• My tech club at school got their versions of Alice 2.2 (3d animation program) as a gift from Carnegie Mellon

• This seems like a whole lot of tech and trouble for a role-playing game. They should just develop a cooperative tactical RPG using an original property rather than trying to shoe-horn D&D into a glorified touch screen system that no one will buy.

• Yeah, but the point is that when it is done, it's going to govern the game with such exacting precision (and a computer's tendency to be completely inflexible) that things like "house rules" and "wiggle room" will be forgotten. - It's become more like the PSP game "D&D Tactics" than a real roleplaying game. It's a miniatures wargame now. You might as well be playing CHAINMAIL, SHOGUN, or RISK.

• Encumbrance? What's that? Is it a spell? ;) - When I GM'd (and DM'd) I didn't fret about things like that. To me, it was about the story. The dice were merely aids to decide how the story unfolded, but I really did NOT care about character positioning, encumbrance, exact line-of-sight, or any of that miniatures CHAINMAIL rules garbage. I used graph paper, and showed approximately where things were, but I didn't count squares all the time. - I think the mini rules became D&D's push when White Wolf took over and realized there's nothing about D&D that they can sell like crack cards (Magic: The Gathering). People can buy the books and then they buy nothing from White Wolf again, unless they want to expand the rules. TSR made their whole business about the core rules books and the modules, but White Wolf wanted something addicting, small, and cheap to manufacture. They tried cards. It didn't work for D&D... So they push minis now. - I read 4th Edition, but the rules seem so awful to me. All the depth has been sucked out of the classes. Now they're just superheroes with powers that they "turn on". It's so much like WoW in terms of how homogeneous the characters turn out, that I can't see the appeal. - 3E wasn't bad... It could still be played old-style (no minis), but you could see how they were pushing toward that goal. - Still, I didn't miss THAC0, either.

• It could be done. With the tech they have here, it shouldn't even be difficult. Might not work with normal dice, though. You'd probably need some kind of special die that transmitted a special signal depending which side it came up on or something. It's gotta be possible, though.

• 4th Edition doesn't exist, that's just a rumor. And I agree with what ZeroCorpse said, D&D is supposed to be fun. Back in my PnP days (I don't know a single person these days that plays PnP, and I run in a relatively nerdy/techy crowd...sigh) all our campaigns had many of the rules as guidelines, for example this thing I've heard of called 'encumbrance'.

• I hope they make it compatible for 2nd Edition AD&D!

• It all started with 3rd edition. They basically made D&D a board game in order to make it more accessible. 4th is even worse, since it now plays like an MMORPG, complete with power buttons and cooldowns. (I'm not even joking.) Yes, in my 2nd edition games we used miniatures, but those were soley for the DM to brutally fuck your characters to death with. (favorite line: "So, what's your marching order again?" Just watch the panic ensue!) Do what I did: go back to Werewolf and Vampire 2nd edition and you'll be happy once again. Nice to chat with you again, by the way.

• Yes.

• They are testing the thing, of course there's no "immersion". It's not even finished yet.

• I couldn't agree more. I always liked to play with a little wiggle room and this seems to leech all of that out of it. It's still badass, and I would definitely give it a go, but it could never replace the real thing unless they allowed you to tweak the rules whenever you wanted.

• You know what, I'm not even that nerdy. I like my D&D, but I'll use the tiles or the old dry-erase board. Cheaper, more fun, and I get to keep my dman lucky dice. You can not take away a gamer's lucky dice. It's just not done.

• This seems so... mechanical and not fun. Back when I played, we didn't use the miniatures rules, and weren't always worrying about exact math or data when it came to position, range, etc. Minis seem to suck the life out of the game, if you ask me. - Listen to them. They're more concerned with "can I move this way?" than the actual immersion in the game. There's not much ROLE playing, and a lot of ROLL playing here. - It's cool, but I think this sort of thing just kills the spirit of a good D&D session. It's definitely for rules lawyers and people who are min/maxing their characters.

• Half-elves usually got the short end of the stick both in rules and role-playing, especially in 3rd edition. All of the penalties, none of the benefits. I'm surprised you're such a fan of them. In 4th edition though, they changed all the rules about half-elves and made them pretty bad ass. They actually get more benefits than any other class in my opinion. Their role-playing changes are significant too. Oh, and fighter/thief? Fun in the short-term, but lousy for long term play. Sucks when you're at level 5/5 and everyone else is almost 10. Not to mention the only real benefit you get is a warrior's hit rating, unless you want to give up all your abilities due to armor. I'd love to have you at my table anyways, Rob. There's always an open seat, set of pre-rolled dice, and refreshingly cold can of Mountain Dew waiting for you if you ever end up down in Texas.

• do you think that girl is dating anyone of these nerds in the video????

• Someone needs to hook up the new football coin flip tech to a 20-sider. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122398194

• This is freaking awesome! Here's the only tiny issue I have: I wish you could use real dice. Obviously they're using real minis, but I assume you have the let the comp roll the dice so it can calculate damage and stuff. As cool as that is, I really would miss the sensation of rolling a real d20.

• Would be nicer if the cameraman wasn't such a spaz, nearly made me nauseous when he moved. I've seen a couple of games, and own a good number that this would work well for.

• The future is here... and it is nerdy!

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