The iPhone Will Kill D&D

[Hejdun]

...rolling their dice from their phone...

Heresy! Dice will never disappear from gaming while I live.

 

[Celebrim]

Funny I still play Canasta and Chess, and technology hasn't seemed to make those games obselete.

 

[Orius]

The iPhone is an overhyped, overpriced piece of yuppieware designed to show all your friends how hip you are. It doesn't have the power to dethrone D&D. All these little handheld devices in their current form won't knock off tabletop gaming.

Laptops are useful, but they're not replacing the game, just some of the tools. Things like the iPhone are going to need enough serious apps to compete with that, and not just a bunch of fancy dice-rollers. What D&D player in his right mind doesn't like to use real dice anyway? Everyone knows you can never have enough dice.

And books are never going away either. There's enough of us who prefer reading from a page to a screen.

 

[cdrcjsn]

Heresy! Dice will never disappear from gaming while I live.

I know, right?

You can't exactly fling your iphone at annoying players like you can with dice.

Well...I guess you can.

But you would probably need to keep replacing your iphone.

 

[DracoSuave]

I really doubt a 200 dollar gizmo has obsoleted a 30 dollar book that you can both roll dice on AND use as a flat surface for your notes. And doesn't require batteries. And doesn't require a contract to use.

For a technology to be obsolete, the alternative has to be better in all meaningful ways. Cost is the most important.

When said 'new technology' are fragile devices you want Grubby McPawhands getting his greasy Cheetos-and-Mountain-Dew fingerprints on, then you start to get why gaming books aren't going away any time soon.

And this is from someone who DOES laptop and game.

 

[Beginning of the End]

But things like iPhone, Sony's eReader, Amazon's Kindle, and other phones will get to the point, along with software companies using the internet as the OS, where people will be using the DDI online from their phone, rolling their dice from their phone, and updating their characters in real time action, from their phone.

Didn't they make that game like 20+ years ago? Yeah. It was called Dark Tower. I seem to remember, though, that it was still played on a tabletop.

The blending of digital information/tools and analog information/tools is already happening at tabletops around the world. Compromises between the strengths and weaknesses of both are being experimented with.

For example, in the campaign I'm currently running:

(1) I don't use a laptop. Why? Because I routinely have 6-10 sheets of information laid out around me that can all be accessed simultaneously. That's about 9000 square inches of display. My laptop has about 100 square inches of display. The laptop is just not an efficient use of my table space.

(2) But one of my players has a laptop. They keep the SRD up it and can quickly search out esoteric bits of information much quicker than I can track them down in a manual. That player chooses to keep a paper-and-pencil character sheet because (a) they find updating it to be quicker than a digital sheet and (b) they like to have their character sheet always within glancing distance, while their computer screen is often dedicated to other tasks.

(3) Another player keeps a laptop open for tracking their character.

(4) Another player keeps a paper-and-pencil character sheet, but tracks all of their spells and equipment on a laptop spreadsheet. They also use their laptop for rolling dice (whereas the rest of the table still rolls their dice the old-fashioned way).

But it's still a tabletop game.

 

[Lanefan]

Even if all the rulebooks etc. end up in electronic format, the one thing I'll always want to have as paper are the adventure modules, whether homebrew or canned. And the point of the game (to me) is to interact with other real people in the same room, rather than virtual people (or AI) on a screen.

The iphone won't kill D+D. Laptops might, if allowed at the table.

Lanefan

 

[JoeGKushner]

Hence my 5-20 years timeline.

Here's the thing, and I could be completely wrong.

The iphone, in that timeline, won't be anywhere near as expensive as it is now. It will be the defacto phone. Or the G1. Or Blackberry Storm. Or... all of them. When the game is set up on the internet and it doesn't matter what you're using to surf the internet, then the OS of the phone itself becomes obsolete.

When you can flip between moving a miniature on a 3D background and flip to rolling some dice and flip to your character...

Tt can't be that far off of a convergance for the PSP, Kindle, touch screen devices, etc... to be coming into one piece of machiery.

Didn't they make that game like 20+ years ago? Yeah. It was called Dark Tower. I seem to remember, though, that it was still played on a tabletop.

The blending of digital information/tools and analog information/tools is already happening at tabletops around the world. Compromises between the strengths and weaknesses of both are being experimented with.

For example, in the campaign I'm currently running:

(1) I don't use a laptop. Why? Because I routinely have 6-10 sheets of information laid out around me that can all be accessed simultaneously. That's about 9000 square inches of display. My laptop has about 100 square inches of display. The laptop is just not an efficient use of my table space.

(2) But one of my players has a laptop. They keep the SRD up it and can quickly search out esoteric bits of information much quicker than I can track them down in a manual. That player chooses to keep a paper-and-pencil character sheet because (a) they find updating it to be quicker than a digital sheet and (b) they like to have their character sheet always within glancing distance, while their computer screen is often dedicated to other tasks.

(3) Another player keeps a laptop open for tracking their character.

(4) Another player keeps a paper-and-pencil character sheet, but tracks all of their spells and equipment on a laptop spreadsheet. They also use their laptop for rolling dice (whereas the rest of the table still rolls their dice the old-fashioned way).

But it's still a tabletop game.

 

[Morrus]

"Won't?" "Can't today" is more accurate.

I have a phone that's as powerful as all the non-weapon, non-transporter gadgets on the Starship Enterprise, combined. "Can't" is a very big word.

Oh, I dunno. Can it detect and locate lifeforms in a cave complex? Can it heal injuries? Can it communicate with orbiting spacecraft without the need for local phone towers to be built first? Can it analyse the molecular composition of a new material?

 

[DaveMage]

Oh, I dunno. Can it detect and locate lifeforms in a cave complex? Can it heal injuries? Can it communicate with orbiting spacecraft without the need for local phone towers to be built first? Can it analyse the molecular composition of a new material?

There's probably an ap for that....