Comments on: D&D Gaming on Microsoft’s Surface

By: Lothar Loc'Nar

Lothar Loc'Nar — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 17:44:15 +0000

I’m awaiting the holo screens, the neural implants to facilitate the blend of computer with ones own brain, the die rolls would be a thing of the past when one can innately know when one missed an attack or succeeded in a critical hit. To have two complete processors, one to store data and the other to run the game. Someone said they like the feel of the dice and the real miniatures, well eventually the program could be designed with the actual neural(signals sent to the hands and fingers) “feel” of those same things if a player wanted or needed them to enjoy a computer assisted game. We are still far off from an immersion of mind and body into an accompanied A.I. but I certainly can visualize this in 50 -80 yrs. Another reason I want to be cloned…..lol

By: Lothar Loc'Nar

Lothar Loc'Nar — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 20:06:27 +0000

We use RPtools(MapTools) currently and can connect to anyone anywhere in the world.It would be nice if your group could make this tabletop system interactive to anyone anywhere via telecommunications (internet). People would load their information from where they were and the DM could load the world they’d be playing in. They could move where they wanted and the screen would show exactly what was there as they see it. To get even more precise the DM could enter a certain spot check to be made for that particular PC to see what he/she could see (possibly only on their monitor) The sounds were nice and would be incorporated with a possible DM precreated sound track/translator system for people in other countries to understand the DM and vice versa. The screen would show initiatives in order as well as any encounters where the PCs went on the board already set up by the DM.

By: Brandan Landgraff

Brandan Landgraff — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 04:59:16 +0000

As an aside, cross-platform compatibility is a huge issue for my group, as three out of seven of my regular group use macs as their primary system. I believe in JD’s groups this has been an issue as well, though in his case it’s been more linux users than mac users. While neither I nor my players have issues with the Character Builder or Adventure Tools from Wizards being Windows only (in my case, I run my mac, a windows laptop, and a netbook dualbooting between ubuntu and windows, and for the other mac users in my group doing things by hand isn’t a problem) when it comes to virtual tabletop software it’s pretty much essential that everyone be able to run the same thing. Even if Wizards were to roll out their own virtual tabletop eventually, that alone would keep my group as a whole from adopting it.

By: Brandan Landgraff

Brandan Landgraff — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 04:53:13 +0000

JD and I both use Gametable for most of our online games. It’s light, quick, cross-platform, and completely free. It’s not especially pretty, but it does the job well enough.

I’ve also used Maptool from rptools.net, which has many more features than gametable, again, works cross-platform, and is also 100% free and open source. It has a higher learning curve, though, and mapping takes more prep-time than the simple line-maps most of us use in gametable. The learning curve and prep-time are what prompted me to switch back to gametable for my weekly gaming–my players aren’t especially bothered by simple line drawing maps, and it saves a lot of time and lets me improvise much more readily.

By: Blake

Blake — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 17:19:32 +0000

I am interested in knowing what on-line gameboards you like to use. I use d20Pro from mindgene. I like it a lot. It is still relatively new, and the staff is pretty quick for customer service.

By: Brandan Landgraff

Brandan Landgraff — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 15:59:27 +0000

I’m pretty sure the pricetag attached to the hardware (I just checked, it’s like $12k for the non-development unit) will prevent this from being anything more than a novelty at any level. Efficiency in die rolling animations or attack visuals is hardly going to be a concern–this is just not a viable model for consumer release for most D&D groups at this time.

Honestly I’m not even sure I could see retailers buying into this given the cost of the hardware needed to run it. It might make its way to conventions, but realistically they’re building a tool for a platform that seems to be intended for something else entirely.

It looks neat enough, I suppose, but if I want an extravagant gaming table I can still put one together for less than that with a bit of imagination and some hard work…

By: Stitched

Stitched — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 20:07:42 +0000

Interesting take on the animation for figs.

I imagine that people could get by with non-moving assets; like people do now with any miniatures battle table. The alternative is to open the modelling / animation to the community – tap into that “power of the crowd” phenomenon. They may surprise you.

By: Jonathan Drain

Jonathan Drain — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 18:35:12 +0000

I thought of orienting a sensor, but that has two problems: you need to buy special dice, and the sensor might unbalance the die. If you can OCR the base of the die you can tell what number is on the top.

By: Andy

Andy — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 16:56:18 +0000

I see a lot of opportunity here, especially in streamlining things, but I’m also agreeing with the tactile element. I think if there were a good way to implement it, that could be quite valuable.

Here’s one thought: if you had miniatures on the table, the table could probably “calibrate” all the miniatures, and then track them, probably by a “lift and tap” system at the start and end of your figures’ moves. They could probably also use 3D models to represent the figures in “instant replay playback”, which would be a cool feature. I’d love to see an editor which allowed you to customize playback of moments in a battle, so as to have a digital record of your character’s Crowning Moment of Awesome.

Technology also has so many options to make things flexible, if it’s done right. And if the DM has the material to plug in. This could be a very cool application.

QR codes read by a scanner could be really, really cool. I like that idea. OCR to read d20s would also be nice, but what I think would be an even better idea is to embed a sensor in the d20 to detect its orientation, and ergo what face is showing on top. So you roll it in a dice box, and that box reads the orientation of the sensor, and plugs it in as a die roll.

By: The Recursion King

The Recursion King — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 12:24:25 +0000

Quite true and a good counterpoint to what is going on here.

If you want to simulate this, now, take a reasonable large monitor and turn it over, feed into it some images using a laptop and photoshop, place a piece of glass over the monitor’s screen and see how it goes.

Myself, I like the tactile feel and true 3d miniatures in a battle that you can actually hold, the clink of real dice and the ease of scribbling things down and doodling on bits of paper. But if it gets more kids into the hobby…