D&D General ARcana -- Augmented TTRPG Platform from Actor Joe Manganiello

Mirrorscape, an augmented reality company which includes actor Joe Manganellio as Creative Director, is a way to view your game's tabletop in AR through a phone or tablet device. It's on Kickstarter now with a planned release at the end of this year.

ARcana: Augmented Reality Platform for TTRPGs

Bringing the table back to tabletop gaming!

www.kickstarter.com

The platform works as an iOS or Android app, and enables you to simulate a full tabletop with models, scenery, and miniatures, anywhere you have a flat surface.

You can purchase additional terrain or miniatures from Mirrorscape's partners, which include Dwaven Forge, Reaper Minis, Hero Forge, and Fat Dragon Games.

If you pledge $30 (or more) in the Kickstarter you get a starter set and a discount on terrain and mini packs; and at higher levels you get beta access (staring at $50) and Kickstarter exclusives.

 

[Michael Linke]

I used to report on that concept, every time a university researcher released details about progress. You have no reason to trust me, but still, this is not tech that's anywhere near to deployment. Unless you want a big cable running from your eyeball to a battery pack (wireless charging generates way too much heat exactly where you don't want it), and also have a century or more to wait for electronics to be miniaturized to that degree.

But if miracles occur, and the Spyball becomes feasible before the planet descends into complete climate chaos, I think we know who'll be sporting them first. It's not like the techbros are going to get less awful in the future.

I just think in general, if your privacy is threatened by a piece of property on the person of another individual, you should just turn around and walk away, not start taking the right to privacy into your own hands. The normalized stigma that follows early adopters of these technologies will make sure that cool niche applications like this never get off the ground.

 

[Grendel_Khan]

I just think in general, if your privacy is threatened by a piece of property on the person of another individual, you should just turn around and walk away, not start taking the right to privacy into your own hands. The normalized stigma that follows early adopters of these technologies will make sure that cool niche applications like this never get off the ground.

I hear that. But even the Glasshole situation got blown out of proportion in a big way. I think there were two confirmed assaults in total---maybe three--just enough to create the arguably false impression of a narrative or trend, and also provide a simple talking point to those who wanted to blame Google Glass's genuinely embarrassing collapse on some epidemic of mean Luddites. Never mind that the people targeted were also on one side of a low-level class war, making the whole thing a lot more complex (and still so uncommon as to be almost nonexistent, statistically).

 

[umbergerba]

Way over the top! ... If you're going to be AT the table, then play AT the table. If you can't afford miniatures, then use theater of the mind. NOTHING beats the immersive storytelling and the descriptive narrative of a good dungeon master. Period. Not to mention, if everyone at the table can afford iPads, then you can afford REAL miniatures! More tech is not the answer to a good game!

 

[Mort]

Way over the top! ... If you're going to be AT the table, then play AT the table. If you can't afford miniatures, then use theater of the mind. NOTHING beats the immersive storytelling and the descriptive narrative of a good dungeon master. Period. Not to mention, if everyone at the table can afford iPads, then you can afford REAL miniatures! More tech is not the answer to a good game!

I certainly agree with the sentiment.

Though I think one goal is to have easy portability. Hard to transport huge amounts of miniatures AND terrain all over the place.

Though, from the look of it, the plan is to license images from the big venders: miniatures from Games Workshop, terrain from Dwarven Forge. Anything you use has to be purchased, not "made." Kind of like D&D beyond but with virtual terrain and minis instead of books. That's going to get very expensive very fast. Neither Games Workshop nor Dwarven Forge are known for their bargains! And I'm sure the licensing isn't going to be cheap, especially with whatever markup ARCane will stick on.

Plus, realistically, you'll need a dedicated device to look through and then another device for the books, game stuff! Switching between the overlay and D&D beyond for ex. would be way to much of a pain. You could do this and just use paper sheets and books, but I suspect anyone interested in this wouldn't be keen to do that.

 

[Grendel_Khan]

The problem with every VTT that I have seen is that their 'virtual world' engine doesn't even rise to the graphical level of cheap turn based CRPG games like Demon's Rise or Chaos Reborn.

Just weak-sauce, 20 year old graphics all around. You can't even create a virtual mini/avatar of your PC like you see in most every CRPG out there since forever. They are all uninspiring, and literally flat, Yawn... The 70's wargamers called and they want their chits back.

All the name VTT's have been unable to deliver anything resembling a decent virtual visual experience since day one.

This is such a spot-on point, and it makes me feel like I'm losing my mind when people talk about this platform's graphics looking good, in any way. Are they seeing what I'm seeing? Are these graphics better than the last AR/VR thingie that also didn't go anywhere? Maybe, but a half-notch above dated and ugly is still ugly as hell. It's all so fluffy and texture-less and oddly proportioned.

 

[Mort]

This is such a spot-on point, and it makes me feel like I'm losing my mind when people talk about this platform's graphics looking good, in any way. Are they seeing what I'm seeing? Are these graphics better than the last AR/VR thingie that also didn't go anywhere? Maybe, but a half-notch above dated and ugly is still ugly as hell. It's all so fluffy and texture-less and oddly proportioned.

Yeah, when I saw the video and it switched to character's POV all I could think of was the graphics looked like the D&D computer games of the 90s (Eye of the Beholder etc.) AND how weirdly empty the rooms looked.

 

[Morrus]

Way over the top! ... If you're going to be AT the table, then play AT the table. If you can't afford miniatures, then use theater of the mind. NOTHING beats the immersive storytelling and the descriptive narrative of a good dungeon master. Period. Not to mention, if everyone at the table can afford iPads, then you can afford REAL miniatures! More tech is not the answer to a good game!

#badwrongfun

 

[Zaukrie]

Way over the top! ... If you're going to be AT the table, then play AT the table. If you can't afford miniatures, then use theater of the mind. NOTHING beats the immersive storytelling and the descriptive narrative of a good dungeon master. Period. Not to mention, if everyone at the table can afford iPads, then you can afford REAL miniatures! More tech is not the answer to a good game!

Thanks for telling us the one true right way to play. Appreciated.

 

[LordEntrails]

I'm still waiting for my Tilt5 AR glasses to arrive. They seem, to me, much more useful for AR game play than this does.

 

[drl2]

I play mostly by VTT these days but when I do get around a table with non-virtual people, I'm very much pencil-and-paper (and maps and terrain and minis for scenes that lend themselves to them)... having a bunch of devices at the table seems cumbersome and immersion-breaking. I get annoyed when someone is simply using a D&D Beyond character sheet instead of a paper one, so I think having people waving tablets around or viewing the game through AR/VR glasses would drive me bonkers.

All that being said, I still find this kind of interesting... if a free trial version became available, I'd probably spend a lot of time tinkering with it on my VR system even if I had no plans to use it for a game.

A number of questions immediately sprang to mind when I saw this announcement, though:

• What are the actual hardware requirements here? Is a reasonably powerful server device going to be needed? What kind of bandwidth will be needed when a bunch of devices are trying to view a scene at the same time?
• How much will those licensed terrain pieces cost when you outgrow the ones that come with it? Will individuals be able to create and share their own terrain building blocks? Will the product be successful enough to build community support that makes open-source terrain a viable option to buying more? (For that matter, will there be support from vendors for more than just the initial bundled packs?)
• There was mention of being able to import STL files, so that might be an avenue for "new" terrain and could certainly be useful for character and monster models... but STLs are often complex and detailed to the point where it takes time to render a single one on a fairly fast computer. Is the software going to reduce the complexity of imported STLs to enable rendering across less powerful devices? If yes, how good of a job will it do, how much detail will be lost, etc., and if no... how is my phone or tablet going to render in real time a room full of terrain populated by a dozen minis my (fairly fast) PC takes 1-5 seconds to draw individually when I load it into my 3d printing software?