The real future of D&D

[darjr]

I think I like some of the ideas to help facilitate the game.

Imagine if nobody had to know the rules? Imagine if they could use creative tools to do the kinds of things that people do now. I'm talking world/adventure/home rule building.

Anyway, the whole point of RPG's for me IS getting together and gaming.

There is nothing like firing the imaginations of my players and seeing the excitement or dread or joy or a combination of emotions boil to the surface. There is nothing like being a player and getting lost in the prose the GM is giving you and having an effect on it. Of having the GM pull you in and tweak all those things that make you want to act.

I don't see why digital tools couldn't facilitate this. But I'm not sure I see how it could work well in his post.

P.S. I purposely left out the exploration and adventure bit. I think they are better at the table top, but I do think they can be had somewhat at the computer.

 

[kenmarable]

I'm of a mixed opinion about it. Yeah, there's some points I agree with (PDFs being a stop-gap, some limited applications of "giving away rules to draw in customers"), but there's also some points I disagree with. There's FAR more future in multitouch surface computing than in holding an iPhone in front of your face. At times it sounds like he's arguing that many old timer gamers are blinded to the potential of technology by citing examples of his being blinded by the latest gadgets. Augmented reality will have some awesome game applications, but playing D&D with an iPhone in front of your face is not one of them.

I think some of his points about business models do have merit (although FAR more merit for small publishers trying to get market penetration than for the major players), but I think his technology projections are way off. Utilities like iPlay4e will be the near future, and the longer term future, I think, is furthering the "computer as utility". My gut and knowledge of the current electronics market is pointing towards a multitouch surface computing networked with smartphones as "controllers" & "reference guides". However, I also know enough about the history of technology to predict that the longer term of RPGs will be something none of us would even dream of today.

Besides with the growth of electronic utilities like iPlay4e, DDI, the ton of stuff Asmor has worked on, etc. show that the industry is already listening to him before he ever wrote that post.

 

[Shemeska]

Crud, by invoking its name, I may be giving it power.

If you don't have a plan for making money, you aren't guaranteed that you'll eventual make money

Sounds like Gleemax.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

More miss than hit, I accept the general thrust of the argument that gadgets will enable online play of traditional games, not just rpg, though rpgs may be the first. Subscription based services are here already and so to an extent are virtual table tops. I would be experimenting with them if I could get over my security issues at the moment. Can't even see the maptools server on the lan.

iPhone based, I doubt, though what exactly the mobile phone evolves into over the next couple of years I do not know. For gaming they need more screen estate.

 

[Vorput]

That Zombie game was just awesome.

If someone created a D&D battlemap where, if looked at through an Iphone, you could see your characters battling- I'd buy it in a heartbeat.

 

[AngryMojo]

Sounds like Gleemax.

Be careful, it can still hear you.

Actually, Gleemax could have worked if it based itself more on myspace. And if it was a lot bigger. Most of the social-networking sites that make money on advertisements have to be really, really big. Both Myspace and Facebook have millions of people on them.

But hey, WotC tried a computer tools suite more than once. They just didn't get it right the first time.

 

[Darrin Drader]

No more rulebooks, no more having trouble finding the right minis to represent your monsters (not a problem until you own crates full of WotC minis). Imagine this technology combined with people in different locations. You could still have your gaming group even after everyone has moved away.

The downsides I see are that it would mean that DM innovation might be reduced. If you have to have a chipped 2D map to get the effect, then you're going to have to buy a new map for every new scenario. Suppose that the publisher codes the monsters into the map, making it possible only to play the scenario it was programmed for.

This seems more useful than a tool like Fantasy Grounds, but less dynamic than face to face roleplaying. Regardless, it would be fun to mess around with to explore its potential.

 

[malraux]

More miss than hit, I accept the general thrust of the argument that gadgets will enable online play of traditional games, not just rpg, though rpgs may be the first. Subscription based services are here already and so to an extent are virtual table tops

First, I would imagine TTRPGs to be the last game to be easily played online, mainly because it is the last game to be easily played online. Any game where the rules are explicit are easy to get online. Scrabble, poker, settlers of catan, monopoly, etc are all played online right now. They might not be as tactilely rewarding, but thats a limitation of any online game.

I'll also point out the author implicitly rejects the subscription model.

 

[wingsandsword]

To make a different point, let's compare RPGs to other hobbies:

Renfaires
SCA/certain kinds of LARPing (dressing up and swinging swords at dudes)
Civil War/Revolutionary War Reinactments

These are certainly different (all involve some level of costuming, certainly), but you know what? They're still going. They're never going to peak, never going to get huge, but they continue to plod along. Nothing can replace the community/togetherness/wackiness of the event.

Exactly.

One of my major hobbies is the "dressing up and swinging swords at dudes" (as you described it) larping. (NERO is the larp I play in, in case you care to know, heck there was even an article about it in Dragon Magazine back in September '91, when Dragon was more than just a solely D&D magazine)

It's still going strong. Now, there are less people than there were 10 or 15 years ago, but there are still plenty of people, and certainly enough for the games to keep going. We don't sit at home playing WoW (or EverQuest before that, or Ultima Online before that. . .) all weekend, we dress up in costume and get out big padded swords and run around a campground that has been made up to look like a fantasy world. Why? Because we like to actually socialize and interact and not just online. Because we like to physically play out our fantasy adventures instead of doing them from a keyboard (or even a tabletop). Because we like immersion and getting in costume and being in character for a day or two at a time is good for that in a way that online gaming will never be.

Until you can build a full-on Holodeck right out of Star Trek there are so many things that you can't emulate on a computer that are out there in the real world (and frankly that would be a whole new style of larping).

With tabletop gaming, the social aspect of going over to a friends house, hanging out, ordering pizza and sharing food, while gaming will never be replaced no matter how good your online game is. People still play real poker instead of online poker, people still play real chess instead of online chess, and people still play real monopoly instead of online monopoly, because a roleplaying game (larp, tabletop, whatever) is more than simply an exercise in mathematical simulation of a fantasy environment coupled with visual/audio descriptors of that simulation, it is a social activity.

In a similar vein, about a decade ago, when I was in college, I had an acquaintance in our gaming club that was certain he'd be the next internet millionaire. His idea was a subscription-based daily webcomic (back when webcomics were brand new), the idea that people would pay a few dollars per month to subscribe to his webcomic and that as he put it "the era of free content online is coming to an end". I don't know if he ever launched the service, but I know it never succeeded.

 

[kitsune9]

A very interesting blog post:

The Inevitable Future of Tabletop Gaming | SquareMans

I agree that this is a very likely and possible future, but still a few years off. I can't see this in five years, but 10-15 years does make this very plausible idea.

The real trick will be if this model is sustainable, that will be the deciding factor.