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<blockquote data-quote="Jeremy Ackerman-Yost" data-source="post: 4753995" data-attributes="member: 4720">Points taken.&nbsp; I think after reading the thread straight through rather late in the proceedings, my brain wandered somewhere slightly different.In short.... I just don't think that's the way to go with the tech.&nbsp; We should be facilitating human-to-human contact.&nbsp; We should be leveraging the human capacity to stretch, distort, and shatter the &quot;rules&quot;, not doing away with it.&nbsp; Simple telepresence would be enough for me.&nbsp; Telepresence of the game space with the die rolls tied in but the DM still adjudicating the rules would be the perfect system, IMO (note, since I haven't had a gaming group in a few years, I have no idea how close the DDi tools come to this now, as I have not subscribed.&nbsp; This thread just got me fired up about playing again, by getting old friends together across our various state, nation, and time zone barriers).That's how I would leverage ubiquitous PDAs and touchscreens in a way that serves the game, anyway.With the added bonus that you CAN have very pretty pictures or even 3-D projection, but don't NEED to have it.&nbsp; You can still build a dungeon with virtual tiles or draw it out on the fly by turning on the grid and &quot;drawing&quot; right on the screen with a finger.And, really, there's no reason you can't have a button for &quot;Tide of Iron&quot; (simple, rules invisible interaction when you want it) but also give the DM the capacity to skip that turn and tell the computer what happens instead.Yes, the DM's UI would be a big, fat hairy deal.&nbsp; There is a significant danger that it would be either too limited or too complicated.&nbsp; There might be all manner of trade-offs that would make it impossible in the long run, but on the face of it, for the players most of the &quot;UI&quot; would be completely abstracted to moving figures on the touchscreen.Think about the Wii..... you can play a game that on other systems requires an 8 or 10 button control AND an analog stick... with 2-3 buttons and motion capture.&nbsp; A huge amount of possible inputs became super intuitive to the point where people in their 60s and 70s who never played video games in their lives are suddenly not just playing, but good at it.A more intuitive way of building your UI would solve many problems for D&amp;D, too.&nbsp; I'm thinking about the Eye Toy here, as an example.&nbsp; You could have board game telepresence right now with a webcam, and a phone line.&nbsp; But all the rules would still be tied to the board and the players.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Jeremy Ackerman-Yost, post: 4753995, member: 4720"] Points taken. I think after reading the thread straight through rather late in the proceedings, my brain wandered somewhere slightly different. In short.... I just don't think that's the way to go with the tech. We should be facilitating human-to-human contact. We should be leveraging the human capacity to stretch, distort, and shatter the "rules", not doing away with it. Simple telepresence would be enough for me. Telepresence of the game space with the die rolls tied in but the DM still adjudicating the rules would be the perfect system, IMO (note, since I haven't had a gaming group in a few years, I have no idea how close the DDi tools come to this now, as I have not subscribed. This thread just got me fired up about playing again, by getting old friends together across our various state, nation, and time zone barriers). That's how I would leverage ubiquitous PDAs and touchscreens in a way that serves the game, anyway. With the added bonus that you CAN have very pretty pictures or even 3-D projection, but don't NEED to have it. You can still build a dungeon with virtual tiles or draw it out on the fly by turning on the grid and "drawing" right on the screen with a finger. And, really, there's no reason you can't have a button for "Tide of Iron" (simple, rules invisible interaction when you want it) but also give the DM the capacity to skip that turn and tell the computer what happens instead. Yes, the DM's UI would be a big, fat hairy deal. There is a significant danger that it would be either too limited or too complicated. There might be all manner of trade-offs that would make it impossible in the long run, but on the face of it, for the players most of the "UI" would be completely abstracted to moving figures on the touchscreen. Think about the Wii..... you can play a game that on other systems requires an 8 or 10 button control AND an analog stick... with 2-3 buttons and motion capture. A huge amount of possible inputs became super intuitive to the point where people in their 60s and 70s who never played video games in their lives are suddenly not just playing, but [I]good at it[/I]. A more intuitive way of building your UI would solve many problems for D&D, too. I'm thinking about the Eye Toy here, as an example. You could have board game telepresence right now with a webcam, and a phone line. But all the rules would still be tied to the board and the players. [/QUOTE]

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