N00b Intro + Discussion Topic: Integrating Technology into Roleplaying
Hello! I'm a not only a new poster to this subreddit, but a new reddit user in general, so please bear with me as figure out how everything works. I've been lurking for a week or so and have to say that I like what I see here. You folk seem to be doing a good job at keeping things constructive and encouraging and not defending into toxicity. I'm hoping that this community will help me with actually turning the design ideas I've been developing on my own into a functional game. However, I figure it would be pretty rude of me to start posting mechanics and asking for feedback without having otherwise contributed, so I'm going to post a few discussion topics on things I've been ruminating on for a while now. In addition hopefully giving us all some food for thought, I have the ulterior motive of using these to explain my design philosophies and goals as a lead in to talking about my game, but I don't think that this should detract from these posts in the end.
The first thing I would like to discuss is integrating technology into games. It's not uncommon to find people using .pdfs, computer-generated character sheets or maps, Dice-rolling apps, etc. but does anyone know of any 'table-top' RPGs that are designed with technology in mind? One of the biggest concerns about design seems to be about keeping things simple enough to not bog down play flipping through rule books, rolling too many dice, making complicated calculations, or keeping track of data that is followed inconsistently. While this made sense 40 years ago and for most of the history of the hobby, we now live in a world of mobile devices, web-apps, and wifi. Why are we still constrained to using paper, pencils, books, and dice? Shouldn't a player be able to create a character in an app that would reference all of its data, create formulae for mechanics with the character data plugged-in with RNG built in to give you the results with minimal time needed to execute? I'll go even further. Shouldn't it be possible, with a good enough interface for a GM to have all character (both PC and NPC) in a database, potentially freeing a player from the need to look at a character sheet at all? Couldn't technology allow for new play experiences based on PCs having imperfect knowledge of themselves or their capabilities? I look forward to good discussion in the comments.
Posted Feb 22, 2016, 5:12 AM UTC