By the time your average Dungeons and Dragons player has failed his third death save and gone off to that great dungeon in the sky, he or she's spent nearly $800,000 on miniatures and various-sided dice. (Trust us, it adds up.) Keeping that number in mind, we'd like to turn your attention to an alternative to tangible tabletop gaming: Surfacescapes, an in-development application for the Microsoft Surface, which attempts to recreate the D&D experience on an outrageously large touch screen. As the Surface currently costs $12,500, the lifetime savings would be abundant.
Sure, there's a few kinks to work out -- the dice roll a little slow for our tastes, though this would make saving throws infinitely more dramatic. There's also the small matter of how introducing this technology into the game might diminish the whole "role-playing" element. If used just for combat encounters, it could be a powerful streamlining tool. For everything else, it would need to be fitted with an Imagination Manifestation Drive™, and those don't exist yet.
Check out a demo of Surfacescape's proof of concept in the video after the jump.
After extensive review and analysis, I'm going to go with "the truth hurts". It's ambitious gaming hardware released at a price point that's laughably unfeasible to the vast majority of the population.
The ironic thing is that if arcade culture was still widespread and financially viable, the Surface would function nicely in a NeoGeo-esque role: a standardized host platform with interchangeable games in an arcade setting. Compared to the standard pricing on arcade units, it's a steal!
Exactly. The more computer interaction you put in D&D, the slower it plays. This is cool and all, but the virtual dice and the giant menu of attack options is completely unnecessary.
i really want to see more electronic interactive board games like this. i think this kind of tech will see a lot of great stuff in the future. perhaps a way of finally consolidating traditional gaming and video gaming
Agreed, that dice roll is painfully slow and for no apparent purpose. It also seems odd that you need peripheral control objects. Couldn't different modes be activated with gestures rather than having to have a physical peripheral? Seems like a poor solution for interface.
Neat idea though and a great use of the technology but maybe a few refinements would make it really sweet.
Note: Surface isn't a touch screen (for all intensive purposes). It uses an array of cameras to determine what is on/touching the surface.
So it makes me wonder, why not roll a real 20 sided? the surface could find the number, and then figure out what's showing at the top of the die based on what it sees on the bottom...
I've done the surface development demo, so I know this is totally possible... But they had to have tried that, right?
The cameras… do they look up at what's above the table or down at what's on the table? In the latter case I guess it's trivial to see the number that shows on the die. If it's the former, then it's a useful fact that opposite sides of any die always add up to the number of sides plus 1 :)
@Prestidigitator: There are (I believe) 5 cameras inside the unit, looking up at the surface. So I guess what you're saying is that 6 on the bottom of the die means 7 is showing?
Yes... I'm a programmer. Yes... I know that making it recognize dice numbers could be hard. No... it's not impossible. Especially for a demo, they'd only have to make it work with the dice they're using.
I don't think you follow here... it's not like you're throwing a coffee mug on the surface. The surface is just a surface, the cameras are UNDER it. In no way could you ever damage the cameras by rolling a die on the surface. And I think the surface could handle even a 100 sided die with out damage.
I don't really see the potential to improve the D&D experience with something like this. I like handling the dice and figuring up damage, odds, distance, etc.
But, I can see how an original IP could integrate this for something awesome.
This is the only way that I would be able to play D&D. I have some really good friends who get together for D&D, I'll go just to hang out, but I just can't get into "imagining" it all. I need some sort of application like this to make it seem worth it. It's like Eye of Judgment. I don't like card battle games, but EoJ is the one I DO like because there is something visual attached to it, makes it a lot more fun for me.
HOLY SHIT is that fucking amazing. That is straight up some Star Trek type interface there. The price is way to high but just the idea is fantastic I say in less than 5 years you will see those in every major retail stores priced more competitively.
Ah yes my purple crown royal bag filled up with dice. Your making me go back to my days of playing D&D every Tuesday & Thursday. I had all those wonderful colored multiple sided dice D20, D6, D8, D4, D12, D100. Great times I had with them playing as my drunken Half-Elf Ranger who would get my party into more trouble than they wanted to get into.
