Even before I first saw the video of
Carnegie Mellon students using the Microsoft Surface
to play roleplaying games, I have been genuinely excited about the potential to have a fully interactive digital game board to use in my role playing an board gaming experiences. The amount of storage space taken up with "dungeon tiles" and terrain on my gaming shelves is more than I'd like. It includes cardboard tiles, printed cardstock tiles, and actual terrain pieces. It would be nice to have a playing surface that projected the images, and only have to have 3-D terrain pieces on my shelf.
The main problem so far seems to be affordability, but based on
this article at Tech Crunch affordability seems to be approaching. The new ePawn pad plans to provide a decent playing area (26") for $400. It also looks like it would be a great surface to play some of those app transitioned board games like "Small World."
What are your thoughts? Are you looking forward to integrated digital/physical gaming?
2 comments:
Pretty cool! My setup is not quite as hightech, but i have a projector hooked up to my PC. I make maps in photoshop (using layers for things like FoW & secret doors) and I project down onto an old kitchen table that I covered with whiteboard paint. It works pretty well and saves me from keeping lots of terrain on hand, but requires a lot more prep time to PS the maps:)
I'm similar to revderrick. I use MapTool for the maps and running the monsters, and I project the map onto the table using a portable rig that I built (so I can use it at conventions and the FLGS). I've been really happy with it.
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