Future Tech Wishlist

[InvaderSquoosh]

Every time my group gets together and plays, the pace and immersiveness of the game is hindered by mundane things related to communication. Here is a list of things that I've noticed:

• It takes lots of time to draw out and create situations on grid maps.
• Way too much time is spent re-reading rules and preparing spell lists.
• The DM has an ungodly amount of information to juggle.
• Oftentimes, the DM's vision of a situation is not completely communicated to the players. Important pieces of info can be left out by accident or oversight. This causes what I call a question-and-answer session to take place
  where the PCs spend some time trying to iron out the details of a situation. What is more annoying is when the players forget crucial information like names of NPCs and the like.

As the years went by, we began to use an increasing amount of technology to solve these problems. One day, we began to brainstorm what the perfect set of equipment would be like for a technologically savvy group. This is our
wishlist of technological innovations to accelerate the role playing experience:

• A flexible, table-sized computer screen that we can place miniatures on and roll up at the end of the day. It will hook up to a portable computer and generate random environments, a fog-of-war effect, and so on.
• A scriptable campaign manager for the DM. This will allow a DM to hack together some code to glue together disparate information and tools. For instance, the DM can have his own home-brew initiative tracking
  program and tie it to the program that runs the above mentioned screen so that it displays in a floating, transparent window without having to leave the campaign manager. Pluggable is not enough, the DM needs to be able to write script in Perl, Ruby, Python and what have you.
• An online resource of 3ed information in XML format. Unfortunately, copyrights and license issues get in the way of this. However, if the DM *ahem* "supplies" the info by uh... typing it up himself from the book he owns, then it should be legit. Like emulators and ROMS.
• A very flexible indexing and search tool to work with above mentioned XML. If there's a disagreement about any rule, just type in a search term or click on the handy bookmark to bring up the relevant section in seconds. Kinda how we use google and dictionary.com these days to do research.

I guess the most important innovation would be the roll-up computer screen. That would take care of a TON of things that slow down my group's game these days.

So what's on your tech wishlist and what problems would they solve?

 

[PlasticBoy]

How about a HoloDeck?

But seriously, my current wishlist is a little more mundane. I love the current breed of d20 software (DM Genie, RolePlaying Master, DM's Familiar, etc.) but I wish it was easier to get material for these programs. What I really want is an industry-standard XML format for all of the data these programs use (characters, races, prestige classes, feats, spells, and adventures). I want the vendors to support this format for import and export, and I want the publishers to sell XML versions of everything they put out. That way, instead of buying a published adventure and having to painstakingly convert it for my favorite program, I can just buy the XML file. This would also solve the problem of program interoperability, so adventures I created with DM Genie could be used with RolePlaying Master, for example.

Sigh, a boy can dream, can't he?

 

[Lazybones]

Or you can just play Neverwinter Nights online with a multiplayer party and DM. Once voice communication becomes more mainstream, I see computer games like this one becoming the future in our hobby. Limited as it is now, NWN is just the first step in what will hopefully be developments that will fulfill the desires expressed in your wish list.

 

[DarkWhite]

I agree with PlasticBoy regarding the possibilities for an XML d20 standard. eTools could have been the standard, but while patches are still in the works, I'm guessing it's XML structure is still subject to change. If I recall correctly, a number of third-party d20 software application developers have expressed interest in importing/exporting/sharing characters/customdata/etc between their d20 application and eTools via XML.

Actually, I don't enjoy 3D Computer RPGs (gasp!) Nonetheless, I believe that NeverWinterNights and eTools should have been developed in paralell such that they could import/export characters via a common XML format. While NWN could not be expected to support custom data (or maybe not even full support for evey official feat, spell, etc), it should nonetheless recognise unsupported items/custom data, and allow these to be substituted with legal ones supported by the game.

Dragon Magazine CDRom Archive be continued, and each new Skill, Feat, Race, Monster, Prestige Class, Spell, Weapon, etc should be available on the CD in eTools format. Maybe the CD for each previous year could be included with the magazine's Annual special issue.

As PlasticBoy suggested, other products could include eTools expansion CDs containing all the custom data from that product, or the company could make these available from their websites as "web enhancment" downloads.

While I appreciate the effort of the web community in compiling eTools custom data download files at sites like e-Tools Repository, maybe more of these could be created with the assistance of the copyright holder and then offered to them to place on their own website as a web enhancement for their own product?

But hey, roll-out flat-screen battle-mat monitor does sound really cool!

 

[Janik]

* A flexible, table-sized computer screen that we can place miniatures on and roll up at the end of the day. It will hook up to a portable computer and generate random environments, a fog-of-war effect, and so on.

The only thing that could make this cooler is if it was in 3D
Speaking of 3D, I have used castlemolds (www.castlemolds.com) to make nice little dungeon walls, but they are a little awkward to set/move. But it looks nice with the minis.

[*] A scriptable campaign manager for the DM. This will allow a DM to hack together some code to glue together disparate information and tools. For instance, the DM can have his own home-brew initiative tracking
program and tie it to the program that runs the above mentioned screen so that it displays in a floating, transparent window without having to leave the campaign manager. Pluggable is not enough, the DM needs to be able to write script in Perl, Ruby, Python and what have you.

That certainly would be very nice but only useful to those who know programming. (Shameless plug warning ) You can however use my program, DM Genie (www.dmgenie.com) in which you can customize, among other things, initiative sorting. Not a completely scriptable program, but IMHO a very nice program to have at the gaming table.

And the D20 XML format is something I'll certainly implement in DM Genie if and/or when a standard is created.

 

[Twin Rose]

I agree with PlasticBoy regarding the possibilities for an XML d20 standard. eTools could have been the standard, but while patches are still in the works, I'm guessing it's XML structure is still subject to change. If I recall correctly, a number of third-party d20 software application developers have expressed interest in importing/exporting/sharing characters/customdata/etc between their d20 application and eTools via XML.

I'm in the process of doing this with Campaign Suite data files. In fact, I've decided that entire characters with the data on given fields (feats, races, etc) should be exportable to allow DMs and Player's to share their characters without sharing their entire databases. Of course, this is still in the initial stages, but I'll be very happy to share my research and work with other RPG software designers.

 

[DM]

RE: Wishlist

You sound a lot like us, InvaderSquoosh, when we first started to integrate computers into our gaming sessions. That’s what drove us into developing, kLoOge.Werks – The Digital Gaming Table. Let me see if I can address your techno requests as brief as possible:

A flexible, table-sized computer screen that we can place miniatures on and roll up at the end of the day. It will hook up to a portable computer and generate random environments, a fog-of-war effect, and so on.

The main area of the screen is a map. The map is any .jpeg, .gif, or .png file you provide. All you need to set up is the map scale and a grid if you want. The miniatures are also like the map, only smaller. You could even take pictures of your existing miniatures and use those images. Fog of war is completely controlled by the GM/DM or by the players light source, depending how you set it up. The screen shots would look something like this:
Master/GM - http://www.kloogeinc.com/werks/images/sview.jpg
Client(s)/Players - http://www.kloogeinc.com/werks/images/cview.jpg

A scriptable campaign manager for the DM. This will allow a DM to hack together some code to glue together disparate information and tools. For instance, the DM can have his own home-brew initiative tracking

A ton of features are included to help a GM/DM. A 2nd and 3rd ed. initiative/combat tracker is intergraded. Combat targeting with intergraded dice rollers and dice expressions are also built in. So, if you wanted a roll to be (1d8)+3 or (1d12)+3/2, you could do it. I can’t say that Werks is open source or scriptable, but we do listen to our users. If you have a suggestion that would make Werks better, there’s a good chance that we’ll integrated it. Most of the features that we’ve added since its inception were from feedback from our customers or potential customers. If you really want something you can script yourself, you may want tot check out OpenRPG at http://www.openrpg.com/orpgnuke/index.php

An online resource of 3ed information in XML format. Unfortunately, copyrights and license issues get in the way of this. However, if the DM *ahem* "supplies" the info by uh... typing it up himself from the book he owns, then it should be legit. Like emulators and ROMS.

I hear your, and others, pleas for a XML standard and sources for gaming material. Where Werks doesn’t generate stat sheets or supply you with rules on how to play, we do support eTools XML export feature to import your PC’s and monsters that you’ve made with it. Multiple monsters are easily created via a cut and paste feature. We hope to see other generators (GM Genie, DM Familiar, Twin Rose, ect.) adopt a XML export feature so we could support those software packages as well.

I’ve tried not to toot my own horn too much here, but if Werks sounds like it may be able to help you out, check out and download the free demo at http://www.kloogeinc.com/werks/download.htm and play around with it.

A partial feature list can be found here at http://www.kloogeinc.com/werks/readme.htm

If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, don’t hesitate to drop me a line or check out our forum at our website.

 

[Davin]

A flexible, table-sized computer screen that we can place miniatures on and roll up at the end of the day. It will hook up to a portable computer and generate random environments, a fog-of-war effect, and so on.

Excellent idea! And they already have a prototype roll-up plastic-sheet monitor working -- they're just trying to get the manufacturing costs down to something we can afford.

What I'd like to add to that is to make the "active battlemap" also touch-sensitive, so it can track the physical movement of character figurines in combat (1 at a time, at least) and perhaps even take players' finger-point input/commands.

 

[Twin Rose]

Re: Re: Future Tech Wishlist

Excellent idea! And they already have a prototype roll-up plastic-sheet monitor working -- they're just trying to get the manufacturing costs down to something we can afford.

What I'd like to add to that is to make the "active battlemap" also touch-sensitive, so it can track the physical movement of character figurines in combat (1 at a time, at least) and perhaps even take players' finger-point input/commands.

This, of course, requires the invention of the holodeck .. Just so we can keep up with technology

 

[Davin]

Re: Re: Re: Future Tech Wishlist

This, of course, requires the invention of the holodeck .. Just so we can keep up with technology

That's the 3-D version. I'll be happy with the 2-D version, which seems to have all the technical capabilities available now.