
The part that I wish I had some assistance with was specialized coding for the modules. I'd love for you to be able to select a game, and have the engine running the display account for differing needs of each game. As of right now, it simply provides the basic components that someone would want in a surface system.
It was mostly a hobby of mine, I'm a systems engineer and enjoy my work, so I treated the whole thing like a full scale project to keep my skills sharp. It needs cleaned up for public release, but given the interest there seems to be in the subject, I'll try to make it entertaining enough for a writeup here on Slashdot.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
1. Set up a website with a 5.45 MB background image
2. Submit it on Slashdot
3. You're done
The problem with Slashdot memes is that YOU INSENSITIVE CLOD!
Let the wookie win.
My god! Amazing! Who would have thought multitouch/surface technologies couuld be used for something like this! What's next, chess?
( joking, for the sarcasm impaired )
Actually, I don't find the technology very suitable for D&D and other role playing games (while it would be perfect for chess).
I have discussed this for ages with friends and strangers in forums. What people seem to miss is that a Role Playing Game is not a Wargame. It may have simulation elements, but it's - at its roots - a narrative game.
This means that at some point the Referee (or DM or whatever you call him/her) will want to "cheat", hopefully in favour of the players, or more specifically "in favour of a good story". Automated systems - especially combat automators - will therefore either have to be sidestepped or manually updated on the fly - especially to edit out irreversible results like a deadly wound for someone in the party, or killing a valuable NPC and so on.
A table automator makes things even worse: this kind of "cheating" would be even more blatant, and damage the game atmosphere.
So, to sum it up: if you want to automate tabletop games with rigid rules and heavy bookeeping, like wargames, it's probably great (apart from the fact it does not alleviate some specific problems like being able to see the other's player pieces, how to simulate fog-of-war and so on, unless you force players to take turns at the table).
If you want to participate in a shared narrative game (like I would say any RPG is, even those heavily influenced by wargames, like D&D) it's probably better to have a lighter set of rules, and allow the referee to edit things on the fly without having the players to necessarily spot any inconsistencies.
As ideas go it's really in the same tradition as various others than have been created over the years, including OHP, as someone else mentioned.
I think the only thing I really don't like about it is the clunky dice rolling. I'd far rather it just showed the result of a dice roll, rather than doing a laborious animation of the rolling dice. In fact I'd rather it just showed the damage over the monster.
I would also point out that Surface units cost something like £8,500 ea. for a commercial unit. Your other choice is the developer unit, which is £10,000. Something tells me this is very much a "play with and figure out stuff we can do with it" project. It's not exactly going to be a practical solution for your average gaming group - maybe a gaming shop as a novelty.
Yeah, I had a sig once; I got bored of it.
On the other hand, it would let my D&D group get together create a rich and vivid shared history without all that awkward talking that we currently have to endure. Now if they could just find a way to remove the requirement to be physically present as well we could be on to a winner.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
This is seriously the only reason I've ever seen to use a Surface. Cool technology, sure, but until today, entirely useless.
And I don't think that having a D&D concept pushes Surface from 'entirely useless' to any form of relevance.
I don't really want the whole damn game embedded. I just want MapTool with multitouch.
"Tangible interface" or "tangible space". I tried my hand in it with one of my AR demos. Mostly users ignore it and go for the path of least resistance - play with phone and markers, not bothering with on-board objects. AR novelty by itself seems enough. Probably require a lot of design fine-tuning to entice users actually use non-trivial game interactions.
For D&D I would like a Surface that can:
-bring up maps as needed, to be played on with Surface-aware miniatures that track positions
-display a combat state tracker, like a game scoreboard, with initative, hit points, state tracking (dazed, on fire, etc) in clear view for all players
-combat-aware board that determines flanking, cover and similar bonuses based on mini locations
-dice that auto-sense the roll and calculates your bonuses, displaying the results
-full web integration with the D&D sites if you need to reference a quick rule (there are already Iphone apps that do this)
Actually that sounds like more trouble than its worth. These days we use a clear piece of acrylic and dry-erase markers over a grid map. Simple and effective.
Computers already have a place at our gaming table, for some it substitutes for a paper character sheet and its nice having a full rules library within reach. It may have gone a bit far when the other week three players were screwing around on their Blackberries at the same time. Turned out they were plotting something they didnt want the DM to listen in on.
Nice wolfie walks right around them, and past them and is on his way into the forest, and they blow his ass off unprovoked.
Bad Magic User! Bad Paladin! Bad whatever the heck your character was.
They should pay attention to how Virtual Tabletop software does things. A lot of the setup issues would be similar between the two. For example many Virtual Tabletop had to deal with the issue of animating virtual dice. What they showed in the video is a bit too sluggish. Another concept of virtual tabletop is rulesets and modules. A ruleset configures a virtual tabletop for a specific game or RPG. While a module is a prepackaged bundle of maps, images, tokens, notes, monsters, etc. It should be easy to do both. In the end surface computer and virtual tabletop are going to be two parallel lines of development that will impact the futures of RPGs. With e-books being used alongside both as well as normal tabletop play.
4E is built for this sort of application. This might be better than what WotC had planned (at least for a meatspace game). If WotC is smart, they will build this on their own and then build modules for it. The potential is astounding. /4E is my favorite edition. //OWoD is my favorite RPG
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
FWIW, I've played D&D as both a narrative and as a pure strategy tabletop game.
Both ways of playing have their merits.
I've seen D&D GM'd as a creative problem-solving game. I've seen it GM'd as a "storytelling" game. I've seen it GM'd as a Monty Haul game. I've seen it DM'd as a wargame.
And yet, in my opinion, those are the things that make rpgs interesting. What does the party do when someone is killed off? How does the GM adjust on the fly to keep the plot moving? How can the eliminated player still participate (adding a new party member, assisting the GM, etc). A GM who fudges die rolls in order to keep the party intact makes for a poor game, IMO... then you have players taking risks they wouldn't otherwise take. Why shouldn't an enemy NPC get lucky sometimes? Why shouldn't a friendly (or key-to-the-plot) NPC get unlucky?
:).
My point is, there are a ton of ways to play rpgs, and your particular favorite doesn't necessarily match everyone else's. And sure, you've talked to other people about it... but remember that there is a selection bias in your sample
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Well, there are several overhead projection systems currently used for D&D that only use the computer to show the maps and the movement as described by the DM. This allows for interesting line of sight and "fog of war" effects.
IMHO, 4th edition is a lot simpler when it comes to combat and theres no need to automate the rolls, damage, or effects (unlike 3rd edition where you sometimes needed spreadsheets to recalculate your entire character sheet if someone altered your ability scores with a spell)
In short, as a DM, my opinion is that anything that makes the combat part of a Tabletop Roleplaying Game easier and faster, while retaining narrative complexity is welcome since it allows the players to focus on the story and less on the mechanics.
No sig for the moment.
Fed up with complexity and commerce? Want brevity and simplicity?
http://microlite20.net/
Core rules fit on 8 sides of A6 paper.
Alternatively, dig around in the second hand bookshops for Fighting Fantasy Role Playing Game. The rule system from the "choose your own adventure" d6-based novels, but adapted for multiplayer RPGs.
Andrew Oakley - www.aoakley.com
Exactly. Thanks to this innovation you won't even have to talk to the other players or the game moderator any longer. Everyone can just take turns while the others watch TV, play FFXI on the PS or start a parallel pen and paper session. How avant-garde.
Cheating of any kind immediately ruins the atmosphere. I guess if you're used to it as part of your normal game then whatever, but for me, any game whether all human or human/computer immediately loses its appeal once the rules are broken. The whole point of a game is to win within the rules. It's not quite as bad if human error leads to rules breaking, but this kind of computer-enhanced RPG would help keep that from happening.
I get that you may be trying to create a more interesting/epic story than "oops you got killed by the first troll you met" so maybe that's just the way YOU play the game. That's your choice. Definitely means I would agree that a computer-based board would do you no good at all.
I both agree and disagree with you here. I think it is better to have clearly defined parts of the game where the players know the rules and can feel that they are on a level playing field with the GM, and let the light and fluffy rules apply to everything outside of that. If the game master spends too much time editing reality just to fit the predefined story then you might as well strap the players onto a flatcar and push them down the tracks.
You can play fast and easy all you want with setting up the story, introducing the villains and leading up to a big showdown at the end, but once the miniatures are on the map and the fighting starts you need to play fair with the players. If that means letting somebody's character get an amazingly lucky shot which puts and arrow through your carefully prepared villain's eye from the other side of the castle in the opening round, then so be it. Grabbing the dice and saying "Uh... that didn't happen" is just cheating.
As a game master you just need to deal with it. Do some quick rewrites and reveal that the late big bad guy was just a pawn and now there's a new guy in charge, or arrange to have him spirited away by his minions and show up a few sessions later with an eyepatch and an even bigger grudge than before, but don't cheat your players just because something that they did doesn't fit in with the narrative you had in mind. Remember that RPGs are a shared experience where all of the participants develop the story together. Railroading them into the storyline that you prepared for them is just boring for everybody.
For war gaming, a large projection setup would be great for maps and terrain. I figured a 4' x 8' translucent surface (giant light table setup) with a projector below it (how far down to fill 4'x8' surface?) would work. Not sure how to support the surface without casting some kind of shadow, though.
As for computer input, figures with rfid tags and some kind of triangulation sensors?
For D&D, yeah, a touch screen in the middle of the table, to display various scenario elements would be cool but not necessarily required. I suppose you could also use a Mac tablet, if they ever come out with a tabloid size one.
I drank what? -- Socrates
You have a good point; the system shouldn't be so strict as to bind the DM's hands and limit their freedom. On the other hand, done well, a system like this could enhance the story-telling aspect by handling all the little calculations and details that can slow down miniatures-based combat, freeing players and DM to focus on role-playing.
Yes, sorry, I was a bit in a hurry and didn't add enough disclaimers to my post. I am answering to you but this goes for at least another couple of people who replied to my message.
Please understand that - of course - what I think is the "proper" way to play a RPG is just a matter of opinion and personal preference.
And when I say I "discussed it with people" I don't mean that everybody agreed, or that I managed to convince them of "the error of their ways", either.
I do take exception at considering RPGs in general games where you can "win" and therefore strict adherence to rules is not the proper way to go for me. But, obviously, it's my own opinion. Apologies if I didn't stress this enough in my post.
The recent editions of D&D are very "tactical", I understand, so among the various different RPGs it may be the most suited for this kind of treatment, but I (personally, IMHO etc.) wouldn't find this kind of technology appealing for playing RPGs.
"This means that at some point the Referee (or DM or whatever you call him/her) will want to 'cheat', hopefully in favour of the players, or more specifically 'in favour of a good story'."
Yuck!!
http://deltasdnd.blogspot.com/2009/05/coddling-players.html
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
rfid tags and triangulation sensors? That is way more complex than it needs to be. I've seen table top displays with a cheap camera mounted beneath the table that tracks simple stickers on the bottom of figures which gives position and vector direction. More complex figures allowed you to tilt the head of the figure up and down which mechanically rolled a sticker wheel on the bottom from one color to another which provided that data to tell the angle the head was at, and derive your perspective. You can do a lot with a cheap camera, stickers and a some programming. Need more figures? Print more stickers. Heck of a lot easier than programming or paying for proprietary rfid tags.
I actually did something like this for my senior year project. We tried to make a Warhammer 40k game. We didn't use MS surface we used Reactivision, to do the tracking. And Reactivision was actually much better than most of the other implementations because it could also track an objects orientation. We never really got it to work that well but it was a fun project
http://reactivision.sourceforge.net/
What people seem to miss is that a Role Playing Game is not a Wargame. It may have simulation elements, but it's - at its roots - a narrative game.
The direction Wizards of the Coast have been taking D&D in for several years now is one of intergration with the miniatures game (and to a lesser extent, the MMORPG) with traditional roleplaying falling increasingly by the wayside. The story no longer matters to a significant portion of the current generation of gamers.
On a more personal note, when I first saw the Surface demoed, my initial instinct was that this would be perfect for Battletech or other miniature based games, but would need some work when it came to RPGs. As far as the DM 'fudging' rolls for the story, we didnt see enough of how the DM station works to assume that is not built in. I am sure there is an override roll button built into the rolling interface on that station.
Don't rush me, Sonny. You rush a miracle man, you get rotten miracles.
OR the DM could have a Narritive menu that allows them to alter results and specify effects to their choosing as such things happen...
You know, like a DM does in real life with a pencil
Actually, I don't find the technology very suitable for D&D and other role playing games (while it would be perfect for chess).
Surely, though, there's no better medium for face-to-face chess than a real chess board with wooden pieces. For distance playing, or for playing against an AI, there's nothing much wrong with a traditional computer implementation.
You could use Surface with special pieces to record the moves - but it would be using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.
Ah, but with a translucent table top, optical recognition would be a pain. Maybe some kind of low level microwave field or scanning laser system...
I drank what? -- Socrates
I agree with the parent here, games like warhammer and battletech will be great on a system like this because they are straight out fighting games and are designed to play on tables like this(without the electronic component) and would only increase the speed of play while leaving the game mechanics themselves alone. This is proven by games like MegaMek, Neveron, and Invasion3042 for battletech and Bloodbowl and ComSim for warhammer, which are played on the computer but retain the rules of the board game and only take over the distance calculations and dice rolls.
Orwell was an optimist.
Since the computer is deciding what dice to provide, why slow it down by having a stupid gesture to make get them to roll?
This is a proof of concept. They said the DM has a separate screen/computer to input the enemy movements etc... The actual program is software based so the DM can choose software that lets him have whatever control level he desires. Heck, even without built in rules, the potential variety of map environments and enemy types would be a great addition to any D&D game.
The whole point of a game is to win within the rules.
That's too strong of a position. I think we can agree that the whole point of a game is to enjoy the time spent doing it. And that you enjoy 'winning' more than 'story'.
I get that you may be trying to create a more interesting/epic story than "oops you got killed by the first troll you met" so maybe that's just the way YOU play the game. That's your choice. Definitely means I would agree that a computer-based board would do you no good at all.
The way I play the game goes a lot deeper than that. I also have been blessed with game sessions where a character did something completely impossible by the rules, and it was allowed anyway, and great fun was had by all.
Anecdote incoming:
I once had a dwarven Animist who followed a god of war. The GM for this game was particularly brutal on mistakes, and over a short time I got kicked out of my church. They told me that when I returned I would be put to death. Later that same day I challenged a bar patron to a duel in an effort to impress the party I was hoping to join. The patron turned out to be the captain of the guard, and almost killed me on his first turn. Being the sturdy warrior I was, I ran. The entire guard chased me. I led them into my old church. Upon seeing my return, weapon drawn and bleeding, they leaped to action, swords drawn. The guards chasing me into the building, I yelled "Get them!" and promptly ducked under the nearest table. I snuck away, and the party agreed to let me go with them.
Later when we returned to sell our booty, we found that the town was deserted. I had accidentally touched off a civil war withing the church-vs-government power struggle in that city.
Now, that being said, were there no 'cheating' allowed:
1) The captain killed my character. I rolled a new one, preferably a different thing altogether, so death has some meaning.
2) I had no bluff training and horrible people skills. The parties in the church would have succeeded any check they were allowed to make and would not have been fooled. They would probably have ganged up and enjoyed killing my nearly-dead self. See #1...
My personal view is that RPGs are best with a balance of story and rules. The rules mostly matter during contests between players, while the story matters most in all other cases.
That's what is fun to me.
Right about now, I'm sure their loving the guy who decided they needed a 5.5mb background jpeg on their page.
I think it be great to have a platform to download board games and expand upon their functionality like this, but the price tag would be huge for such a tabletop. At least you wouldn't have to clean up the pieces or worry about the cat knocking over your armies in a game like Risk :)
They should integrate google maps too! Well okay, it's Microsoft so they won't but I think they have their own satellite photo collection map thing. Anyway, you could go through real, actual locations and real mountains and woods and stuff. That'd be awesome!
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
The figurines are flush to the top with very bright and simple shapes on them. The recognition doesn't need to be very precise.
I'd have to argue that D&D is a rule set; and that the DM and the players depending on their preference will use the rule set as a vehicle for narrative or for combat simulation. It certainly gives you all the tools you need for both and you can certainly have one without the other. This would be perfect for D&D tournament style dungeon crawls. This use of a multitouch table is very neat but I agree that "cheating" is something you do not want to take away from the DM. With that in mind I think if there was an interface where you could input your results from your rolls that would take care of that. I personally prefer rolling real dice.
Dude GM games are worse than GM crops. You should seriously boycott that shit before you get cancer.
...I hope they code the Surface better than they code the website. Wow, is that pokey and pointless.
That said, if I could get the faintest whiff of a donation of a Surface system and a grant to write D&D software for it (including extensive real-world testing) I'd be pretty damn eager too.
D&D 4.0, being more of a skirmish adventure game than a RPG, is really perfect for it.
I can see it work tho, you could have the maps dynamic, and fog-of-war'd. You could have the surface character- and stat-aware so that it would give you movement options, and just tap the character figure and target, get a dropdown of attack options, and it resolves the mechanics with lots of sound effects. Pools of blood could spread from badly injured/dead toons. You could either use figures atop the displayed map, or have animated icons for the characters which would look cooler anyway (minifigs and dungeon tiles makers? Your long painful struggle keeping your business afloat is about to end, anyway...).
Display animated spell effects OF COURSE, not to mention dynamic lighting and shadows, traps that happen when you move onto them (your character's animated response based on the internalized saving throw roll). NWN/DDO meet somewhere on a combination touchscreen/projector, basically.
Yeah, I could see this being cool.
I think they should also test long-range networked implementation, so I'd be happy to help if someone could donate a Surface.
-Styopa
I agree with all you posted. I suspect (but not having really tried, it's pure speculation on my part) that having a complete combat simulator in software and then adding an "editorial console" on top to allow the DM to cheat would be very complex in terms of usability and would disrupt the game flow (even if the actual touching up of the results would be relatively rare).
What I think is that sometimes fudging rolls and changing things on the fly is almost automatic for a good DM, while having to change the results and propagate the effects back would be a bit cumbersome.
Example: an NPC Magic User casts some area effect spell (which I suppose would be shown to players, either with cool digital effects on the table, or at least with some text message).
Now, if one of the PCs fails save and takes too much damage, do you ask the DM if he is ok with this before showing the results? How much of the "prerolled past" is the DM allowed to change?
Would this be a "change the rolled damage till the Ranger is safe"? And if this is the case what about NPCs and even opponents caught in the blast? Would they get back to life, too? What if you showed them getting burn to a crisp with an animation?
What if the only way to change the outcome requires the MU to fail the casting for some random motive?
Basically I see the tension between "let the system take care of the rolls" and "what if I want a different outcome for this specific result?" as something difficult to properly implement (the MS table thing is not the problem here, it's a conundrum for any computerized combat simulator, I am afraid) because a detailed combat turn in a RPG has lots of things happening, and changing the result would clash with lots of things the simulator has updated in its internal state, and makes things hard to properly edit.
I don't have the url handy, but somebody already made a knock-off using plexiglas with a paper & rubber coating so he could both project visible light and detect touches using frustrated internal reflection in IR.
I forget if he used lenses or just a sharp angle and the distortion controls to keep the depth of the box down.
4E is a load of dog shit.
I've been through three and a half versions of (A)D&D, three versions of Shadowrun, two and a half versions of GURPS (if you count 3+CI+CII as "3.5"), and loved them; edition specific warts and all.
I bought the D&D 4E Core Set, expecting good things and was very disappointed. I have never, EVER seen a role-playing game get bent over and screwed in the ass like WOTC did with D&D 4E.
I decided to go with Pathfinder RPG instead and now run a Pathfinder game every other Saturday. The PDF for the Core Rulebook (PHB + DMG) is only $10... check it out.
While it is nice to be able to play with nice maps, the amount of extra effort to create/find/buy them is a deterrent. Our group does just fine with a laminated piece of posterboard and dry erase markers. It's extremely quick, reusable, and flexible in the amount of data it can hold. So until I see something actually marketed with that same set of features+, and I'm rich enough to afford it, it makes no difference. The only thing we can't do very well, and neither can a Surface interface is a 3 dimensional playing field.
The area where automation comes in the most handy is in the combat accounting. A more beneficial piece of software would be a projectable or multiview system in which information such as damage, status effects, turn order, and turn progression was displayed to everyone. It would mean no more having to ask who needs healing, or who's turn it is because somebody delayed their actions. The players are still in control of their own characters and the specific character accounting such as what powers have been used, but basic information such as maximum hit points and initiative are all that is required.
Yeah it looked like the Dungeon Master had a seperate screen to control certain aspects of the game, so maybe they could also "override" the strict rules there without anyone being the wiser?
Jeff
I don't see how your example is any different than non-automated D&D. Plus, what's the big deal about dieing? If I recall correctly, you don't lose experience or levels anymore. I believe one of the epic level powers or feats is written as "once per day, when you die..." The whole "the party is screwed if one person bites it" meme is so previous editions.
I wonder how much it'd cost to get a Microsoft Surface at home. Imagine the possibilities
I saw that too, it was pretty cool
IIRC he used arrays of IR LEDs around the plexiglas table (mounted in the wood in which the table was inlaid), and a standard 640x480 webcam (mounted below the table, near to the projector assembly) with the IR filter removed to detect the FTIR "touches" to the plexiglas.
The projector was a standard projector that you can buy in any shop today.
RPGs are a continuum from strongly wargame (e.g. Twilight 2000, Shadowrun) to pure storytelling (e.g. The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen, Prime Time Adventures). For extra complexity most RPGs span a wide range of that continuum, most spanning a much wider range than the rules really support (e.g. D&D). Players of more tactical RPGs revel in careful research, planning, and execution, with the acceptable risk that dumb luck could kill everyone five minutes in leading to a profoundly crappy story. Fans of more storytelling focused RPGs are happy to sacrifice a bit of plausibility if it's what the story calls for. And it's all good. As role-playing gamers we need to be more accepting of other valid play styles; we're too small of a community to get into pointless debate over which one is correct or better. The real rule zero isn't, "The GM is always right," it's "If you're all having fun, it's right."
Assuming your goal is to end up with a "good" story for whatever your standard is, if the GM occasionally has to "cheat," perhaps you should be looking to a different RPG. If a bad roll will hurt your story, why are you making the roll in the first place? By and large the idea that a GM might need to fudge a result for the betterment of the story is a side effect of using the wrong rules. (Of course, the dominance of D&D and to a lesser extent other games makes it easy to end up using the wrong rules.)
Search 2010 Gen Con events
+1
They've overdone it with this surface prototype. Feeling the dice in your hands and rolling something real is a great part of D&D.
One of the best parts of something like the surface is so that the DM doesn't have to whip out tons of poorly cropped A4 pages and waste time aligning them on the table. The surface could also do things such as answer questions about cover, range, blast/burst etc, without actually going about and performing any further combat calculations, ie, so that the players don't have to reach over and count out squares all the time. Also, as you mentioned the hidden line-of-sight fog-of-war effects are a superb addition.
The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.
they are using a fundamentally flawed game system. I've played Pen-n-Paper rpg's since the mid 70's and the current D&D system is really really REALLY Bad. Try GURPS for a far better game playing experience.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
I'm actually proposing an option where you roll real dice and then input the results. I think that would allow the DM the option to "cheat" if they need it. I agree that if you kept all the rolls in the system then there would be a good chance it could become cumbersome for the DM to change them. I still prefer real dice.... personal preference.
I agree with you that the narrative element is at least so impòrtant than the simulation (and just character simulation at that) in RPG.
And that's precisely why I think that is an extremely good idea. Because it frees the DM from all the annoying and tedious mechanical elements of the game so he can concentrate on the narrative, ambience, NPC playing and so on. And of course the program should allow the DM to "tweak" thing a bit if it needs to. Or for other things that players like as tossing the physical dice themselves.
I've been a DM for more than more than 30 years now but, as it is, mastering is too time consuming for me to do it often and well. But with this kind of help, I would probably go back to the job.
I'll be the DM of my retirement home, yeah ;-)
--
El Guerrero del Interfaz
Cell phones may be bringing mobile gaming to a whole new level, but I envision surface computing will result in entirely new modes of social (face to face) gaming.
Imagine your favorite board game -- Monopoly, Risk, Life, Scrabble, whatever -- enabled for surface computing;
-No tiny plastic pieces to loose, to choke children/pets, gum up your fancy robot vacuum, or stab the unsuspecting bare foot;
-No need for a banker (who never seems to have a cash flow problem);
-No worries of spilling drinks (on your vintage, 1st edition Talisman board);
-No worry of clumsy players/pet upsetting the board (right when you were poised to cement your bid for world domination);
-No worry of loosing player position on the board;
-Instructions will be available for all players at any time, even all players at the same time (especially useful for those contentious/strategic rules disagreements);
-Games can be enjoyed for game-play and mechanic, rather than being an exercise in re-learning board setup, sorting/shuffling stacks cards and pieces (battlestar galactica anyone?);
-Multimedia animations, themes/skins, and expansions will offer endless possibilities both as enhancements to the classic games we've been playing for years and for a myriad of yet-to-be-though-of modes of social gaming which surface computing will foster.
Tabletop gaming demo was impressive. Tons of potential. I would absolutely love to see a surface computing setup for Magic the Gathering!
This is not the future of D&D. There are no Collectible Cards involved ...