The real future of D&D

[Intense_Interest]

I don't really buy the guy's vision, and neither does he. Here buried until the last seven sentences is the twitter-worthy thesis of his entire article:

The lesson here is not “Augmented Reality is going to change tabletop gaming.” AR is just one component of it. The fact that all the players in the target demo will live with and on their personal mobile web devices complete with cameras and social networking is the lesson. The fact that they’ll pay you $5 for a new class or race is the lesson.

And even then, the weakness in the thesis is apparent: You have to have the AR aspect of the "New RPG" for the personal mobile web devices to be necessary, and you have to have the cultural agreement that everyone at the table has to afford the Luxury expenditure of the smart phone for them to be useful, and that there will be enough of a demographic in the subscription/micropayment for a company to trust in investing into the ultimate product. None of this is apparent beyond the ever-increasingly slowing Moore's Law.

His "tech demo" for the AR is fiendishly simple; single-player, non-representative first person, very few variables to animate, non-complex interaction, zero scalability. Any company that invests in the technology early and doesn't get a hit will be facing a mile of red ink ahead of them.

We'll be too busy living in our Arcologies and having personal shapely robot friends to use AR for RPGs. Unless civilization regresses to the point that programmers can be chained to a computer and forced to work for the Leisure Class's need to play with their Hand-held PCs to pretend to be an Elf.

 

[malraux]

I am not sure of what point you are trying to make. You initially pointed out that table top rpgs would be the last games played online, and I pointed out that there were people already playing them online.
I do not dispute that there are issues and extra hassles in playing in this way but it is being done.

The point is that board games have made the transition to a virtual environment and made it easy. As easy or easier than playing in person. TTRPGs are at the end of that process, not the beginning. The line I was responding to was

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.

I disagree that TTRPGs are the first of the traditional games to be played online. They are at the end of the process and haven't made the transition near as well as something like settlers of catan, which is playable with just an xbox controller. There's no way you could do that with VTT right now.

 

[dm4hire]

Problem I have with it is the one thing he focuses on, Technology. It advances too fast to be reliant upon when it comes to trying to adapt what would be needed for a true technical version of any true RPG. By the time it was finished it would be out dated.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

The point is that board games have made the transition to a virtual environment and made it easy. As easy or easier than playing in person. TTRPGs are at the end of that process, not the beginning.

I will admit I probably was not thinking all that clearly when I made the origial comment but also playing a port of Settlers on the Xbox was not what I was thinking as playing a traditional boardgame on a computer. In the case of Settlers some has actually ported over the whole game and created a graphical and rules engine to manage the playing.

Now that you metion it, what I was thinking of has been done for boardgames with applications like Aide De Camp that allow one to recreate the board and counters for a traditional boardgame and use them online.

I disagree that TTRPGs are the first of the traditional games to be played online. They are at the end of the process and haven't made the transition near as well as something like settlers of catan, which is playable with just an xbox controller. There's no way you could do that with VTT right now.

Fair enough but what do you mean by they are at the end of the process, do you mean the last thing that gets processed?

By the way does Neverwinter Nights count as an implementation of D&D online?

 

[olshanski]

Whoah,

My kids play Monopoly and Risk on the same looking boards they've always had.
My kids also play cards, which really hasn't changed much in 300-500 years or more.
My kids also play "tag", which I would guess really hasn't changed much in 3000-5000 years.

The premise that all entertainment is reliant upon technology is flawed.

 

[kitsune9]

The article that is the subject of this thread is not so good, but I really appreciated an earlier article which, inter alia, blames some of the decline of TTRPGs on the lacklustre adventures that have been published.

This ties into the prep time. Look at 4E: it is much easier to prepare for compared to 3E/3.5E but prepping your own adventures is almost the only way to go because the published stuff is rubbish.

People look back on 1E so fondly because of the great adventures. That's not the case with 3.xE (with the obvious exception of Paizo) and I don't believe it can yet (or ever?) be said about 4E.

Going off thread here, I'd say some mods from Fiery Dragon and Necro Games were pretty darn good. Some Goodman mods were also fun such as Bloody Jack's Gold which was frustrating but in the end had a really cool conclusion.

Getting back on thread, yes, I agree that prep time is a big factor.

 

[Deuce Traveler]

First, anyone who cites Who Moved My Cheese as anything other than a faux-motivational book for business people who want to pretend that they are too busy being businessy to read real books loses several credibility points, imo.

Nice... I have to use that. I think that book and cartoon is fun to watch, but I agree it contains little value. Amazing what it costs for such a prettily dressed presentation.