The iPhone Will Kill D&D

[JoeGKushner]

Hey Hong! Long time, no see!

I think the point would be that the rules could be extremely complex, and yet totally transparent to the players. You could achieve a rules-lite experience at the table while having a ridiculously involved system behind it.

And the reason I think this is crucial kinda played out on message boards after the D&D game day. Now I ran the adventure in like 3-4 hours tops. Others took seven hours to run three combats and one skill challenge.

D&D cannot survive that. Not if it's "back to the dungeon". If the game is not going to focus highly on story, and it is back to the dungeon (and to be honest, many of the adventurers I've seen and several I've run have followed this mantra), the game cannot thrive long term under those conditions. (In my opnion of course.)

The game has to flow much quicker. Being able to double tap your character's power on your application and having the results sent straight to the DM and instantly deducted from the monster's hit points etc..., even if it's not as fast as a true MMO, has to be faster.

And hey, think of all the neat little sound effects that could be marketed for the different powers. "Man, your raging thunderstrike sounds awesome! Where can I download that."

 

[Kask]

Really, computers are great. But they aren't a panacea.

Which is why, in all these years, this really hasn't happened and people continue to play the game the "old fashioned" way.

 

[Achan hiArusa]

Really, computers are great. But they aren't a panacea. There's some things humans do better. If it were otherwise, we should just lay down and accept our robot overlords

I have already. All Hail the Computer! The Computer is our Friend! To think otherwise is treason! And treason is punishable by immediate and lasting execution! Activate your next clone!

 

[Silverblade The Ench]

I don't want to start an edition war, I loved 3rd ed initially and think it's great simulationist D&D But...it sucks monkey spheres to DM, and it's so slooow in combat due ot all the rules.
However, when playing Temple of Elemental Evil on the PC, it's awesome! The Dm should be left to controlling the monsters, making and guiding the story, rules umpiring, and having FUN.

I'd much rather a CPU handles all the damn fiddly rules, even dice rolls (but computer randoms tend ot suck, see the TOEE oenwhich was broken actually)
As a DM, all I want ot do is have FUN and that's by running a great adventure for my friends, not by wasting my damn time, which is precious, on mathematical gobbledegook!!

Yes I know, heresy to many of you who are maths geeks But it is no fun for most of us (and I used ot love maths..applied maths) when the point is, to have an RP experience. Ya know?

Computers or editions do not change the RPing. They may help or hinder it, is all, by wasting time or giving me a headache.

Also, from an art persepctive (my particular bag), the potential is growing all the time to let folk have abetter digital experience.
One day, we'll have rela time 3D high quality film quality visuals.
Why the hell play on a normal blank graph battlemat, when you may have a video mat, you cna project a gorgeous representation of the play area, with light sources attached to the PCs minis (virtual or real)?

The times, they are a changing!

 

[Hadrian the Builder]

Computer-aided RPGs are already here and it'll just get more pervasive. When I went to college, there were engineers who turned their noses up at CAD programs because they preferred to draw everything by hand and the intuitive understanding of a project imparted by drafting by hand. It's good to see those folks play RPGs and are on this thread. Sorry the resistance-to-CAD didn't work out for you guys, though.

I'm an engineer also. CAD is pervasive, expansive, and highly effective. But it expands my capability, and does not replace it.

Likewise, computer enhancement doesn't have to kill table-top gaming. Instead the game will branch out into even more forms than it takes now. Even innovative new computer games that are alot of fun have not shoved aside chess played in person (although you can certainly play online), checkers, cards, board games.

I don't think that technology will stop people from wanting to gather around a table and play D&D. The question is, what is the core of the game? What exactly will be "killed"?

 

[MadLordOfMilk]

Why the hell play on a normal blank graph battlemat, when you may have a video mat, you cna project a gorgeous representation of the play area, with light sources attached to the PCs minis (virtual or real)?

Prep time.

 

[Hairfoot]

You are still locked into only the sorts of benefits and detriments the program's built to handle, and in the form it allows. If you house-rule anything, you're pretty much hosed.

Perhaps, but only if the game system is complex. I have the Swords & Wizardry, Labyrinth Lord and OSRIC rulesets in my phone, in editable text. I'm ready to roll.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

You could call me a neo-Luddite when it comes to mixing RPGs and tech- I may use my PDA to store campaign info or PC designs (or even use it as my character sheet for active play), but I'm not using my computer or pdfs at the table. That said, I don't see any way around the fact that computer aided RPG play is increasing and inevitable.

Personally, I don't see D&D as getting killed by tech so much as being transformed by it. As computers get faster and more gaming material becomes available in interactive electronic forms, I can easily see people playing actual D&D (not some MMORPG based on the game) via telepresence at a virtual, immersive 3-D gaming table (with all buildings and other environmental factors fully rendered) at some point in time, with the DM controlling which resources are available via an "active/inactive" resource checklist, HRs built into the game, and the machines handling all of the math so that you might be able to play in real time...with buddies dispersed all over the world.

It probably won't happen in my lifetime, or at least not at my table, but I think that's probably inevitable.

But even so, I don't see even that killing the face-to-face gaming table.

 

[DarkKestral]

Personally, right now, I suspect you could probably build a decent iPhone app designed primarily to run 4e D&D that would be incredibly awesome, and would make the game go really fast in some respects. Unfortunately, the problem with that, and with any other current virtual tabletop program is that penetration is too low for most tech right now. But times are changing. Right now it's dicerollers that are becoming common. I've heard of apps that could do d20, White Wolf (WoD, Scion, and Exalted), Shadowrun in all editions, Fudge and it's variants, and other, more complex systems as well from the start. No futzing with custom systems, all totally built in.

Of course, things will change soon enough; already, a lot of MMO players are turning to iPhone apps and similar to help them play their character. One of the most popular apps relating to MMOs is a EVE Online skill trainer app. If you're not familiar with EVE, think of it as the Character Builder. Others are WoW Armory lookups and talent calculators/suggestion system (darn close to being character sheets w/ character builders, with the slight exception of not having full access to your inventory and still others have various functions that basically tell me, D&D5e may not be primarily a book, but be a app system. Why? Because those MMO players, when playing D&D, WILL be used to apps as character sheets. And when they're presented with that paper sheet, they'll rightly complain that they have to do all of the work, when the app could do just as well, and automates the entire process. Particularly when the app is something they'll always have with them anyway, due to being on their cellphone.

Those of you who don't think this will happen, and soon, let me ask you something. Did you buy CDs? Do you buy them now, or do you just download a mp3 ? If you say that something needs to be superior to it's replacement in every way to become popular, and you admit to downloading .mp3s over CDs preferentially now, you've already defeated your point: mp3, by virtue of being a "lossy" audio format, by definition has less audio quality than the source used to make it. You've proven that, in general, convenience trumps quality. And it does so every time.

And that's ultimately the reason virtual tabletops haven't made their mark yet; they're simply not convenient enough. If D&D 4e had the virtual tabletop, and a decent iPhone character sheet app, and the online character builder for those without an iPhone or similarly powerful smartphone from day 1, as well as an array of good looking tilesets and a few basic layouts that make dungeon and templates to make dungeon construction easy for that virtual tabletop, they could really make an inroads into getting some of the customers that now play MMOs onto the D&D treadmill. Because, at that point, a DM really could build a dungeon in about as much time as it took to draw one by hand, and placing the monsters would take a similar amount of time in either version. That's the real sticking point, though. There isn't a "good enough" virtual tabletop/character sheet system yet, as for MMO systems, which have the advantage of already being computer-based, but I suspect that's due to lack of effort, more than anything.

 

[Janx]

Dark Kestral's made a valid point. The WoW players are going to expect better tools. Because they have them. To them, the difference between WoW and D&D, is that a human fully controls the monsters and NPCs, resulting in "custom" interactions with their character (rather than scripted).

From a player perspective, the advancement of tools seems to be like this:
automating dice rolling (remember the 1st hand-held dice roller, e-mail dice servers. etc)
electronic character sheets (the first being in word processors/ spreadsheets, then dedicated programs)
in-game char sheet (weakest link yet, not seen a good app)
in-game map/PC interaction tool (the virtual table-top, holds the PC, and the map, so the players can move about/interact)
chat tool (text, then voice, then video)


From a GMing perspective, the tools are more varied, folks have been making a lot of stuff:
random treasure roller
random dungeon generator
random encounter roller
random NPC generator
random town generator
random map generator
encounter manager
in-game map/character interaction tool
chat tool (text, then voice, then video)

Each of these tools build upon each other, until the DM has a tool-set to fully run the game in the computer, and the players can participate in that environment.

We know that a game can be run fully in pen and paper. We know that a game can be run on pen and paper, but played in a text-only chat room. We know that a pen and paper game can be run with web-cams for remote players. The key to "killing" pen and paper, is to make the tools easier to use, more convenient than pen and paper.


I think some of the first steps, are to make it easy to run a PC without a paper character sheet. This doesn't mean codifying every rule into the computer. It means making an interface that holds all my char sheet info, that is easy to navigate. It means the consumables (HP, spells, gear) are easily manipulated in-game. It means any related rule text (skill and spell descriptions) are hyper-linked in. That's about it. If I had a solid tool for that (that was fairly easy to handle out-of game revising for level-up), I wouldn't need a paper char sheet. I don't even need to to enforce the rules, so long as it showed me the math (how many skill ranks do I have, how many am I allowed).

If every player had this tool running at the table, the next "synergy bonus" is for them to be able to interact with the GM's laptop. If every roll were sent to the GM, he'd be able to compare the roll to the DC (he could handle the situational modifiers, etc). From there, he'd decided what suceeded, or failed. If the PC's heal/get injured, he could sent the appropriate effect to the PC. You'd still be dealing with GM abjudication. The software simply handles dice rolls and "consumables". The GM decides what to do with the results, and sends any PC altering command back to the PC.

From there, you'd want to tighten up the "GM" decision making so that any obvious stuff is automatically handled. If a PC attacks an orc, you don't need the GM to verify the roll and apply the damage, just let the PC laptop issue the "attack orc with longsword" command and apply the result. Once you start down this path, is where the codeifying the rules becomes harder. Combat rolls are pretty easy, it's all the other "real world" simulation stuff that creates a ton of code. This is where the steep slope begins of making a tool that works well.