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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jan van Leyden" data-source="post: 5695012" data-attributes="member: 20307">Focusing on the classical tabletop approach with the players sitting around one table I see two avenues for computer support.<ol> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Number crunching and data look-up. For crunchy games like 4e this is a big help. Initiative handling, condition tracking, power management; all those little items of information the DM has to - or at least should - remember are perfectly suited for computers. There exist already programs like 4eTurnTracker or CombatManager which do this, but I can imagine even more support easily. Data look-up is a great help, too. Where in my 123 source books is this damn feat? Enter a database and you're ready to go. The next step would be a round-trip ability. My tracking tool or PDF with the adventure contains links to the database, and from the database I can feed my tracking tool with a single click. Want to soup up the encounter with a fitting monster or change monsters on the fly? Fire up the database app from the tracker, do a neighbourhood search, click once, and the additional monsters is a fully functional part of your modified encounter. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Intelligent assistance. This lies a bit more in the future. The computer just tracks your groups progress and preferences over the whole campaign. It collates all the information generated when preparing and running the game. It could propose a random encounter fitting to the context, it could propose changes to an existing adventure to make it more fitting to the group. Say an adventure calls for a group of bandits under the lead of a were-rat. Has the group already dealt with bandits in the region? The computer might propose re-skinning the bandits or exchanging their stats for the known version of the bandits. Have former encounters with the bandits hinted at some powerful creatures being in the lead of them? Throw out the were-rat and introduce some fitting critter. All this would have to be proposals for the GM. One step further I can imagine the computer running the world in the background. Weather generation, information flow, an economic model. Have the players uncovered the plans of a priest gone evil in their last adventure? This would have repercussions in the regions, at least for temples of the same religion. The PCs reach the next town with a priest of the same god and the program asks the GM for the relationship between this priest and the uncovered traitor. According to this information a lot of encounters in town could change, each NSC might automatically receive a keyword describing his reaction to the PCs. Or the knowledge of the PCs deed arrives in town after them. The behaviour of the inhabitants will change while the PCs are already busy with their next adventure. All this might be effortlessly handled in the background by the computer asking informed questions and making proposals.</li> </ol>All this means help for the GM while not changing the game in any way. If techniques like MS Surface surfaces and become affordable, no doubt some new branches of our hobby will appear. Maybe we will see a new form of computer games, maybe hybrids with a computer game and a human GM working in conjunction. Some RPGer will find such a game more attractive than the traditional ones and leave the (traditional) hobby, no doubt. Perhaps new players will be introduced by this sort of games, and maybe this new players bring fresh ideas to the table.RPGs will continue to evolve and some of us might find themselves on a dead branch of the RPG tree. But I don't see a species-killing asteroid looming in the sky above us.</blockquote>

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