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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lord_Blacksteel" data-source="post: 7298900" data-attributes="member: 53082">A fun question - I think the answer is "Not as much as people have been trying to sell us on for the last 25 years" <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />People have been doing D&D things on computers since the very early days. A lot of us were writing character generators, sheet generators, or encounter tables in BASIC on Apples II's, Vic-20's, and Atari 400's back in the early 80's, as people were doing on college mainframes in the 70's. Technology (in my view) will always be an aid to, not a replacement for, the tabletop experience. I'm not so sure about the curve here. We've had consumer web for over 20 years and we've had it in our pockets for 10. We've had a generation or two grow up with it in that time. First, It will never replace miniatures. It will be an upgrade option perhaps, and an expensive one for the near future. Dwarven forge hasn't replaced wet-erase mats, dry-erase boards, or simple graph paper, and neither has the VTT. I think increased prevalence of 3D printing will make miniatures easier to acquire and customize for this week's run.Second, by the time it becomes almost ubiquitous, the appeal of physical miniatures will become a factor. There's a tactile element there, particularly if you're all going to be gathering together anyway, that will always carry some weight. Third, let's not forget that not all RPGs need miniatures and that even some D&D games are not miniatures-based. I'm going to reject "verbal storytelling" as a direct replacement for "roleplaying game" but technology can be a great aid even now. Sound effects, recorded segments (I used a pre-recorded distress call in a Star Wars game earlier this year and it was great!), and to a point music can all be much easier to include with a laptop or a tablet or even your phone these days than was possible 20 years ago. Pulling up an image of a character or monster or vehicle or building can help enforce a certain flavor in a game. I think the biggest thing is what we're seeing now - a real ability to run games online to allow groups to connect regardless of location. That's significant in that it means if someone moves away from their group they can still play together in some way. That's causing some new technology to be developed that could be used for traditional tabletop games, changing them up in some interesting ways. I think VR is not going to have much of an impact anytime soon. We had Unlimited Adventures and two Neverwinter Nights games that were toolkits to allow users to build their own content and while they were cool they never really turned into a big thing. This kind of option still takes all of the creative drive and the time to put it together and adds another  layer of technical on top of that. Even AR has a similar problem so i think it will be a long time before that becomes a big player in face to face RPGs. AI - What's World of Warcraft if not a DM-less RPG? Neverwinter has adventures themed to the last few years of WOTC D&D stories and DDO has old school modules in its virtual world. I'd say we already have a good start on AI-managed adventures. If you want something more tabletop-related then check out FFG's apps for running Descent and Imperial Assault without a "DM" for those games. As far as an AI creating new material, well, I think humans will be required for that for a very long time. The biggest obstacle to innovation here is that technological solutions require money and there's just not that much money in RPG's compared to many other areas so what we get will mostly continue to be adaptations of products developed for another purpose or labor of love type solutions like Combat Manager for PF or the character generator for FFG's Star Wars game that a fan created and only a few professional efforts like Beyond. Regardless, tt should still be an interesting ride.</blockquote>

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