The iPhone Will Kill D&D

[ProfessorCirno]

Betting against Moore's Law has been a losing proposition for virtual buggy whip manufacturers for a long time now.

People getting hung up on what the iPhone of 2008 can do aren't getting Joe's point and are getting wrapped up in his tongue in cheek title, I think.

Computer-aided RPGs are already here and it'll just get more pervasive. When I went to college, there were engineers who turned their noses up at CAD programs because they preferred to draw everything by hand and the intuitive understanding of a project imparted by drafting by hand. It's good to see those folks play RPGs and are on this thread. Sorry the resistance-to-CAD didn't work out for you guys, though.

And yet computer programs are still consistently uncapable of replicating human behavior or even simplistic brain computation enough to replace testing within the psychological research community.

I'm not saying it'll never happen. Maybe it will some day. But the funny thing about maybes is that they're all equal. Maybe it won't happen some day. Maybe it will, but we'll find some big block that we're never able to get around.

 

[Kask]

Opinions?

You haven't made a case for how rolling dice on a tiny screen will hurt D&D?

I'd start with that...

 

[Kaisoku]

Why do people still go for walks? We have many better ways of transportation, gets us places quicker, that still gives us excercise, etc.. while even keeping the same scenic view if we want.

Walking has been around since we stood upright, and yet it's still here even after all this "technology".

So, why do we still prefer to go for walks from time to time? Because there's something we enjoy in visceral sensation of the action.

Yeah, there's other factors in my analogy, so it's not perfect... whatever.

My point is that tabletop gaming gives us a particular set of sensations that we just don't get when playing through a computer screen (no matter how sophisticated it gets).

Literally... "It's just not the same."

Like Stormtalon said... until we have the Matrix, tabletop won't be replaced by technology.

 

[Umbran]

Betting against Moore's Law has been a losing proposition for virtual buggy whip manufacturers for a long time now.

Yes, but grasping the impact of said progression on actual functionality is another matter entirely - generally not because people don't understand what power the computers have, but because they don't understand how much computer power and programmer cleverness is required to make their dreams reality.

Folks have been saying "virtual reality is almost here!" since the 1980s. It still isn't.

 

[fissionessence]

You are still locked into only the sorts of benefits and detriments the program's built to handle, and in the form it allows. If you house-rule anything, you're pretty much hosed.

There are websites of World of Warcraft interface mods, Neverwinter Nights mods, Warcraft III scenarios, etc. There will be websites for Dungeons & Dragons house rule patches that you can apply to your client.

~

 

[Simplicity]

The iPhone won't kill D&D, but I do think that it will be transformed.

We're already seeing it.

1) How do you build a character in D&D 4e? There's two methods:
a) Pull out the books, roll your dice, do the math. Takes about 1-2 hours. Difficult to explain and you need multiple books to see all of your options.
b) Open the character builder and pick some options. Takes about 20 minutes. Plus, you get the power cards for free and the math is precomputed without any mistakes.

2) How do you do combat in 4e:
a) Keep track of combat state with miniatures. Keep track of player state with powercards/character sheet.
b) Have an app do that for you.

Given that we have 1b, there's really very little to prevent people from playing D&D combat on a single computer hotseat style (for added fun, let it be a tablet touchscreen). Let the players import their character files and then take turns interacting with the screen.

 

[darjr]

You are still locked into only the sorts of benefits and detriments the program's built to handle, and in the form it allows. If you house-rule anything, you're pretty much hosed.

Machines have a basic problem - the more flexible you make them, the more atrocious the UI becomes. Simple UI comes from a small number of simple, well-defined interactions. The closer you try to come to giving the user anything they could want, the more difficult it becomes to give it to them.

Yes, I guess I was taking this as a given. And I that I don't think the iphone is the platform for this, or at least not the only part.

You still could allow for 'notes' or some such so at least the extensions to the game could be kept. I do agree about feeping creaturism and UI monsters.

 

[greatamericanfolkher]

As a DM I love bringing my laptop to a game because it means that I can have access to the books that won’t fit in the backpack (The spelljammer line, minus the modules, plus a copy of the 3.5 MM and the pathfinder core book fit just right into the GenCon backpack I have), but honestly, if I could run my game at my house, where all of my books were within easy reach, then I would run without a laptop, because I love the feel of real books and real dice and real pencils. I do admit that when eReaders get more affordable (and can properly display an RPG book page on a screen legibly) then I’ll look into that as an option.

The other people that I game with mostly don’t care, and would use whatever was available. I think that that may, ultimately, be the attitude that wins out, the “whatever is easier” line of thought.

 

[MadLordOfMilk]

1) How do you build a character in D&D 4e? There's two methods:
a) Pull out the books, roll your dice, do the math. Takes about 1-2 hours. Difficult to explain and you need multiple books to see all of your options.
b) Open the character builder and pick some options. Takes about 20 minutes. Plus, you get the power cards for free and the math is precomputed without any mistakes.

While I do agree that the character builder is much easier math-wise than explaining everything, it shouldn't take 1-2hrs after you've done it once or twice. Plus, explaining all the benefits of everything in the character builder is tougher without the person having made a character by hand.

Personally, using a character sheet only adds about 3-5 minutes at most to calculate all the numbers out once it's filled in. Picking my options on the character builder vs using a book takes me about the same amount of time, which is where most of my time is spent. For someone who's not as good at mental math, though, I can see the character builder being a huge time saver (or at the very least, a good way to keep from a bazillion math errors). I personally like it because it's easier to do mentally, but not because it saves that much time

As far as combat and environments go, also, that's not pure math calculations like the character builder. There's a big difference there.

 

[Umbran]

There are websites of World of Warcraft interface mods, Neverwinter Nights mods, Warcraft III scenarios, etc. There will be websites for Dungeons & Dragons house rule patches that you can apply to your client.

Which means that unless I'm a computer programmer (or really solid with some scripting languages, or something), I have to use everyone else's house rules instead of my own.

Really, computers are great. But they aren't a panacea. There's some things humans do better. If it were otherwise, we should just lay down and accept our robot overlords