Samuel Van Der Wall over at Roleplaying Pro is hosting this month’s Blog Carnival on the Future of Roleplaying.  Inspired by a video produced by Microsoft Labs on the future of technology, I thought I’d put together a list of ten things I’d love to see at the table top. Additional sources of inspiration follow the list below.

First, I definitely believe that the table top RPG game is going to stick around, there is so much more than just getting together and killing monsters and taking their stuff. Even if that’s what your group is into, sitting around and enjoying some social time together is a far more enjoyable experience than doing the same thing online.

On to the list!

1. Smart Phone Character Sheets

Sure you can carry around your iPlay4e character sheet to reference, but what if you could lay your phone on the table and it would automatically load your character sheet onto the table surface.  You could then access, update or share pieces of your sheet as the game progressed. All in-game calculations could be handled based on the loaded sheet, including character visualization.

2. Tabletop Integrated Rule Books

I’m a PDF convert ever since Monte Cook released the Book of Eldritch Might and I miss WotC’s PDF books that were previously available.  I’ve not used pdfs at the game table yet, though I will be soon. I’ve just always found laptops a little cumbersome at the table. Now if the computer were the table… Rule books could be searched, retrieved, and displayed for anyone at the table.

3. Auto Calculating Dice Rolls

While dice rolling software is available for your Smart Phone or iPhone, I’m still a fan of the tactile sensation of polyhedrons shuffling in hand to give that up. What is sometimes awkward is remembering all the modifiers that are applied to your roll. Imagine if you rolled your dice onto the digital tabletop and when it stopped, the display automatically output all the calculations next to the number. You could then send the roll over to the DM to determine if the roll was successful.

4. 3D Interactive Battle Map

There is a scene in the video above where a project manager is skimming through a 3D graphical representation of their project, isolating and zooming in sections to make changes. Apply all those concepts to a visual 3D game table and you’re on to something. Now let all players at the table see the game table through various lenses (fog of war style) and interact with it and you’ve got one heck of a miniature game.

5. Ease of Condition Tracking

Whether you play D&D or not, most of today’s games rely on conditions from health to blindness to dying.  Many innovative solutions have been created to help track all these conditions flying around, especially with 4E’s reliance on them.  Why would you want to take care of all that when the interactive gaming table can do that for you.

6. Ease of Resource Tracking

Along the same lines, most games use resources that players need to keep track of, be they encounter powers, action points, or spells.  The interactive table already has your full character sheet and is tracking any conditions affecting you, resource management is an easy one to throw in there.

7. Visual Aid Distribution

When it comes to visual aids, from images, to maps, to props, I’ve always had found it difficult to include them at the table. Online games its easy and really helps, but at the table pulling out the Monster Manual or dropping the full geographic map on the table is at times cumbersome.  With surface based sharing you can display images to all (or just one?) at the table and those that wanted to could even grab a shot of it and store it for their own reference later on.

8. Personalized Note Taking Interface

Pen and paper gaming already has one of the most personalized note tacking devices built in, that’s right ~ the pen and paper.  Many gamers have experimented with laptops, netbooks, or smart phones to take notes as well but that can take up a lot of space.  Having the ability to record notes on a multi-touch tabletop interface would allow players and DMs a like to jot down anything they needed to and save it for a later date.

9. Full Game Recording

With all of these innovations above relying on the tabletop computer to display, manage, and manipulate it would be an easy matter to include recording.  DMs would be able to replay scenes to allow for easier preparation for the next session and players could access quick summaries from the records.

10. Enhanced DM Tool-kits

All of the above suggestions have been targeted at making the game better from a table top perspective, but I’d be remiss at leaving DM prep work out of the mix. So many advances are taking place already to allow DMs to modify creatures on the fly or have advance preparations available should players alter the course of play. What if all those tools were available in game immediately at your finger tips. Encounter too easy? introduce new elements immediately. Need information on an NPC from 6 sessions ago? pull them up with a couple of clicks. Events being handled earlier than planned? update other events automatically with the changes to the play environment.

I’ve only scratched the surface with these ideas, but I was so taken with how companies are looking at future technology that I couldn’t help myself. Heck any one of these ideas could be expanded on drastically.  I’ve already mentioned the Microsoft Future of Technology video, but some of the other inspirational pieces include the BBC’s Inside Microsoft’s Home of the Future video and CNN’s Just Imagine: 2020 series.

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Uncategorized by Chris Cumming