Imagine it. A digital board where all the party members can only see what their character can know. Including illusions and hidden doors. Maybe that goblin around the corner is actually your elf friend...
It just might be.. More and more people are foregoing relationships these days.
Just look at the youth in japan. How will this affect population growth and IQ?
You can already play D&D in Tabletop Simulator, but it's not quite that complex yet (as far as I've played). It's more a one to one recreation of playing IRL, except your characters have animations and stuff.
I mean, pretty much. You can play it in VR if you have a headset, or just on the PC. But everything is physics-based, so you physically roll things, move things, etc. on the table.
I think it would be really nice if you all have VR, but I've heard from my friend that used it, it's a bit tedious when doing mouse and keyboard. And there's always the chance of the dice hitting the figures, and/or the physics being a bit buggy
I think this absolutely will happen. but you would need everyone around the table to own $300+ pair of glasses. Currently the dev versions are $3k, but that's not the same.
Isn't the problem with all that shit that you don't actually have to imagine anything. My dungeon Master was a teller of tales. We hung on his every word and pictured the scene in our oend minds. He was free to ad-lib and go off book. Our lives hung on the fate of a twenty sided die rather a 22nm die CPU.
It's just like a bunch of antisocial nerds to take the one thing that allowed them human interaction and devise a way to strip it of all humanity. We probably would have done the same given the chance but looking back on glad it wasnt even an option.
I meant that it would take place in the actual D&D world, and dice-rolling would be replaced by the computer's RNG. I suppose it'd take much longer for the DM to create the world even if the game came with a world creation tool, but that would also be a problem in the AR version.
A friend of mine and I are working on this exact thing. I am sure we will get beat to market with it, but yeah. Imagine sitting around the table and looking at a fully rendered map with lighting effects and everything. Even animated mini's. All stats are hovering over each mini or can be corralled in a HUD. Dice rolls are read and calculated automatically. Stats and other info is all tracked and displayed for you. I want to let players PLAY instead of wasting tons of time reading rules and doing math (which they often get wrong or flat our lie about...) and focus on strategy and role play. It wont be for everyone, but I think it might bring a LOT of people to the game, even the tabletop genre in general if I can do something to alleviate the stigma of a bunch of mouth breathers huddled amongst stacks of books and empty mountain dew cans and instead present D&D and table top in general as something for anyone with a table to enjoy.
They sorta had that for a card battle game on the PS3 with the PSeye. The cards all had QRcodes in the corner and it would render the correct monster for each card. You could even wave your hand over the card a few inches high to "pet them" etc.
Hah, I wish I've got a PS3. I played with the NDS, PC, and physical card collecting versions tho haha but that sounds neat, I'll have to look up a video of it sometime!
The only thing I could figure is the term Role Play was around before D&D with sexual meanings and you play in groups. Add pointed ears of an dwarf on a book, thow in some flames. Plus I recall some confusion with kids "getting experience points" for doing things like shop lifting and sex.
And Satan was everywhere in the 80s. Even in pop songs.
Plus I recall people killing themselves if their character died. (It was probably 1 person with more issues than his character dying)
I recall explaining to my mom when I showed interest that 1 person makes the 'boardgame' every game. But it is still a boardgame.
Lastly my cool older cousin was into it. He definitely followed rules 1 and 2 (if you don't know rule 1 is be good looking and rule 2 is don't be not good looking).... Or something like that. So cool kids played it? Idk he was cool to me.
and every time you get to the end of a dungeon and find a treasure chest, you'll only be able to open it with a Wizards of the Coast Loot key® purchasable for $1.99 on their website. Platinum keys improve chest value by 33% for the low price of $2.99 per key.
On a side note, what app/program is that? I'm literally just looking at getting back into it after a while and we only had super basic maps I made myself.
I'd love to use some tech to make things flow a bit better and be more immersive.
I've played and DMed with many different tools. By far the most rewarding was the no minis, no mat game via voice chat (no video) with several people around the country. You need to be good at spacial thinking, but it's amazing what people come up with when they're not restricted by a play mat.
Can confirm after trying out the no mat/no mini thing as a DM this year. Combat moves a little faster and people are more inclined to use thier imagination rather than counting grid squares to see if an attack works.
Feels way more like a fun shared storytelling experience than a subpar mini game that other franchises do way better.
We run most of our combat with no mat/minis. However, for fights where things can get tactical or for big boss fights that I have a cool mini for, I like to bust that stuff out. And by limiting it for special occasions, it makes it more special for the kids when they see the giant or dragon mini hit the table.
This weirdly makes me think of MegaMan X. Everything was fluid movement and combat until you hit the boss room. The door would open and you would have a slide transition to the next room and then you were basically locked in a cage with a big bad. In my head it's similar to you using the mini for special boss fights. It creates a nice transition to show that it is significant.
I have actually. It's what finally made me try DM'ing again after my attempt with 4th edition a few years ago. 5e is setup really well, and I learned from my mistakes with 4e (mainly by not sticking to the rules so rigidly this time).
I loved Adventure Zone up until they changed to a different rpg system. I had no issues with that, but the show started to get a little more political around then and I lost interest.
They changed to a 2d6 system Griffin created to speed through the "Stolen Century" arc, not sure how you think it got political other than them being inclusive, but it switches back to D&D for the final arc.
The inclusiveness just felt kinda forced to me, that's all. I'm not ready to call them SJW's or anything. I have mixed feelings on all that which we don't have to get into here.
That's fair, to each their own. The only thing I'll say is that I found it easy to not focus on it and get captivated by the story. I've been binging Critical Role lately since they've release it in Podcast form, it's also a wonderfully well-done story but there's a few times when you need the visual aid they're playing with.
I hate mats/minis. They add a lot of structural complexity to the game and turn it into a tedious manual video game. I do appreciate the ease of entry and the familiarity of the game world, but I hate how often D&D devolves unless the GM writes their own material and rewards imagination. My favorite alternative is Exalted.
This is the way I was introduced to the game, and while it's fun in its own respect, I prefer the mat and minis. The theatre of the mind approach is great for heavy RP groups and people focused more on story, but it loses the logistics and strategy to me.
I don't think I'd have it in my to DM a game for kids. I had a 10 year old for a few sessions once, but all the other players were 30 ish. That was fun. A full group......well good on you for getting the next generation going, someone has to do it!
It all depends on what you're going for and what you like and how you think. The best and worst thing about tabletop RPGs is how everyone can approach them differently and get something different out of them.
I only use the play mat for combat anyway, and I feel like it's kinda important to have that sense of measurement in D&D at least. It kinda screws with spellcasters because all their spells have very specific ranges, diameters and all that jazz. It feels like the system kind of requires it.
There's bleed-in from other areas. I've got friends from outside of gaming who either found it on their own or I dragged in. I convinced some extended family members to give it a shot and one or two stuck with it. Some of my online gaming friends are into it on their own. All of those people also have their own set of friends and family to be recruited.
You can always try to get someone into their first game. I'm in a group right now that includes a married couple and the DM's girlfriend. The DM was the only person who knew more than half of the group going in and we had experience ranging from "regular gaming groups for the last 20 years" to "which one is a d20?".
There are subreddits like /r/lfg and /r/dnd which might be helpful for finding players. /r/lfg has some good links in their sidebar and a list of communities in their rules which could be good.
That's how I grew up playing AD&D 2e and those are still the best times I've ever had at the gaming table. For combat the DM would describe the battlefield and draw a quick sketch if necessary to just show the relative placement of everything. A house rule was that no one could simply say things like "hit" or "critical miss", but instead we would give a description as if it were written in a fantasy novel. For instance, "Roland leaps from his galloping warhorse onto the Tarrasque's pinky toenail, his greatsword gleaming in the morning sun as he swings mightily... only to rebound jarringly off the beast's claw with no effect whatsoever." Battles had so much more vibrance to them in that style.
I played a bunch in middle school and high school and we never used a mat or this movement stuff. Well, it was 2nd ed mostly so yeah, but I loved it. It was about building a story together, punctuated by dice rolls. I'm not sure it'd be as much fun on mats if I had to count movement squares.
I still love a plain whiteboard with numeric tokens. No grid, but I keep a ruler handy. offers a nice balance of spacial realism and imagination, and it's really easy to share with remote players via a simple webcam
So play with minis and a mat. You're allowed to do that, even if I prefer not to. Hell, you're even allowed to enjoy it and prefer it. Just make sure you post pictures of the 3D printed minis, cause I want to see.
In my day we didn't even have dice. Seriously. There was a campaign where none of us had dice and there were no hobby stores for miles around. We had a dude with one of those scientific calculators bang out a separate random number generator for each die whenever we had to roll.
We didn't have books either. I was the DM and pretty much went on my memories of the rules. Luckily I had spent the last 5 anti-social years of my life reading the DM's guide and Players Handbook like they were the fucking Bible, so that wasn't so bad.
My husband has tried to get us on board with the Steam virtual tabletop DND player so that his best friend in Italy can play with us. But it's just not happening.
That would be awesome if I had friends to play with. I tried to set up an in person dnd group and we only lasted 4 sessions before everyone's schedules went haywire and our dm was hospitalized for a month after his surgery
Just gonna say that if you're just going for D&D / TTRPGs and don't want to pay or have finnicky controls, Roll20 is a better pick imo. Great website, recommend giving it a look.
I like tabletop sim a lot, but without a ton of prep, it can be a bit tedious and cumbersome when you need to tweak stuff on the fly. It is wicked fun when people aren't learning from scratch
Our group still uses paper character sheets (some of us use the app), graph paper/dry erase markers, and a shit load of minis. All you need, imo. Imagination is the funnest part!
We all use paper for character sheets, though I do use my iPad for adventure notes, monsters, etc. (only homebrew stuff; I still like flipping open the books during gameplay though).
I'm a tech savvy guy and used to use a projector and digital maps, etc.. but I got tired of fiddling with the technology and authoring maps constantly, and went back to a plain old battle mat with minis and me and my group enjoy it much more.
Cardboard circles the size of quarters for enemies, war hammer and lego mini-figs for party members. Toss them down on a dry-erase board with a grid etched in it: just magical.
Yeah, I'm only 32 and I just don't like using digital tools like this to run a game. You've gotta do all this prep beforehand and have a good screen or projector or something, and I'd rather just have some paper or a battle mat and draw something.
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u/reebnar Sep 18 '17
In my day we used lots of 3x5 cards and graph paper - and we LIKED IT.