The Future of OFFLINE Gaming
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2017-05-06
·
1,386 words · ~6 min read
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some people tackle adversity with their wits others charm and some even rely on
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sheer brute force but personally i've always found the best tool in a jam that
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won't land you in prison is a 20-sided
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polyhedron which is why no one is happier than i about the fact that
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rolling for initiative and trading sheep for ore are becoming increasingly
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mainstream activities in what some would describe as a recent tabletop gaming
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renaissance but even the most die-hard fans of board games and rpgs face some
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fairly common problems not the least of which is finding enough people to play
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with and while technology like online message boards and facebook groups can
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facilitate finding other local nerds sometimes there just aren't enough
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people nearby who have the sheer tenacity and fortitude to sit in a chair
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indoors for extended periods of time but how else has technology improved
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tabletop gaming let's explore
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ten years ago you either hung out in the lobby of your local gaming shop until
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you found someone with acceptable body odor stats
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or you didn't really play but since then
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programs like roll 20 octagon and tabletop simulator have emerged to help
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people with a challenging schedule or without any local group at all feed
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their addiction whatever your poison of choice there's a slick well-designed
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application to cater to your needs we've come a long way since the multi-user
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dungeons of the 80s and 90s in terms of both usability and aesthetics with the
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marked exception of magic online that is still
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absolutely terrible but while these services will never replace gaming in
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person at least not for me they do a lot more to enhance modern gaming than
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something like cali.net built-in campaign and map tools can
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benefit anyone's game and by hooking up a short throw projector to your laptop
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you can even create dynamic detailed battle maps for your players there's
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also a whole host of things that you can do with the power of a computer behind
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your setup like use a dynamic lighting feature to induce a fog of war effect
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automatically without physically covering the map with various household
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objects and there's more while you can play
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tyler's favorite role-playing game with a single book and an unnatural interest
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in the medieval mouse societies i've always been a d d kind of guy and to the
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obviously dozens of you who are wondering about my personal favorite
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edition that's three point whatever these are some of the 3.5 books
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tyler and i had kicking around and these are the books we had for pathfinder
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neither of these stacks is even a full collection looking up rules in the
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middle of the game can be an arduous and disruptive task when considering the
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sheer girth of the library that we have here which is why replacing these stacks
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of tomes with something as simple as a searchable pdf is an absolute godsend
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and helps take some of the headache away from managing the fact that one of your
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barbarian players just entered a romantic relationship with a 55 foot
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long town burning dragon and you need to brush up on your large-scale grappling
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rules card players are also getting a lot of
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help from this newfangled technology i mean given the ease and the speed of
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using online deck builders i can understand why some people
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may not want to go back to binders on binders of cards especially if you're a
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fan of games that are out of print or are for some other reason no longer
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commercially available because this way you can still assemble
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an electronic collection and find other die hard fans online to match against
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there's also an increased prevalence of phone apps while there are outliers like
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the xcom board games that even require a
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mobile app in order to play most of these apps are on more of a
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supplementary role and while i'm not personally a huge fan of having phones
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at the table these apps can eliminate some of the tedium of score and
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bookkeeping with automated character sheets or even drafting your team in the
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case of the blood bull app and tech is driving game production as well just
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take a look at these kickstarter numbers one of the reasons we're spoiled for
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choice in tabletop gaming right now is because the barrier to production is so
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low and the ability to connect prospective game makers with funding is
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better than ever we aren't normally huge fans of
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crowdfunding here but the success rates of board game campaigns compared to
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video games or technology is much higher
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and let's not discount what increased exposure has done to bring tabletop into
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the mainstream do you want to watch a video of vin diesel playing dnd you can
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do that that's a thing you can even watch d on twitch right now although i
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would request that you finish this video first increased exposure plus a decrease
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in barrier to entry is helping make the current edition of d d the most
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accessible yet though their business model may have changed slightly since
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the early 2000s which is probably good news for the ants so with these current
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levels of growth what's on the horizon well the rapidly growing availability of
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consumer 3d printing hardware means someday even dungeon masters of limited
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financial means will be making monsters and ornate dungeon furniture in their
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own homes for the cost of filament and
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then there's electronic playing surfaces footage of people playing board games on
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the microsoft pixel sense blew the community away a few years back until
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they saw the eight thousand dollar price tag but the dream isn't dead companies
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like epawn are looking at ways to make modular and lower cost surfaces that
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could be used to create sprawling battle maps in your living room table so with
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all this in mind maybe the next time you check out your backlog of 500 unplayed
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early access games in steam maybe you'll consider trying something
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more refined try it check out a tabletop
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simulator game get a group of friends together for some good old wholesome d
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and d and hey if you have more enemies than friends that's fine too here's a
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list of games that are perfect for making sure that they never talk to you
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again in a socially acceptable manner
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squarespace my friends you want to build a great looking website that's
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functional and easy to use check out squarespace we've got a link
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in the video description basically you choose one of their gorgeous templates
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you pick out whatever photos and text you want and you slap it in there using
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their simple web interface if you have any trouble they've got 24 7 tech
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support via live chat and email which is
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flippin sick and they are always adding
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all kinds of great new features to make the whole experience more seamless so
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check them out at the link in the video description and use our offer code also
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down there to save ten percent off your first purchase
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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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to see all the rest of our videos check out the link below on amazon where you
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can see to buy a bunch of this stuff including this bag of 100 not this bag
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specifically but 120 pieces of dice i was given this in a
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secret santa thing from a friend of mine that's a huge amount of dice idm that's
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very helpful uh also you can see where to buy some of our shirts or you can see
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other various spots or links and whatnot if you want to jump over to the forum you can discuss anything tabletop in the
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subject of this video and uh check out this video which is coverage of mox
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boarding house down in
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uh the states