Computing at the gaming table is nothing new, due to the prevalence of laptops and smartphones.  However, the first is obtrusive and obstructive, and the second is often too small to read.

So, that leaves an opening for the iPad.  It seems that it would be large enough to be readable, without standing between the players like a laptop does.  The first obvious solutions are digital versions of game books, and dice rolling apps.  But, I think there’s more options here.

With the size of screen on the iPad, and the coming herd of iPad-specific apps, I think there are other options as well.  There could very easily be a tool with everything needed by a DM — initiative tracker, dice roller, reference books, etc.  There could even be a game board app for very close quarters combat.  Zoomable maps are another possibility, since we consistently reference maps of our game world as we play.  If tablet computers became common enough, everyone could have quick access to their rulebooks in the same app that contains their character sheet.  This would greatly clean up the gaming table.

While it may replace books and character sheets, I think that people still prefer the physicality of dice and miniatures, so it can’t replace everything.  But, I do definitely see the advantanges.

What do you think?  Will tablet computers help or hinder the gaming process?  What features would the ultimate gaming app include?  Tell us in the comments!

“I just think 3.5 feels a lot more like UNIX.  You can do whatever you want.”  That’s what one of my players said to me.  That would be great, an gaming edition that lets you do practically whatever you want, writing scripts to let you perform any action, putting input in one end, and getting a phenomenal result on the other side.  Hundreds of small single-purpose pieces that let you pipe input and output however you need to.  You could have a wizard where you put components, casting time, and targets in one end of the equation, and get a a targeted mini-Fireball with each foe’s name on it out of the other side, telling you how much dice to use for each one so that it is balanced with your abilities and the other classes of the same level.  You could have a paladin script based around how the enemy responds to his Smite Evil.

But, the more I think about it, 3.5 is not like UNIX.  It’s kind of like DOS.  It’s kind of clunky, and has pieces you never use (i.e. Rope Use), and pieces you overuse (i.e. Spot).  You can do some things in it, and it works OK, but you will often find you can’t do what you want to, or what you need to.  Push a boulder onto an enemy?  Improvised weapon.  You’re better off hitting him with your sword.  Want to grab an enemy and throw him off the cliff?  Maybe it will work, but after too many rolls, you find that odds are better that you would have been more successful hitting him with your sword again.

I have no delusions about 4e being UNIX.  But, I do hope that is like Mac OS X.  I mean, really, do we want the game that I just fawned over in the first paragraph?  Sure it would be a neat simulation, but we’re trying to tell a story here.  We need a system that has limited options, but has the options you want.  And works like it is expected to.  But, for the most part, we need a system that just gets out of the way, and lets the DM and the players do what they need to.

I’m not sure if 4e is like Mac OS X yet.  It could be like more like Windows 95.  Quite a few options, but none that you need.  Things don’t work like you expect them to.  Your audio driver’s IRQ needs to be reassigned because it is conflicting with your modem, but the OS just keeps setting it back to for you, and the Device Manager keeps showing the yellow question mark no matter how many times you re-load the driver.  OK, that last one probably completely ejected you from the metaphor entirely, but you get the point.

Now that I have discussed both D&D and Operating Systems in one post, effectively squaring the geekiness of this blog (if only I could find some way to involve Star Trek…), I’ll enumerate my findings from my first session of 4e:

1) Players have to work together more – If you use a daily power, and miss, then you’re just out of luck.   Players really need to maximize all the bonuses before one of the players goes mini-nova.

2) It is possible to kill the players – At first, I thought that with all the healing surges and such, that it would be nigh-impossible for the players to die.  Not so.

3) Sometimes they should run away – As a corollary to #2.  The players had no rest between encounters, and were given an option of a skill challenge or turning to face the Shadow Hounds chasing them.  They chose to fight, although they were already wounded.  Which leads me to #4.

4) Make Skill Challenges more obvious – Really, probably my fault.  I’m not sure if everyone declares when they enter into a skill challenge, but that would have let the players know that they had a way to escape the encounter.  Like how Picard escaped the Encounter at Farpoint in the pilot episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation (YES!! I did it!).

History Hacker is hosted by the deserving Bre Pettis, well known to the readers of Make magazine.  He definitely has the chops to host such a program, with his scratch-building prowess rivaling that of Adam and Jamie of Mythbusters fame.

Onscreen, Bre comes across as somewhat of a mix of the retro-cool of Elvis Costello, and the outsider geekiness of Napoleon Dynamite.  More importantly, he definitely shows up as knowledgeable.  The first episode covered the rivalry between Thomas Edison and Nicola Tessla.  Bre enhanced the history lesson by first turning his bicycle into a generator, then making his own neon tubes, and finally exploring wireless electricity.

The hardest part of the show to stomach was the constant effort to make Bre and everything he touches look cool.  I’m sure it was some producer’s idea somewhere, that “these kids nowadays need to be spoon fed what is hip”, but it comes across as a Poochie-like attempt.  Bre is a geek.  Let him be a geek.  Don’t make him utter phrases like “check this!” or anything else equally cheesy.  Geek is cool now, just let him be.

The pilot episode, overall, was watchable and fun.  Here’s hoping that History is able to put Bre to work making more.  If you saw it, and want more episodes, Bre has instructions for telling History about it on his blog.