Future Of Pen & Paper?

[Scott Tortorice]

Here's an interesting article and vid!

Future Of Pen & Paper?

Anyone who ever played Pen & Paper, whether it was Dungeons & Dragon, Ravenloft, Shadowrun or whatever, knows how atmospheric such gathering with your friends around a table can become. And honestly, who does not sometimes wish to be teleported back in time just to experience some of the cool adventures with your favorite Dungeon Master.

All you needed was your character sheet, some dice, a pen and paper and lots of imagination combined with any possible junk food you could lay your hands on. No matter how technological our lifestyle has become nowadays, our beloved Pen & Paper games were still oldschool. Until now …

A walk-through of the current build of proof of concept for a Dungeons & Dragons experience on the Microsoft Surface. Created by the Surfacescapes team at the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University....

 

[FanaticTW]

Is this pretty nifty ...yes. But no amount of technological bells and whistles will take the place of good Game Mastering; that is, good story, flexibility, tight and relevant encounters, and game flow. This, technical innovation would seem to me to severely disrupt the flow of a table top game, to essentially watch a monitor.

just my 2 shekels

 

[Scott Tortorice]

I agree. It is a cool idea, but if you are going down that route, are you even playing a P&P RPG anymore? You might as well just play WoW at that point.

 

[Palantir]

I like it, but probably not if I knew the cost.

I think it's still "P&P" and I'd use it as a DM's assistant to display my world and modular plus help my players better visualize the terrain and handle the details of stats and spells: although I'd let the players roll their own "real" dice.

I also liked the second video design of the guy drawing the dungeon as the players "advanced" thru it.

I've halted my D&D world after 20+ years but used a stand-up whiteboard to draw and display & hide my dungeons / floor plans. I used the table with a large hex grid map for terrain and combat.

Having one table to do both would have been quite useful.

 

[Palantir]

The cost of the second design is free using open-source programs.

http://rptools.net/

Did a quick scan of the site, some in-depth programs / tutorials for using it.
I didn't realize there was a complete and active RP community out there using such virtual tools & offering a lot of resources.

Almost has me wanting to restart my world.

 

[Scott Tortorice]

Wow, I didn't realize this either. Then again, I haven't played any type of fantasy RPG in about ten years, so I don't know much about the modern RPG scene (Dragon Age: Origins might change that).

 

[Dion]

"Is this pretty nifty ...yes. But no amount of technological bells and whistles will take the place of good Game Mastering; that is, good story, flexibility, tight and relevant encounters, and game flow. This, technical innovation would seem to me to severely disrupt the flow of a table top game, to essentially watch a monitor.

just my 2 shekels" - FanticTW

Ya, I agree, nothing beats an good Dungeon Master & good old Dungeon Master Screen, not even this. :smoke:

 

[GrumpyWargamer]

It's cool, it's very cool.

It's not portable, not even remotely portable looking.

Until it is, pencil and paper will have no reason to fear it.

Nothing quite replaces being able to put some books in a bag, buy some munchies and meet at a location that can change to get in some gaming.

I wouldn't mind seeing wargaming get some use of of this technology. But I won't hold my breath, no one in wargaming seems much interested in innovation, and this sure won't be cheap.

 

[david-gfe-games]

Strange that innovation is not something the War Gamer is interested in. The Pentagon seem very keen on innovation.

 

[KacyCrawford]

I remember my childhood playing pen and paper with my cousins, great timepass!!!

The game was about Thief and Police

 

[KacyCrawford]

Its a cool idea.