-abs prefers the battlemat, with it’s pre-drawn grid, to a whiteboard, but has to admit he loves minis and so wouldn’t like this even if it was cheaper

Also for that screen to be a true DnD screen it would have to have industrial strength protection against crumbs, spilled beer and soda and chinese food.

But damn why didn’t i ever think of that whiteboard idea

I dunno, maybe everyone played like that, I didn’t really play a lot after that group so it could have been the done-thing. For me though, before that was graph-paper and pencils, so it was pretty revolutionary to my sheltered, innocent brain.

I also know that for us, we commonly water-down or beef up our NPC’s to fit the situation, how much of that can be done on a computer system? Is it a rule junkie? I’ve even had times where I’ve adjusted an NPC during a battle to make more/less challenging… how much of that kind of stuff can you do?

Finally, as a mom I have to ask- how easy is it to keep that screen clean? Lord knows all we eat during D&D is chips… and soda or mixed drinks… so does the screen, with hundreds of fingerprints on it, stand up to soda spills, greasy marks, etc? And how easy is it to store away when we’re not using it?!

Other than those things, very cool.

Will this device have applications that can create maps, sheets, dungeons, worlds? How creative can one get with this device? What are some of its limitations and such? When and where are we able to test it for our selves?

From what I can see you are on the right road here. Keep going and show us what your truly made of with this device.

DarkReign

#2: That’s what CMU’s Field Robotics department is working on.

I even have my own whiteboard.

ANYTHING is better than graph-paper (and miniatures are too expensive for any campaign with more than 10 enemies)

I think that this is incredible for things like showing pictures to set the scene, or for maps. As a DM who often spends far too long drawing things out on the battle mat, this would be a great time saver. I think using the system to keep track of monster movement, powers, animating fireballs and so on is overkill. And I think the die rolling is also an unnecessary step. If you are adding complexity to the system so that a simple task involves more steps or takes longer without bringing positive change to the result, that is not a good use of technology.

And people like their dice.

Only thing is, you could buy a hell of a lot of miniatures with what it costs to buy the table. And these things don’t seem to have many uses, to be perfectly honest. This is the first real use I’ve seen. So thats a pretty damn costly game of D&D.

Then again, that was 4th ed, so they’re definately playing the wrong game.

Overall, the touchscreen surface concept is very cool, though.

And the white board – yeah – never thought of it, but it’s a brilliant idea. I *did* play a game once where the DM had the dungeon drawn out on a large board and covered it with a tacky paper to hide the layout. As we progressed through the dungeon, he would cut away portions of the paper with a utility knife. Pretty neat.

The best part of the presentation was the stuff up front about the slide show and the world map. Those are areas where you were doing things you probably can’t do as well. Also, I’d think that the relevant control feature isn’t a radial menu with a set of pre-planned actions players can perform, but rather a character sheet (or some equivalent listing of character information, and this could be a place where the table shines) that each player can use as a method of initiating the relevant dice rolls.

I really must agree that pen and paper are essential to the original games. If these projects bear fruit, my real interest would be in new game systems born with multi-touch function in mind.

Our group spent $15 on a 50 page big graph easel pad with one inch squares. The DM would draw his maps in marker beforehand and we’d just use lead during play. Between sessions we could roll it up and put it behind the couch. But really we only ended up using that because the regular dry-erase battle map was too small.

I’m unsure as to whether this would be a help or a hindrance in a game – as opposed to a player stating ‘I cast fireball’, rolling to hit, rolling damage, and the GM going ‘it goes woosh and the wolf dies!’