There is a very strong possibility that Traditional RPGs will not adapt but will die out completely.  I say this because I don’t see a lot of people teaching RPGs to new players anymore.  It took me about 6 – 4 hour sessions to really teach my sons and a friend how to play D&D last year.  Now they all prefer this type of face-to-face RPG game over video games or MMOs, which I find very enlightening.

I think face-to-face RPGs needs do the same and follow this model, but there is a big problem embedded within this type of change.  It doesn’t affect just distribution and play but directly impacts the creative resource commitment.  Those really brilliant people who are willing to commit themselves to making games, because it is fun and they can make a living at it.

If, and this is a BIG IF, RPGs do adapt then I think there can be 3 types of RPG playing systems.  We are only talking about pure-RPG, group based, games that require a GM and non-GM players.  Someone who can dynamically create a world/campaign and others to enjoy that creation and have an affect on it.

1) Old school – Table, chairs, dice, books, maps, minis and munchies.  This will be the smallest portion of the playing types but should still be popular for conventions, special events, and game stores.  It won’t fully go away but it will not drive the industry like it did in the past.

2) Online Group – this will be the biggest of the 3 – Digital tools such as voip, virtual terrain, movement and combat tracking systems, cloud-based campaign management and storage of information are now coming online.  Set a time, everyone logs in together and plays.  This will be the biggest portion of play out there.  Some  players will actually be in the same room, others will attend virtually.  Everyone can see the ‘map’ and move when it is their turn.  Sadly, story-telling will be less in this type of game but encounters will be more complicated.

3) Digital Event – Same as #2 on the technology side but no real time attendance needed, instead you will set up directives or guidelines for your ‘Character’.  A GM still sets up a campaign for a set group of characters, but you use your favorite communication tool of choice will keep you up-to-date much like twitter.  If a situation arises that falls outside of your directives, a communication event asks you for guidance.  You respond and the game continues.  At anytime you can access a ‘map’ view with a recap of activity.  Story telling will be very limited and encounters will be strictly controlled by the GM.  This game-type should fit well with the casual gamer or the highly connected player.

You will be able to switch between #2 and #3 without missing a beat.  The tools are not quite there yet but they are getting better.

I hope all this happens, because the days of getting together physically and teaching a new-player an RPG are fading fast.  No one wants to sit that long anymore and teach someone else.  If the tools don’t support teaching a player how to play in an interactive group-based RPG like D&D then there will be no one to play that type of game.  No matter what we want, these games will die out.  Everything will be MMOs or online video-game consoles systems.  No teaching needed for those.  … and now real story-telling either.

In theory I’m in favor of helper applications when they decrease the amount of tedious busywork instead of messing with decisions that belong to me and me alone – an example would be an app that handles the d10000 critical hit chart in Hackmaster, or the complicated initiative system in it – but the fact is, people don’t use even those now.  People don’t even use die rollers. Why would they suddenly line up to adopt these new variants of the same basic thing? Where are all these imaginary teens whose main problem with pen and paper games until now has been that they can’t shoehorn their cell phones in them?

This makes me want to design a new, technology based game!…

Not too bad of an idea, but it won’t replace books. By the point you seem to think it will go to, it will no longer be the same hobby. It will be a LAN party, with different computers.

I agree with your point that future games will be defined by young adults and will involve synthesis of a new way to play a game from some form of IT.

Discussion of the types of technology are only useful as speculative examples of where the change could come from.

My experience: Success or failure, defined as long-term consumer enjoyment with corresponding willingness to pay, results from how well a game engine (or rules) disappears from players’ notice during their experience.

The future of table-top gaming will be the system that best gets the hell out of the way of playing the game.
Discussion of underlying technology is speculation

- Pen-n-Paper DnD:  Didn’t players enjoy it most when the rules were relatively unnoticeable in their experience of the story?

- Apple products: iPod is noted for how well it gets itself from between the consumer and their experience of music.  iPhone for how well it delivers an experience through ease of use and synthesized (non-Apple) content.

- MMORPGs: Success, defined as multi-year subscribers or repeat micro-content buyers, appears to rely on player’s social experiences within the context of the game, not on how well a player can tweak their character’s powers.

- Table-top simulation games: Games played in tournaments year after year at regional and nationwide conventions have relatively simple rules such that the players are competing against the other player’s battle plans rather than referring to fine points in the rules (For historical minis: Observe difference between 7ed WRG and DBA/DBM).

Other thoughts:
There’s even an indie RPG that requires (and only uses) instant messaging/group chat as its enabling technology (Code of Unaris).  It’s as wildly fun to run as to play.  Because of the rapid play, the first two entries of of your Game Story Series are strongly recommended reading.
USA smartphones will soon include bar-code scanner software using camera-phones.  That’d be a neat way to enable non-face-to-face mini-figure battles: Place figs on typical gamer’s mat for its grid referents; Make your moves; Your smartphone with adapted scanner software translates the table-top analogue info into on-phone game management system;  Use your phone to send your positions to remote opponent who can use just the on-phone game system or re-create your moves on his mat; Repeat until opponent ground into dust and then chortle.

Also, bear in mind that knowing lots of rules and applying them in sometimes complex ways is a major reason why a lot of people like RPGs in the first place – particularly for teenagers, some of whom will be using their ability to do this as a marker of social status.

Overall, it seems likely that the sorts of activity the author describes will happen. It’ll just be a further division of the market, like MMORPGs are. There will still be people who like to craft books, and people who like to use them.

Computers are deterministic, they do exactly what they are programmed to do and nothing else. If you want something in a game to have the potential for a certain response to stimulus you have to code the response, set a handle that lets it be triggered, and tell various other things that might be able to grab that handle that they can do so.

Then you have to bugfix it, which can be a deeply complex exercise for each potential response that might chain or overlap with any number of others. Real world games can easily miss interactions seperated by weeks of gameplay that end up crashing the program.

Making the changes to the world space be at all persistent becomes quite problematic as more things can be made to happen too, and players do rather like to make changes.