The Inevitable Future of Tabletop Gaming
This will be the last thing I write about traditional tabletop gaming for a while, I want the topic to lie fallow and give my non-tabletop gamer readership something to come to the site for, for a little while. Probably a review of Bruno come Sunday night!
If you were in high school when D&D came out, you’re 52 now. The overwhelming statistical likelihood is, if you played in High School or College, you don’t play anymore. Because of the time and commitment it takes to participate in this hobby, it’s fundamentally a game for teens and 20-somethings. Getting 5 people together on a regular basis who all have careers and families, to play a game that requires at least one of them spend a few hours preparing outside the game, is tough no matter how you slice it. So a moment’s thought will reveal why it’s easier to get everyone together when you’re kids, or in college or your mid 20s, than when you’re in your 40s.
Also, as our lives become more complex, I think it gets harder for us, as players, to slip into that meditative state necessary to believe in the world we play in, and imagine what our characters would say and do. It takes time and the ability to relax and forget everything happening outside the gaming table. It is ironic, therefore, that as we get older it becomes harder to roleplay. You’d think it’d be the opposite.
Yeah, absolutely some of us still manage it, and obviously as one of those people I think it’s great. The game, in many ways, improves as you get older. Yay for us. But being one of those older gamers should not prevent us from looking at the hobby, and understanding what age group is best suited for the time and social commitments.
So its a young person’s game. It’s also, like all entertainments, dependent on technology. When the technology changes, you get a revolution in the entertainment. Twas always thus.
The hobby was founded pre-home computer and for many years in the late 1970s and early 1980s, people predicted the personal computer would have a big impact on tabletop gaming. People like Dave Arneson wrote in Pegasus magazine about how the home computer was going to influence the way people played RPGs and wargames.
But it never did. It influenced the way RPGs were made, and who could make them, with the advent of Desktop Publishing, but the games stayed the same. Instead of the computer changing how tabletop gamers play, the computer just invented new kinds of games, video games, while tabletop gaming stayed essentially the same. Has stayed the same for 40 years.
Every time we see a revolution in music or movies, somewhere behind it is a technological revolution. Something has become possible that was not, something has become cheap that was expensive. The people who then take that technology and use it in unexpected ways, didn’t really know anything about the technology, they just stumble upon it and the world changes. The Beatles didn’t invent multi-track recording. When Afrika Bambaataa heard Kraftwerk for the first time, he said “How’d those German white boys get so funky?” Not “how does the minimoog work?” No one cared how it worked. They just wanted to monkey with it.
The technology changed all by itself. Then the world split into the artists who embraced it–typically young people who didn’t know it wasn’t supposed to work like this in the first place–and the artists who are playing catch-up.
So here’s the undisputed reality, by the numbers.
- Cell phones. If you’re an American, odds are you know someone who doesn’t have one. If you’re Scandinavian, odds are everyone you know has a cell phone. The Europeans are way ahead of us in cell phone technology. Either way, most everyone has one now.
- Smartphones. Just as most everyone has a cell phone now, most everyone will have Smartphone in only a couple of years. I think most of the roleplayers who read Squaremans are between 32 and 55, and to many of them this may seem absurd, or a nightmarish scenario. But I’m not worried about them. I’m talking about the future of the hobby and kids in the 12-28 age range, which we agreed earlier was the ideal range for gaming, already accept this as a fact of life.
- Cheap, fast, powerful processors. The new iPhone is capable of running at 833mhz. It doesn’t, they underclock it, but it could. That’s fast. Not as fast as my desktop machine, but it’s fast enough. Fast enough to make all manner of really sophisticated applications you could never have done in the 1980s. Let alone the pre-personal computer birth of the hobby in 1974. It’s getting somewhat absurd to call these devices “smart phones” since we’re now at the point where the actual ‘I can make phonecalls’ part of the device is a minor feature. They’re really PDAs, though that’s a terrible term for them to. Maybe…mobile web devices? I dunno.
- Insanely Cheap Development. Becoming an iPhone developer costs $99. That’s it. The SDK is free and joining the Dev Program is $99. So imagine you’re a tabletop game developer. Apart from the time which is by no means inconsequential, the actual cost to become an iPhone developer is $99. Nothing. Compared to how much you’ll pay for art, or freelancers to write, it’s nothing.
- People are OK with Micropayments. They didn’t used to be, a lot of old people still aren’t comfortable with the idea of paying $5 so your horse can have barding in Oblivion, and that idea tanked. It wasn’t the right time and it was poorly implemented. But iTunes proved everyone wrong. A buck a song is perfect. Everyone loves it. Free Realms and its brethren, Xbox Live’s point system, Facebook games, these systems are all micropayments and they’re huge. It’s a valid model. Sure the older generation doesn’t like it, but young people take it for granted.
- Augmented Reality is happening. No longer SF. Real. Real and people are doing it now, and the iPhone and its cousins will probably be the way most people experience it and not in a year or two, in the next few weeks or months. As I write this someone, probably several different teams, are working on this, but real. Actual. The only difference between that scene and what we’ll see is; you’ll have to hold up your iPhone to watch the action, like it’s a window you’re looking though. Which, it turns out, is a lot cheaper than violating the laws of physics so you can have something floating in the air that emits light and knows where you’re sitting.
Ok, so this is the first you’ve heard of Augmented Reality. AR. Don’t feel bad, it’s one of those things that’s going to happen fast.
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Forget the games you know. Forget GURPS or Champions or Exalted or D&D. Forget them, they’re meaningless in this model. Why? Because they were all developed for, predicated on, and distributed through a system that PRESUMED the final product had to be a BOOK of some sort. That’s what they’ve been selling and we’ve been buying for 30 years. Books. Systems that you read and which required humans to adjudicate and remember.The entire industry, small though it may be, is predicated on the book form. Book technology and human memory and the games that technology can produce. So that’s how they think. They think in terms of selling you books. Getting you to pay for books.
That model is over. It’s already over. The demo that accepts it is aging away and the new demo does not take the same things for granted. The PDF model is, I assure you, short lived. It’s a stop-gap measure. The fact that it’s optimized for piracy isn’t the problem the problem is that it’s still a PDF of a book.
“iPhones are expensive.” “I prefer books.” “I like something I can hold.” It doesn’t matter. If you freak out, asking “Who Moved My Cheese?!” You’re already lost. The future isn’t about those people, it’s not about people who are afraid of change, or who resent the implication that they’re afraid of change. It’s about the younger generation to whom the hobby is best for anyway, who don’t have our hangups, don’t have our assumptions or experience and to them, an iPhone or something like it will be something they take for granted. Sure, some people won’t be able to afford one. Doesn’t matter. Enough people will. More than enough. And they get cheaper all the time. Eventually, just like cellphones now, Smartphones will be free. Augmented reality is happening.
The technology is here, the people have it. What’s important, the real question you should be asking yourself–forget all this other stuff, it’s going to happen whether you like it or not–the real problem someone’s going to crack sooner or later is; what would a game developed with this technology as its assumption look like?
D&D assumed you’ve be able to get your hands on a book, a pencil, and some dice. Some lead minis and some graph paper. Nothing that couldn’t have been done in 1888 or 1792. What will a game that assumes everything on the list above look like?
I don’t know. I imagine it’ll look a little bit like D&D does now, except you’ll be looking at the table through a Smartphone’s screen, things will move and be animated and make sounds, and you’ll never have to look anything up because the Smartphone handles all the rules for you. It won’t be like playing a video game. It’ll be like imagining a D&D session. You’ll still sit around a table, you’ll still play with your friends, you’ll probably still push little figures around on a grid. But the figures will be plastic pieces with RFID chips in them. You won’t have to worry about your view of the table or the action because you can change the view, pan around, zoom in, explode it, on your Smartphone.
So how do we get there? We forget the book, we deal with the technology in front of us. Then what? What is the Step by Step Guide to the Future? Here it is. Tell your friends. 
- First, give your rules away. Free, here they are. Here’s an iPhone app that runs your game for you. I don’t mean, like, rolls dice for you, or tracks hit points, I mean the Smartphone RUNS the game for you. It knows all the rules, it watched you move your minis (or markers) around the battlemat, and you just told it what Power or Ability or Action you wanted to use or take and it resolved it for you AND communicated the result to everyone else. In fact after a generation or two, you probably won’t even know what the “rules” are any more than you know the underlying design behind your favorite video game.
- Second, do whatever it takes to get people playing your game. The old model was Selling More Books = Making More Money. That’s gone. Already gone. The future is more people playing = making more money. This is scary for some people, but it’s working. It’s the “Our business model is no business model” model and the fact is, scary as it is to people used to traditional planning and cashflow, it’s the future. KCRW instincted their way to success by just giving their content away. At a time when no one knew how to make the internet make money for them, they just went with their instincts. Give it away. You can listen to all their shows online. So far everyone who’s worried about the money first, has lost. KCRW got people listening first and worried about the money second. One of the most influential stations in the country, and they’re more successful now because people listen online all over the world–rather than just Ad Execs in L.A. who put the songs they hear on Morning Becomes Eclectic into their commercials–and become ‘subscribers,’ which is to say they DONATE money for content they were getting free anyway. Now, the future of the hobby isn’t donations, I’m not saying that, I’m just saying you can start with “get everyone onboard” and worry about monetizing later.
- Sell your content. No, I don’t mean your fifty pages of history for your setting. I mean new classes, new skills, powers, gear. Stuff your players can use. Stuff they can play with. Don’t look at me like that, this is what everyone’s been doing anyway, just very badly. The hobby has always been predicated on getting people to buy the next chunk of content, but in book form. Your strength is not the paper or the binding, your strength is the content you create. That’s your business model. Give the game away, charge for Bitz. Your audience will be fine with it, they’re ok with micropayments
- Use existing technology to enhance the play experience. The industry has always relied on technology, it’s just that the technology was printing and desktop publishing. Now that the technology has changed, the industry has to. That’s the AR. Look, the good news is, you don’t have to develop this technology. Apple already spent billions developing the iPhone and they’re practically giving away the right to make the software. It costs less to become a developer now as some RPG products! And probably if you’re reading this and you’re an existing RPG developer, you’re not the guy. That’s the bad news. It’s not going to be the forty-something guy who develops this game, it’s the college kid who already has the iPhone SDK and has a great idea and is just doing it.
Everyone in the business knows their strength is the rules and the content, but they don’t behave that way. If they did, they’d give the rules away and charge for the content. Instead of they behave like the paper, the ink, and the binding are their strength. And that’s what they charge for. They behave that way for a lot of reasons, but one of them is the fact that those are expensive elements. It’s expensive to print a book. So it becomes important, though as I’ve explained you don’t need either. You don’t need the book, and you don’t need the expense. Give away the rules, charge for the content. Use existing technology your target demo already has and develop a cheap app that facilitates and enhances play.
The lesson here is not “Augmented Reality is going to change tabletop gaming.” AR is just one component of it. The fact that all the players in the target demo will live with and on their personal mobile web devices complete with cameras and social networking is the lesson. The fact that they’ll pay you $5 for a new class or race is the lesson.
Let’s imagine you love the Old School gaming ethos. Meditate on it for a minute. How much of that experience was a result of the actual book? Not the art. There’ll always be art, even though it might be 3D and animated. I think you’ll find very little of your experience was the actual physical book. It might have been the language, sure, but that can be whatever you want it to be. Most of all, it was an attitude. An ethos. A point of view. That never has to change. There’s no reason you can’t use this technology to run Encounter Critical.
In the end, which this is, the rebuttal to this is not: “here’s why the technology doesn’t matter.” Because there’s nothing you can do about the technology, it’s happening anyway without you. The rebuttal is; “No, that’s not what a game that takes this technology for granted will look like…THIS is what it will look like.”
And then go out and do it.
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July 10th, 2009 at 5:17 pm
Sure it did. Sundog, Oblivion, Warcraft & StarCraft, Age of Empires, Jade Empire, Mass Effect, Bioshock. Those are RPGs and war games. They haven’t gotten to the point where you can do "anything" yet (their rules adjudicators don’t "interpret", so you can’t do things like the Marvel Superheroes power stunts). But they implement the game and rule sets and they set up scenarios (taking the place of the human that needs to prep outside of the game time). It has changed the way the current generation is playing games. The flaw is thinking that "Tabletop Gaming" isn’t competing with computer gaming and console gaming (and movies, literature, model making, hockey, etc). It’s all vying for that entertainment budget (time and dollars). Beyond that, I don’t really disagree with you. And, the reality is that computer game expansion packs and Rock Band downloadable songs are the model you’re extolling. People are already doing what you’ve suggested. * Give away the rules: When you buy Mass Effect, you aren’t buying the rules, you’re buying the scenarios. You’re paying Bioware to be your GM. * Get people playing: Free demos = giving away part of the content. * Sell your content: see bullet 1 above. Also, Mass Effect had an expansion to buy. $5 for something that was essentially a single encounter. * Use existing tech: Bioware didn’t make the XBox. At this point, if you aren’t doing this, you’re already behind the curve.
July 11th, 2009 at 1:23 am
I don’t need books to roleplay. Most of my roleplaying career I’ve been playing homebrewed games. I certainly don’t need miniatures, races, or classes to roleplay. I don’t even need rules; freeforming works.
The industry will change. Roleplaying games may change. But roleplaying, in and of itself, is quite special; before something can project my thoughts and imagination to other people better than language can, roleplaying, the fundamental activity, will not significantly change. Maybe there will be some hybrid forms, but sheer flexibility of language and description and imagination is very, very hard to beat.
(I’m 21, but old-fashioned.)
July 11th, 2009 at 6:13 am
Tommi: It’s heartening to hear you say that, but you are vastly outnumbered by the tiny fraction of World of Warcraft players who roleplay in that medium. I think it’s because more people find their imaginations supported by rules (to say nothing of millions of dollars of art assets) that roleplaying-with-rules is more popular than drama-improv. And certainly, inasmuch that while playing these games, people will still presumably talk with one another via text or voice (or selecting icons from a list), there will be an activity of which you could still say "That’s still roleplaying." But unfortunately, we can’t sell language.The only thing I would add about the Future of the Table is that some games will be designed to be played asynchronously, or to ignore synchronicity. Turn-based fiction.
July 11th, 2009 at 12:10 pm
KCRW instincted their way to success by just giving their content away. At a time when no one knew how to make the internet make money for them, they just went with their instincts. Give it away. You can listen to all their shows online.
To be fair, you could listen to them for free before that, too.
July 11th, 2009 at 5:54 pm
Not online. You could listen to KCRW live online years before you could any of the L.A. commercial stations.
July 14th, 2009 at 10:50 am
[...] O Inevitável Futuro do Jogo de Mesa É assim que o RPG será no futuro? [...]
July 14th, 2009 at 10:52 am
Well, to play devil’s advocate here…
Though impressive, the reality to author discusses is built upon the foundation that the infrastructure we currently have will remain, and will remain affordable and accessible.
The book/hardcopy versions of games will remain, in my opinion, because they offer a level of simple reliability that electronic options can never trump: they still work when the power goes out. They still work when there’s no good internet connection, or the battery’s running low, or the server’s full, etc. They remain a low-tech option that can be just as entertaining, and they’re much more malleable in comparison—compare the time & number of people it takes to create an adventure for a tabletop game compared to a patch for a computer game.
And, there’s no guarantee that giving away core materials for free and charging for the rest will really work. Some may feel that it’s a fair exchange, while others may feel cheated that they’ve acquired a half-finished product and they need to buy "additions" to get it working properly. Some may feel they could use the free framework & create their own thing. It’s tricky.
I can see potential for what the author proposes. However, it assumes that the status quo will remain so (if not improve).
July 14th, 2009 at 11:01 am
We don’t play RPGs because we’re afraid the power’s going to go out, so the argument that things will stay the way they are because the technology is dependant on electricity is, I think we can agree, spurious.
July 14th, 2009 at 12:06 pm
I think you are making a whole lot of reaching assumptions here, the first of which is that everyone will have these wonderful portable computers on them at all times and that they will want to use them for traditional role playing.
Just because the technology exists doesn’t mean people will use it. Take cookbooks for example. The internet and tv have done wonders for the home cooking industry, no doubt. People were afraid that it might hurt the cook book industry with all these recipes available out there for free. But even now cookbooks are one of the few print industries that continues to /grow/.
In the end this argument is no more valid than the old claims that internet RP would replace table top RP. The iPhone will not become the primary RP tool any more than foot ball will be played with rocket boots.
July 14th, 2009 at 8:41 pm
I was working with a company on a micropayment game for Facebook using a very well known license. (The company folded before the game really got off the ground) Anyway, we had it on pretty reliable info that MafiaWars was generating somewhere around $18 million/year in micropayments. That serious money, and the company behind MafiaWars has 20+ other games generating millions as well basically reskinning the game.RPG’s as we know them are the wargames of our youth. Yes they generate income, but other than D&D and *maybe* World of Darkness (but I doubt it, at least today), none of them are generating anything close to what MafiaWars is doing.
July 14th, 2009 at 8:52 pm
Yeah I’ve seen some numbers on those games and it’s clear to anyone who’s paying attention that people, mostly young people, have no problem spending money to advance their standings.
It’s like anything else. Rock ‘n’ Roll was considered an assault in a cultural war. Now it’s video games. The people who cling to these misconceptions never change their minds. They just die off, and the new generation can’t even really wrap their heads around the idea that anyone got worked up about it in the first place. A lot of older gamers who recall a time when you spent money on a game once and played it as much as you liked, rebel at the idea of micropayments. But they’re old.
The iPhone and WoW are probably going to go to Micropayment models wherein you buy the game and then spend tiny amounts of money for various upgrades.
It’s not the people in their 30s and 40s playing D&D who are going to take face-to-face gaming to the next level, it’s the kids in high school and college now who are already working on it because it’s obvious to them. They’ve already got the mobile devices. I know a lot of people who payed to get the iPhone SDK who may never do anything with it, they just wanted to screw around with it. That’s how easy it is.
And how alien it is to the average tabletop developer or player to whom the idea of just buying an SDK to monkey with it is incomprehensible.
The new generation might not even know of or care about D&D and traditional gaming. They just know they like hanging out with their friends and they all have these incredibly powerful tiny devices. Sooner, rather than later, someone’s going to connect the dots.
July 16th, 2009 at 7:30 am
I don’t doubt that mobile devices are changing the way younger people socialize, and that micropayments are a viable business model for game content.
However, face-to-face gaming is different from electronic table-tops: when you interface with a game by reading or speaking, the action takes place in your imagination. When you play on an electronic table-top, the action takes place on the table-top. Heck, I don’t even use miniatures and a grid, because they spoil my immersion.
So I’ll second Tommi’s comment "(until) something can project my thoughts and imagination to other people better than language can, roleplaying, the fundamental activity, will not significantly change."
Or rather, the kind of game that you could play with an electronic table-top (or any graphical display) does not suit my needs as a gamer. I play RPGs to share an open-ended imaginative space with my friends, not to maneuouver pieces around a grid. The best art department in the world cannot touch the images that a good RPG session conjours in my head.
While I can see how mobile devices and micro-payments may become the normal format for delivering text content to buyers, I don’t see how they can offer anything to enhance the imaginative experience of the gameplay itself.
July 16th, 2009 at 7:47 am
[...] those young whippersnappers are the future of the hobby: The Inevitable Future of Tabletop Gaming The Inevitable Future of Tabletop Gaming | SquareMans D&D: The Lost Art of Adventure Writing & The Death of the Hobby D&D: The Lost Art of [...]
July 16th, 2009 at 2:31 pm
Look, here’s a really simple mind experiment.
Imagine an iPhone app that totally replaces your character sheet. It does everything for you – all the math is just handled. You can do scenario planning. You can add and subtract conditions with simple hotkeys.
Assuming you already had an iPhone, wouldn’t you want this app? Wouldn’t you use this at the table?
Now extend this one step. The DM has an iPhone as well, and using either bluetooth, cell, or 802.11 networking, all the iPhones at the table are integrated for the DM. He can see all the data with flicks of a finger. He can even apply bonuses and penalties, add and subtract conditions with a touch of a button. He has total visibility over the party in a way that’s almost impossible with paper character sheets.
Oh, and he can send and receive "twitter" style text messages with the players (and the players can do the same for each other) when private communication is desired.
Thats <i>evolutionary</i> development. It will happen; or at least it would happen if Wizards would let it happen. And once it happens, the only people who won’t use that tool are grognards who just don’t like using anything other than paper and pencils to game. But most people and most groups would move to this model, since <i>they bought the phones for other purposes</i>. Think about how many people in your gaming groups don’t have smartphones today. And how many will probably get one this year or next? And now realize that every 18 months hereafter, they’ll get twice as good, or half as expensive. How many Moore Cycles does it take before they’re as ubiquitous as pocket calculators and digital watches? 2? 3? We’re talking 2011 technology here folks; this is just around the corner.
Now go <i>revolutionary</i>. That iPhone is running AI software that helps manage the game. It suggets spells, feats, and magic item uses to its player, helping them maximize their character’s impact on the game. For the DM, the app is "running the monsters", making sure that the DM has the same advantages as the players – that the monsters fight, think, and harmonize strategies in ways that a barebrained human just can’t keep up with over time. The app is streaming audio to the wireless sound system in the room, providing tempo-appropriate mood music, occasional background sounds, and theatrical effects. On demand it can stream pages of text (rules, backstories, maps, etc.) to the wireless e-books the players have with them, selected using XML based parsers from on-line libraries of game content. At the end of the session the players can link to a wiki-fied website that has recorded all the action and provided them with notes they can read to remember clues, interesting characters, loose ends, plot hooks, and character development moments for the future.
Tell me you <i>wouldn’t use this</i> if someone gave it to you. Or charged you the nominal fee of a couple of bucks, which would include updates and bug fixes delivered in the background as needed.
Literally the only blocker here is permission from Wizards of the Coast.
RyanD
July 16th, 2009 at 2:39 pm
The reality is, Ryan…a lot of the people reading this *would not* use their phone in the manner you’ve described because they consider the devices *distasteful*.
That’s what I mean when I say, it doesn’t matter what *we* think, we’re the old people. We’ve already aged out of the target demo for the game anyway. It’s our generation, if not actually you and I, who look at these gadgets as unpleasant distractions.
That’s why Who Moved My Cheese. Some people reject and rebel against change *even when it’s demonstrably better for them*.
But, the good news is, this is going to happen anyway. Kids in college now, on summer break, are working on games that presume the players will be A: face to face and B: using some kind of hand-held mobile device.
I think such a thing has the potential to completely obliterate D&D in terms of popularity. I’m thrilled to be around to see it.
July 16th, 2009 at 3:53 pm
Matt, I might have agreed with you 5 years ago. But my eyes have been opened. "Our" generation of gamers is coping just fine with new technology. They are the people playing World of Warcraft and EVE. They are the ones buying iPhones and iPhone apps at crazy rates. They bought into iTunes and created massive libraries of music after Napster closed.
"Our" generation is putting multi-millions of dollars into MafiaWars, and Peggle, and PuzzlePirates, etc.
They may not be the generation that makes the next gaming platform out of these devices (although they may very well sit on the boards of the companies who do and fund them!)
I am pretty optimistic about the adoption rates for technological assistance at the gaming table. I knew it intuitively when we put the character generator into the 3E PHB, and I knew it quantiatively when I saw how many copies of Master Tools got preordered. And that was nearly a decade ago!
I think that if the tools were here today a lot of people would use them, and by next year, they’d be common, and by the year after that, if you sat down to play D&D without your iPhone apps, you would be ostracized by the people who were using them.
In this case, I’m bullish on potential in tabletop gaming.
RyanD
July 16th, 2009 at 8:15 pm
I don’t see why handheld devices are the optimal choice. While it’s nice to have a functional mobile device for when you’re out and about, a table top rpg game is a planned event in an indoor setting. Players would just bring a laptop to the game to have a much nicer screen size…
But the exact form of the technology is a moot point. Clearly technology offers some significant advantages to the game and will definitely start to revolutionize things. I already would never conceive of DMing a game without my laptop handy for accessing notes and using combat managing software.
The real revolution I’d like to see occur, and that I think will occur, is to improve game balance by storing rules electronically and frequently updating them as issues arise. Just like patches in MMORPG’s, different classes/races/etc… could be quickly nerfed or adjusted when unbalanced combinations are discovered.
July 17th, 2009 at 7:40 am
[...] am curious, did you come across the augmented reality (AR) meme like I did from Square Mans’ blog (link) or is this something that you and/or Paizo have been thinking about for awhile? If that wasn’t [...]
July 17th, 2009 at 9:53 am
[...] am curious, did you come across the augmented reality (AR) meme like I did from Square Mans’ blog (link) or is this something that you and/or Paizo have been thinking about for awhile? If that wasn’t [...]
July 17th, 2009 at 10:04 am
I have to agree with Ryan. We old fogies are adopting technology en masse. I <b>already</b> have people in my D&D game doing many of the things Ryan is talking about.The iPhone is changing everything. We’re on the verge of something very, very interesting.
July 17th, 2009 at 11:14 am
Why does this inevitable future sound like something from Wired magazine circa 1995?
We’ve had computer RPGs just about as long as we’ve had tabletop RPGs. Back in the 80s there were people who experimented with mixing their tabletop games with digital dice rollers, computer programs for building characters, or even programs that would do all sorts of complex math for your highly detailed combat systems. People have been playing forum based games with hybrid forum / tabletop / LARP gameplay since the 80s (with BBSs) and 90s (MUDs, MUSHes, MOOs, etc).
This stuff might be new *to you*… but when people start talking about the "future" or tabeltop RPGs it usually has a weird retro-future quality to it. World of Warcraft *is* that past future of RPGs. Just like the Great Train Robbery is the past future of Theatre. But just like Film didn’t make Theatre obsolete, MMOs don’t make tabletop games obsolete. Lots of people still buy the boardgame monopoly even though you can play it online with all sorts of added visual effects.
July 17th, 2009 at 11:15 am
You’ve already got iplay4e.com out there, with iPhone sized character sheets and the just released full sized sheets. I use the full size sheet on my netbook, and click through all my powers before the game so my browser caches the Compendium entries for them all. It takes up about the same table space as a character sheet, and has all my D&D books on it as well. If players make their characters public, the DM can grab each characters sheet and put the party on his laptop to check their HP, defenses, etc.
Add monster sheets to that and initiative tracking (which if the iplay4e folks aren’t doing, someone is) and a campaign wiki, and you’ve already got the prototype for a Generation Y (or Z) D&D game. Add in a DM controllable map display that can be easily shared with the players and updated in realtime, and you’re just about there.
AR at the moment is still in the gimick stages, and I think for RPG purposes will be until smartphones are a bit more ubiquitous, and more importantly until display tech migrates to HUD. There’s plenty of work being done there, but ubiquity is probably going to have to wait for the next generation, but if Natal and other projects take off, I can’t imagine heads-up displays (eyeglasses or monocles) not becoming ubiquitous.
One little correction: you don’t need rfids for AR, and in fact the range on them generally isn’t good enough or fine enough for that. Instead you use AR tags, 2d barcode-like images that the camera can pick up and overlay. So your mini at that point would be something you print out at home. As would the dungeon. Imagine dungeon tiles with a code-tag in the center. As the DM lays them out they appear in your field of view as full 3d constructs.
So there’s my vision: The future gaming group looks like any other gathering of friends, huddled together talking back and forth and occasionally poking at their phones. The phones are their books, their dice, their map and their character sheet. You may hear an occasional disembodied voice. That’s John. His bus was late, so he’s joining in remotely until he can get there in person. Or you may not see them at all, because they’re all joining in remotely, sitting in front of their webcams at home. The generation after that, you won’t even see the phones. It’ll look like just a bunch of people sitting around making up stories together.. and that’s the important bit.
July 18th, 2009 at 4:01 am
[...] The Inevitable Future of Tabletop Gaming | SquareMans (tags: boardgame rpg computers augmentedreality) [...]
July 18th, 2009 at 9:50 am
City of Heroes/Villains has moved to a micropayment model for costume expansions. The developers also let the player base know that these paid for expansions allow them to increase staff so they can add more player requested features into the game, like the upcoming power customization feature for issue 16. I know several players who buy the expansions with no intent of using them. They buy them to fund the additions they want to see in the game.
I’m 41, and don’t have a problem with the microtransactions. I have seen some pen and paper games following that model, Evil Hat Productions springs to mind.
July 18th, 2009 at 1:34 pm
@stuart – adoption curves for technology often look like hockey sticks. There is a very long period of seemingly flat activity where it looks like nothing is really happening, then suddenly the graph flexes, and shoots towards the vertical. If you are in the graph early a lot of things seem obvious and boring (or at least easily anticipated). But if you are not on the graph at the beginning, when it flexes, it seems like the change has come from nowhere.
I never believed (and still don’t believe) in the concept of laptops at the gaming table. Some DMs use them to good effect and I say "bully!" but for the greater number of players they are either a distraction, or worse, they actually get in the way of running a fun and efficient game. The thing about the iPhone is that is it imposes discipline on the situation. The apps have to have a fairly high quality or Apple won’t let them into the store. And because they are limited in screen size, processor power, and "resources", the designers have to learn to be really good at maximizing their value.
They are also becoming ubiquitous. I remember in the early 90s when I learned that something like 80% of peole who read Dragon magazine had CD-ROMs, I just about fell out of my chair. At the time, the overall penetration rate for CD-ROM was about 15%. And yet virtually everyone I knew who played D&D regualrly did in fact have a CD-ROM drive. Both statistically and ancedotaly, that fact seemed confirmed. The people who read Dragon were also on the internet (especially Usenet) really early as well. I think a similar thing has happend with the iPhone. I supsect adoption rates are vastly higher within the D&D population than they are in the population as a whole. That makes for a very attractive target market.
I agree with Mearls. The iPhone is a game changing thing. People who have been on the graph for a long time don’t see what all the fuss is about, but if you’re thinking about this from a business perspective, that inflextion point is critically important to understanding the opportunity. And unlike Wired in 1996, which just had to guess at the adoption curves and Moore Cycles, we’re lucky enough to be able to hold the thing in our hands, and say "yup, it’s time. Here we go!"
This really is one of those moments in history where things can change. It will be fun to watch and see if they do.
RyanD
July 19th, 2009 at 4:11 am
@Ryan: I don’t think this is about objectively looking at adoption curves and moore cycles as much as you being jazzed about your new iphone.
<a href="http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/patterson/48631">BlackBerry Curve overtakes iPhone as most popular smartphone</a>
It’s also worth pointing out that you no longer work in the tabletop gaming industry… you’re in the online gaming industry now.
July 19th, 2009 at 9:57 am
Agree with Tommi.. absolutely disagree with the article for a very simple reason: technology is a medium, and the "storytelling" on board games are an ability that could be used through this medium, but technology have taken decades to improve the transmission capacity (and freedom) of narrative (storytelling), unfortanetely, It still in a very basic level.
Board games are not just pieces and dices. Videogames are not just storytelling.
July 19th, 2009 at 2:00 pm
When i am the GM i do use my Notebook. I carry around most books as pdf with me, have the prewritten adventure, and can easily make lists (mostly for Initiative in combat).
However, as a player, i don’t. The possibilities to do something else besides playing, or waiting for the GM to finish with another player, prove to be a distraction, and therefore i would not want my players to use them.
Also, for me a TT RPG is still a game played face to face with my players. Sure, modern technology makes it obsolete to be in the same room, but RP still involves mimick and gestures.
The miniatures i use are all painted TT miniatures, often taking me 5-20 hours of work. Makes it more ‘special’, since i try to create miniatures who really suit the PCs.
For me, the TT RPG will exist a little longer. Sure, new toys will be used, but the hobby will still be picked because we want to be face-to-face, not wanting a computer stuck in our faces again, and because we like to create our own stories/legends.
July 19th, 2009 at 2:14 pm
@stuart – it’s true, I do have a new iPhone, I just picked it up last weekend. Its sitting right next to my Blackberry.
Of course, I also had an original iPhone, and before that I had an MDA phone, and before that I had a Treo, and before that I had the Kyrocera smartphone, and before that I had a Newton 100, and before that I had a Kaypro II. So I’ve been on the hockey stick a goddamn long time. I feel entitled to an informed opinion that "the iPhone is a game changing device".
I’m staring at a couple of boxes of our next TRPG, "Geist", which you’ll be able to pick up in stores later in August and at GenCon. One of the reasons I’m at work this weekend is to complete a report on sales trends for our various game lines in advance of a marketing meeting we’re having next week to talk about how to make a splash at GenCon and Dragon*Con, to make sure our fans know that we’re still in love with tabletop gaming and that we intend to support them until the bindings rot off the spines of their books (which would be eerily appropriate, in some kind of twisted way).
I’ll let you know when my career path makes my opinion irrelevant about tabletop games, but we haven’t reached that point quite yet.
RyanD
July 19th, 2009 at 3:42 pm
@Ryan: I stand corrected – I didn’t know you were involved with the White Wolf side of things after they got bought out by CCP games. I had a look at the Geist preview PDF – it looks very good.
I still think you’re overestimating the impact of the iPhone though. It’s a good device but the odds of everyone in a gaming group (outside of Cupertino) having an iPhone isn’t good. Even everyone in a gaming group having a smartphone of any brand and wanting to use it at the table is far from universal amongst RPG players. A lot of people play tabletop games because of the unplugged/analog nature of the game.
Is there enough of a market to sell iPhone / Smartphone users an app? Sure – most definitely. Should smaller publishers take a risk and design tabletop games assuming these devices will be used? Dodgey…
July 20th, 2009 at 10:23 am
Go to labs.iplay4e.com (for the up-and-coming stuff), search through for a character, and look at both the default (iphone) and the full-screen interface options. This is done outside of Wizards (with their knowledge but not assistance). Then think about what could be done from the inside…
July 20th, 2009 at 1:02 pm
RPGs aside, imagine the possibilities with tabletop wargames of the GW variety. Unlike RPG books, I don’t think physical models will ever entirely go the way of the dodo. There is a hobby and way of life devoted to assembling and painting physical models that would be hard to model via AR. So no, not the way of the dodo; let’s say the way of the bald eagle instead. Once prevalent, now diminished in number. For everybody else, people who are attracted to wargames but don’t have the time and/or money to invest in physical miniatures, AR-friendly wargaming would be incredible. Small, flat paper or plastic chits that when viewed through a Smartphone appear in 3D? With all the rules built-in and a tool that shows you how far each model can move in a turn? Incredible. What I wouldn’t pay to see a 3D Great Unclean One heaving and burbling on the tabletop!
July 20th, 2009 at 11:37 pm
Nice article and exquisite comments! = )
My opinion: Technology can be a great addition to a tabletop game – it can handle rules, dice rolls, initiatives and other boring/complex stuff. I’ve even coded myself a little SW for this, and I think this is the future of tabletop: computer-aided RPG.
But think of the aid itself: it aid us in which way? Well, in my opinion, such help seems like a great idea because it takes all rules away and leaves us with more time and concentration for the important stuff: the adventure, the game story, the drama, etc… Or in a nutshell: it helps us roleplay. And after all, we are discussing RPGs.
So yes, technology hasn’t helped much in tabletop gaming yet. I believe it will sooner or later. But ideas like Ryan Dancey’s "revolutionary" ones won’t happen. Computers and AI aren’t just good enough to handle RPGs – is there a single game session where the players don’t get off the planned track, for the DMs pain? Today’s best AI is a long way away from handling that kind of thing. No, AI will only be of any help with RPG when computers are able to create and tell stories – by which time, we will be able to invite robots to play with us.
So, yes, tabletop gaming has places for technology, but as Tommi and Rob have said above "(until) something can project my thoughts and imagination to other people better than language can, roleplaying, the fundamental activity, will not significantly change".
Last remark, for Brian888: in the case of wargames, I’d rather play 100% virtual ones. It has all the benefits you suggested for augmented-reality wargames, plus you can play online/multiplayer, save the game and continue later, nice music, etc. Check out "Battle for Wesnoth" and "UFO: Alien Invasion".
July 20th, 2009 at 11:48 pm
The iPhone is a game changer but being tethered to the AT&T network is a problem. I am not going to buy a phone just to play d&d at my table with a smart phone.
Once the iPhone has broken free of AT&T’s lack-luster network and available with any carrier then it will be the unstoppable force.
Until then, you all enjoy being on the bleeding edge.
On the upside Apples little bundle of tech joy has forced so many other companies to get their own product up to snuff.
July 23rd, 2009 at 7:24 pm
iPod Touch has many of the same capabilities and is not tethered to ATT.
July 24th, 2009 at 8:57 am
"Until then, you all enjoy being on the bleeding edge."
I have a Windows Mobile smartphone. When I browse forums to look for cool software to use, I am constantly bombarded by apps that make Windows Mobile behave like an iPhone or are apps that are "just like <some other app> on the iPhone."
The iPhone is not bleeding edge. It is the standard by which all others are measured. Now, because it happens to be the best at what it does, people make the easy mistake of assuming that it is bleeding edge, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.
July 29th, 2009 at 8:04 am
Heh. In any computer implementation of an RPG, there will be a finite number of ways to get from one side of a door to the other. Hell, there’s often just one way.
In a tabletop game, the number ways to bypass any door are unlimited and still being discovered. The essence of tabletop is that, as GM, you can never hope to predict what the players will try at any point ahead of time, and so there’s absolutely no hope a programmer can cover every idea from every potential player.
Computer games are great, but they can’t be a proper RPG, and no app can hope to handle the capacity of human imagination when faced with a challenge, not even so far as getting to the other side of the first door the players come to.
July 29th, 2009 at 8:23 am
Is it possible that we simply have not yet figured out a way to properly provide the player with the infinite choice that you speak of in a computer RPG? Maybe a clever design could allow a player to change the rules dynamically as they play, to account for things the designer failed to consider.
July 29th, 2009 at 2:52 pm
[...] The industry will change. Roleplaying games may change. But roleplaying, in and of itself, is quite special; before something can project my thoughts and imagination to other people better than language can, roleplaying, the fundamental activity, will not significantly change. Maybe there will be some hybrid forms, but sheer flexibility of language and description and imagination is very, very hard to beat.” [lähde] [...]
August 2nd, 2009 at 9:05 am
Geoff. No.
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.
August 8th, 2009 at 1:29 am
I think there are underlying assumptions about the psychology of gaming here. If your group is full of techy folk with good disposable income playing a highly tactical RPG like D&D, maybe the scenario is good for you. For other people, the idea of holding a bit of electronics in front of your face instead of interacting with the other people round the table will be horrible.
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.
August 26th, 2009 at 6:30 am
Hey Squareman,
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.
August 27th, 2009 at 11:24 pm
So, you think table top games will end up being just like a turn based version of Super Smash Brothers: Brawl? Except that instead of being huddled around a tv, and wii, controllers in hand, it’ll be around a table, controllers in hand?
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.
December 9th, 2009 at 3:53 am
I think the problem here is assuming that in this brave new world our shadows are still morbidly darkening some tabletop. If books, and indeed all our fundamental concepts of roleplaying, are already obsolete, why are we desperately clinging to the quaint notion of being chained to a table where everyone is face to face? It seems to me that a system of freely distributed content, or purchasable in convenient doses, would quickly become something that wouldn’t need a real time gathering, either at a table with books or sitting in front of a computer. It would be on the go, endlessly mutable and modded, the traditional GM would be negated, and players would be free to enjoy the experience as superficially or obsessively as they want – the potential for anyone to be the GM, in a way, by personalizing the game within whatever their social network might be. Or maybe sorta like a glorified chess correspondence, but with more lulz.
December 9th, 2009 at 9:34 pm
Human beings are social animals and that’s not going to change for another few million years. People enjoyed sitting around and playing with stories thousands of years before books. Books are in no way necessary or sufficient for the RPG experience. People like getting together and playing games and will always enjoy doing so. Even games that can be played online still have a high (30%) percentage of people who play "couch" multiplayer.
December 23rd, 2009 at 11:41 am
But being one of those older gamers should not prevent us from looking at the hobby, and understanding what age group is best suited for the time and social commitments. So its a young person’s game.Right, because designing an RPG with different social requirements is completely impossible. </sarcasm>
January 8th, 2010 at 10:07 am
The Inevitable Future of Tabletop Gaming | SquareMans…
This makes me want to design a new, technology based game!…
February 1st, 2010 at 7:21 am
Ryan, the "revolutionary" app you described is down right insulting. It trivializes both the role of the player and the role of the GM to the point that you might as well have neither, and just let the game play itself. Fortunately it’s also not technologically feasible until sapient AIs are invented.
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?
February 23rd, 2010 at 12:58 pm
I don’t think inevitable is the right word. I think ‘possible’ is a more accurate word. I work in the HVAC industry as a webmaster and System designer. I am living, and designing, the systemic changes that you are describing. The concept is called the ‘Long Tail’ marketing model.
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.