some people tackle adversity with their wits others charm and some even rely on
sheer brute force but personally i've always found the best tool in a jam that
won't land you in prison is a 20-sided
polyhedron which is why no one is happier than i about the fact that
rolling for initiative and trading sheep for ore are becoming increasingly
mainstream activities in what some would describe as a recent tabletop gaming
renaissance but even the most die-hard fans of board games and rpgs face some
fairly common problems not the least of which is finding enough people to play
with and while technology like online message boards and facebook groups can
facilitate finding other local nerds sometimes there just aren't enough
people nearby who have the sheer tenacity and fortitude to sit in a chair
indoors for extended periods of time but how else has technology improved
tabletop gaming let's explore
ten years ago you either hung out in the lobby of your local gaming shop until
you found someone with acceptable body odor stats
or you didn't really play but since then
programs like roll 20 octagon and tabletop simulator have emerged to help
people with a challenging schedule or without any local group at all feed
their addiction whatever your poison of choice there's a slick well-designed
application to cater to your needs we've come a long way since the multi-user
dungeons of the 80s and 90s in terms of both usability and aesthetics with the
marked exception of magic online that is still
absolutely terrible but while these services will never replace gaming in
person at least not for me they do a lot more to enhance modern gaming than
something like cali.net built-in campaign and map tools can
benefit anyone's game and by hooking up a short throw projector to your laptop
you can even create dynamic detailed battle maps for your players there's
also a whole host of things that you can do with the power of a computer behind
your setup like use a dynamic lighting feature to induce a fog of war effect
automatically without physically covering the map with various household
objects and there's more while you can play
tyler's favorite role-playing game with a single book and an unnatural interest
in the medieval mouse societies i've always been a d d kind of guy and to the
obviously dozens of you who are wondering about my personal favorite
edition that's three point whatever these are some of the 3.5 books
tyler and i had kicking around and these are the books we had for pathfinder
neither of these stacks is even a full collection looking up rules in the
middle of the game can be an arduous and disruptive task when considering the
sheer girth of the library that we have here which is why replacing these stacks
of tomes with something as simple as a searchable pdf is an absolute godsend
and helps take some of the headache away from managing the fact that one of your
barbarian players just entered a romantic relationship with a 55 foot
long town burning dragon and you need to brush up on your large-scale grappling
rules card players are also getting a lot of
help from this newfangled technology i mean given the ease and the speed of
using online deck builders i can understand why some people
may not want to go back to binders on binders of cards especially if you're a
fan of games that are out of print or are for some other reason no longer
commercially available because this way you can still assemble
an electronic collection and find other die hard fans online to match against
there's also an increased prevalence of phone apps while there are outliers like
the xcom board games that even require a
mobile app in order to play most of these apps are on more of a
supplementary role and while i'm not personally a huge fan of having phones
at the table these apps can eliminate some of the tedium of score and
bookkeeping with automated character sheets or even drafting your team in the
case of the blood bull app and tech is driving game production as well just
take a look at these kickstarter numbers one of the reasons we're spoiled for
choice in tabletop gaming right now is because the barrier to production is so
low and the ability to connect prospective game makers with funding is
better than ever we aren't normally huge fans of
crowdfunding here but the success rates of board game campaigns compared to
video games or technology is much higher
and let's not discount what increased exposure has done to bring tabletop into
the mainstream do you want to watch a video of vin diesel playing dnd you can
do that that's a thing you can even watch d on twitch right now although i
would request that you finish this video first increased exposure plus a decrease
in barrier to entry is helping make the current edition of d d the most
accessible yet though their business model may have changed slightly since
the early 2000s which is probably good news for the ants so with these current
levels of growth what's on the horizon well the rapidly growing availability of
consumer 3d printing hardware means someday even dungeon masters of limited
financial means will be making monsters and ornate dungeon furniture in their
own homes for the cost of filament and
then there's electronic playing surfaces footage of people playing board games on
the microsoft pixel sense blew the community away a few years back until
they saw the eight thousand dollar price tag but the dream isn't dead companies
like epawn are looking at ways to make modular and lower cost surfaces that
could be used to create sprawling battle maps in your living room table so with
all this in mind maybe the next time you check out your backlog of 500 unplayed
early access games in steam maybe you'll consider trying something
more refined try it check out a tabletop
simulator game get a group of friends together for some good old wholesome d
and d and hey if you have more enemies than friends that's fine too here's a
list of games that are perfect for making sure that they never talk to you
again in a socially acceptable manner
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all right guys i know this was different if you like this video like it if you just like to dislike it get subscribed
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secret santa thing from a friend of mine that's a huge amount of dice idm that's
very helpful uh also you can see where to buy some of our shirts or you can see
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subject of this video and uh check out this video which is coverage of mox
boarding house down in
uh the states