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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DarkKestral" data-source="post: 4752170" data-attributes="member: 40100">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.</blockquote>

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