'Killer apps' for tabletop role-playing games

When it comes to tabletop role-playing games—like Dungeons & Dragons, which involves dice, miniatures, character sheets, and your imagination—there's not much in the way of innovation.

Before tabletop role-playing came along there was theatrical improvisation, but the form has remained essentially the same. Miniatures added a slightly new dimension in helping visualize distances between opponents, but that's not a new innovation either. Miniatures were used in Dungeons & Dragons since it was invented, which only makes sense since the progenitor of role-playing games was created from a miniatures game known as Chainmail. Not that you would know it, judging from the controversy on the Internet over the latest edition of Dungeons & Dragons, which incorporates miniatures into the rules.

Until a few years ago, miniatures were largely the domain of wargamers and collectors. Because they were heavy and made of metal, they were difficult to store. And they all came unpainted, which required a significant amount of work on the part of the person who wanted to use them for gaming. It's something of a badge of pride for wargamers to have painted an entire army, their painted figures sometimes numbering in the hundreds. It wasn't until prepainted plastic miniatures were mass-produced that miniature gaming became more accessible for everyone.

The other problem is placing the miniatures in context; that is, drawing maps to place the miniatures on. Most game masters can manage a few lines and squiggles, but the really fancy stuff requires access to a color printer. Color printouts, especially of large-scale areas, quickly become unwieldy. What we need is a surface that can react on the fly, flexible enough to reflect any change in the gaming terrain. Enter Microsoft Surface.

Microsoft Surface is a 30-inch diagonal display in table-like form that allows users to modify what appears on its surface through natural gestures and touch. Unfortunately, it isn't currently available for individual purchase.

More within the reach of a gamer's budget are augmented reality tools that can complement tabletop gaming. In ARhrrrr, a mobile phone provides a window into a three-dimensional town overrun with zombies. Point the camera at our special game map to mix virtual and real world content. You can even use Skittles as tangible inputs to the game, placing one on the board and shooting it to trigger an explosion.

Tabletop projection is something of a poor man's solution to this same problem. It's basically a projector hung from overhead that projects onto a table. The table is controlled by a laptop, so the game master can upload maps and change them on the fly. For an example, see Pen, Paper & Pixel.

Finally, there's the difficulty in transporting the big, bulky instruction manuals that gamers know and love. Laptops are one solution, but they're not nearly as portable as the Kindle, which displays text without backlighting. Finding, downloading, and converting the each rulebook's PDF to the Kindle format can be a challenge.

Perhaps the real killer app is actually a format. Thanks to PDFs, gamers can play games without bringing any books to the table at all.