Kingofpain89 wrote:
Call me crazy....but I think this is where RPG's are headed at some point.  No more books (and eventually no more pdf's), no more box sets, no more dice, and no more Cheeto and Dr. Pepper stains on your modules.  It would have to be done the right way though.  Just another MMO isnt going to work.  It has to be big and it has to cater to pretty much everyone.  Which makes me believe that there is no way Hasbro/WotC could pull it off.  Someone with some serious cashflow, imagination, and initiative will have to do it for it to work.

Except that it's already been done to death.  D&D Online already exists.  And Neverwinter Nights.  And the 4th Edition electronic table top thing.  And those are drops in the ocean.  There's already lots of choices out there.  I can play any of those right now.  Or WOW, or Everquest, or Torchlight.  Or Diablo.  Or Dungeon Siege, or Dragon Age, or Elder Scrolls, Etc., Etc.

There's literally hundreds of Sword and Sorcery PC and console games out there to choose from already.  A new D&D game would be just one more of these.

What sets D&D apart in my mind is the face to face, dice rolling,  table top experience. Especially now when there's a flood of electronic options out there, that is what makes it different.

sauromatian wrote:
To some extent, they don't have to interest the 14-year-old, just the older relative who buys gifts. Look in a toystore at all the obsolete stuff: railroads, slotcars, lincoln logs. The gift-buyers are stimulated by their own nostalgia, hence the current red box with retro art.

Most kids I know nowadays would look at you with absolute hatred if you got them Lincoln Logs for a gift.

FormCritic wrote:
Gleemax was a term from the game, Magic, The Gathering.

(I don't know for sure, but I think it means, "To buy more cards than your opponent and thus max out some sort of wiener cardgame gambit.")

Gleemax was personified as an alien brain in a tank...somehow dominating the minds of young gamers.  

The idea was for Gleemax to form the bridge for pathetic card floppers to migrate from their kid's game over to Dungeons and Dragons as part of an online pan-gaming experience.  Gleemax was the name of a rather amateurish website that was supposed to facilitate the card game/virtual dungeon environment no one wanted to enter.  The supporting technology looked at least 15 years behind modern computer gaming standards.

Older gamers responded with open-mouthed astonishment that something so lame and impossibly stupid could actually seem like a good idea to game executives with an intelligence greater than that of a five year-old.

It was difficult to find words contemptuous enough to describe Gleemax.  No level of utter scorn seemed sufficient.

(The English language just can't express how stupid Gleemax was.  The only possiblity seems to be to use the word "gleemax" itself to describe something preposterous that someone else wants you to take seriously.)

Younger gamers apparently responded with yawns.

Gleemax was such an impossibly dumb idea that WOTC quietly put it aside and fired their computer people.

Epilogue:  I have one of the sponge Gleemax brains in my collection.  A nice Acaeum member mailed one to me.  I keep it as a memento of a truly great dumbass idea.

We were at the Gencon (2007?) where Gleemax debuted.  To say there was a collective yawn of indifference is selling it short. Everyone present predicted failure, which seems to be obvious now, that actual gamers know more about what WOTC should do with their company than anyone responsible for Gleemax, or working at WOTC at the time.

I have two of the sponge brains also, which is two more real brains than anyone working on the Gleemax project had in their heads.

Mike B.

Agent Cooper wrote:

Except that it's already been done to death.  D&D Online already exists.  And Neverwinter Nights.  And the 4th Edition electronic table top thing.  And those are drops in the ocean.  There's already lots of choices out there.  I can play any of those right now.  Or WOW, or Everquest, or Torchlight.  Or Diablo.  Or Dungeon Siege, or Dragon Age, or Elder Scrolls, Etc., Etc.

There's literally hundreds of Sword and Sorcery PC and console games out there to choose from already.  A new D&D game would be just one more of these.

What sets D&D apart in my mind is the face to face, dice rolling,  table top experience. Especially now when there's a flood of electronic options out there, that is what makes it different.

I think the problem with the games you mention is that none of them are "D&D", as we know it. Even Neverwinter Nights, which was close, doesn't replicate the experience (but was a great game, with downloadable modules that sometimes were quite good).   If you want something that is greatness, go back to the Baldur's Gate type experience, and make it completely interactive.  To this day, Baldur's Gate is the closest product to actual Dungeons & Dragons on a computer that has ever been produced, and now  you have technology that leaves it in the dust.

King can correct me if I am wrong, but envision this:  I'm on a long train ride, I pull out my Ipad, and I dial up King, Blackmoor from Canada, and Ron from Hong Kong. We decide on a rules set (say, 1E), and a module  you guys want to go through (S2 White Plume Mountain).  While you guys roll up your characters with 1E AD&D rules, I fiddle with the traditional S2 layout a bit (changing out some monsters and traps, adding some rooms, expanding it to two levels, etc).  Since this module is set in Greyhawk, I pull up the Greyhawk program and have  you guys start out at The City of Greyhawk, so we can play out the entire journey to WPM, random encounters and all.  We can pause the session wherever we leave off and restart when we can all get together again.  Dice rolling, mapping features included, along with the ability to talk amongst ourselves while we play.

Now, this session would give you a COMPLETELY different experience if you wanted to go, say, on a delve of Undermountain in the city of Waterdeep, since that's an entirely different world, with different rule sets.  Or if you wished to adventure in Waterdeep with 2E or 3.5 rules instead of 1E.  Depending on how many add-ons you can buy, you can replicate any experience you choose. I would love if the D&D experience was headed in this direction, but I just don't see it, because of costs involved and the stubborness of WOTC to acknowledge their back catalog or indeed any version of D&D except the one they are pushing at the moment.

Mike B.

The MMORPG approach is a dead end as far as tabletop roleplaying goes. Neverwinter Nights by Bioware came the closest. You can create custom content, have everybody long in, and the referee could possess NPCs or monsters while the computer handed the rest.  The rules followed 3.X fairly faithfully.

The problem is that to create custom content was a pain in the ass to say the least. You didn't have to be a programmer but it helped. In the end most people used Neverwinter Nights to run small MMORPGs.

Much more successful are virtual tabletops.  Unlike MMORPGs the origin of a virtual tabletop lies in whiteboard software, and internet chat gaming. It became fairly popular after VoIP became readily available particularly Skype.

Virtual Tabletops, VTTs work by allowing the referee to display images, sharing dice rolls, and a connection for text chat or voice. This replicates the tabletop experience well. There are differences, some good, some bad. But they are not great.

VTT software been out for a while and many are in their 2nd or 3rd versions.  They often use rulesets which customizes the VTT for a particular game.  This usually takes the form of a automated character sheet that you fill out along with a combat tracker. The better rulesets will add all the correct modifiers to your dice roll when you roll a particular attack or skill.

A VTT could use a 3D environment as a battleboard. But it would be like a 3D chess game. It is fancy way of moving miniature like pieces around a fancy environment.  The biggest problem with adding 3d will be to make flexible and usable enough for a non-programmer.  So far attempts at doing this wind up feeling like you are in a limited shoebox.

In contrast a regular VTT can take any image including ones you scan and use it. This approach is proving to be far more flexible and approachable than the 3D route.

And for those who don't use battleboards or minitatures the VTTs still has benefits in allowing the referee to see other players character sheet and dice rolls. As well as sharing any text or image props you use for your game.

What set VTT back is the same thing that sets back most internet collaboration. People simply prefer gaming face to face. To see who they are talking. Video chats doesn't really overcome this.  However VTTs are becoming a useful adjunct to tabletop RPG because it allow games between people that can't otherwise physically get together. For example I heard of games involving people in the US, Canada, gaming with folks from Europe.

benjoshua wrote:Seriously, face to face is the way to go.  

So because your normal gaming group has real life issues to deal with, live on opposite sides of the country, and perhaps one of them lost the use of their legs and can no longer meet regularly, you would rather play face-to-face once or twice a year (if that) than meetup in a digital environment once a week?

Think of the possibilities.  What if someone could design a virtual gaming table that you could tailor to your whim?  You could meet up in a tavern common room, a forest glade, a musty wine cellar, or a dimly lit cavern.

And I dont know about you, but a couple of the people I play with have farts that smell like three day old corpses.  

Prufrock wrote:
Would you care to explain how you know what a three day old corpse smells like?  I'm assuming you meant a three day old human corpse.


Martin

I grew up in a rural town.  Every once in awhile one of the ranchers that lived in the area would lose a cow, sheep, or horse to an accident.  After a few days in the hot sun they would bloat up like a balloon.  A friend of mine worked for one of these ranchers and we got to watch him try and pull a dead cow out of a ravine.  At some point when he was hauling it out, the innards burst due to the pressure and all the gas that was sealed up came rushing out.  You can't imagine the stench.

Hope you had breakfast already.