Surfacescapes Demo Walkthrough

A walk-through of the current build of our proof of concept for a Dungeons & Dragons experience on the Microsoft Surface. Created by the Surfacescapes team at the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University.

Team:
Theyab Al Tamimi
Whitney Babcock-McConnell
Michael Cole
Dyala Kattan-Wright
Bulut Karakaya
Michael Lewis
Ethan Rupp

http://www.etc.cmu.edu/projects/surfacescapes/index.html

Category:

Gaming

Tags:

• Carnegie Mellon University
• Dungeons and Dragons
• Surfacescapes
• Microsoft Surface
• Demo

[Senmetsu]

Not to hate, but wouldn't having all this visual stuff defeat the purpose of playing DnD? I always think of it as a game of Imagination, not just another video game.

[politas]

Looks very interesting. One comment, though. Waiting for that dice animation would get very annoying, especially if you have a largish group rolling their individual initiatives, attacks, saving throws, etc, etc. I would suggest speeding that up so it's only just long enough for recognition and reaction.

[nozidnolram]

This is fantastic technology although with all these fancy tools coming out for use with D&D strips it off of it's very essence which is using your imagination. I mean soon you won't tell the difference between playing a video game and D&D... sad.

[toxicgabz]

Can I draw my own maps and battlefields? I could deal with the vitual dices if they werent that slow. The monsters animations should be enhence. Put some sparkels on those Fx ;)

[goshyn00]

@Senmetsu I agree. Though i like the idea of the touch screen for visual aid and technical aspects. being able to bring up world maps and deal with technical aspects on the fly would help move the more dull aspects on and help the more involving storytelling aspects shine

[liamweight]

This is what I always wanted it to be like! Sure, I liked being creative, but I would spend hours creating maps that weren't just paper and pen. This is genius!

[Xandyclaus]

Ok, just sooooo awesome :O I LOVE IT!!!!!

[gueritol]

@Senmetsu Well you really don't need miniatures ... only imagination and some paper. :D

[rhaeven]

Gah, why can't people see how awesome this is and that it is literally not different from using minis on a physical map? This isn't programmed solidly like a videogame, the DM is still in total control. If one of the players wanted to cut down a tree to fall on the wolf the DM could still manually reduce the wolfs HP if sucessful. You can still do literally anything. If you can't use imagination because something is shown on a screen then YOUR imagination is fail.

[Adwrigh]

we need an ipad version!!!

[MaleficusOfTheVoid]

None who respectes himself should buy one of these ! It ruins the whole D&D concept !

[jetzine00]

I would suggest removing the virtual dice entirely from this system's functionality. If you don't know the nervousness of a sweaty palm rolling a d20 in the face of death, you haven't played D&D. Don't take the physical aspects of the game away. I look at the surface as a great way to integrate the map and the character sheet, removing unnecessary math. The dice are too important a part of the tabletop experience. Allow the surface to facilitate the storytelling, not replace it.