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When I started the search, back at WizKids Games, we didn't have supercomputers in our pockets, so we looked at creating our own handheld devices, but the tech we could afford wasn't compelling enough to build a product line around. Five years later, the price of CPUs and high-resolution color displays had dropped enough to be able to create a custom-connected handheld gaming device, so I raised a lot of venture capital money to build a digital tabletop battling game called Nanovor. Nanovor launched in 2008 — right as our economy collapsed and the iPod Touch came out. Nanovor died, but the dream didn't. Sometimes, you just need to be patient.
The advent of affordable mobile touchscreen devices fascinates me with its potential. That's why we started Harebrained Schemes, and why my search for the right tech to connect tabletop to digital moved from creating the right device to finding the right interface to connect the physical tabletop elements to tablets and phones. Our solution is the Tabletop Digital Interface stylus. The stylus combines market-proven microdot technology with Bluetooth connectivity that connects our miniatures and game boards to the smartphones we carry in our pockets. The result is the solution I've been searching over a decade to find.
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Why have I been looking to bridge tabletop to digital for so long?
First, because I love tabletop games, especially miniature games, and I want them to not only survive but to thrive into the next century. I believe that to do so, they need to evolve. Things move in cycles. Back when the PC game industry started booming in the 1990s, a lot of the hit games were "ports" of tabletop games to computers (D&D, MechWarrior, etc). The tabletop was where game innovation and fictional world development was taking place — and computer game creators leveraged those learnings into their games.
Back then (and for thousands of years beforehand) a person's first game experience was a tabletop experience, but that is no longer true. The penetration of console video games and, more recently, the rise of mobile touchscreen games, means that more and more kids are being introduced to computer games long before they are introduced tabletop games. This is an important paradigm shift because these kids now approach tabletop games with expectations steeped in the standards of computer games — things such as ease-of-use / accessibility, information-on-demand, save game and long-term persistence of experience, progression of and impact upon the game world, worldwide community, and (of course) recognition of their accomplishments in the form of leaderboards, badges, achievements, etc.
The tabletop-to-computer game cycle has definitely turned, as today you see a lot more video games being "ported" to the tabletop than vice-versa, but we need to go farther. We need to integrate the features described above from computer games into tabletop games in order to be compelling to the next generation audience (or, I would argue, to a large part of the current generation).
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The TDI (Tabletop Digital Interface) stylus platform we created for Golem Arcana is our attempt to seamlessly deliver the compelling videogame features I described in a tabletop experience without undermining the essence of tabletop gaming — that unique face-to-face social interaction and fun of friends at the same table playing and laughing together.
As good as online social interaction has become and how much better it will get, it cannot replicate the billions of years of evolution that goes into the joy we feel as humans when we interact in person — especially when we get together within the context of an organized framework like a game. Proper integration of digital features should enhance rather than detract from quality social interaction. After all, did you get together with your friends to debate rules or to play a game? Is it more fun to win a game because you know the rules better than your opponent or because your strategy was better than your opponents? The TDI platform levels the playing field by adjudicating the rules and incorporating all reference materials so that it's the quality of your play that determines victory rather than your quality as a debater or rules lawyer.
The second reason that I want to bridge the gap between tabletop and digital gaming is because I want to create a massively multiplayer tabletop game. My whole career has been about exploring the intersection of gameplay, story, and socialization. Every game I design, whether digital or tabletop, is a different experiment in how to mix these three elements together in a new and interesting way. Golem Arcana represents an opportunity to integrate tabletop gameplay and storytelling in a way never before possible.
Twenty years ago, we used gameplay to generate story when we introduced the After Action Report at the BattleTech Center. Opening in late 1989, the BattleTech Center was the first 3D immersive multiplayer game available to the public. It featured 16 networked 'Mech cockpits in which your team had ten minutes to accomplish its mission, normally blowing the crap out of the other team. People would come out of the cockpits after their ten minutes high on adrenaline and bubbling at the mouth about what just happened. When we introduced the After Action Report, it took the whole experience to the next level because it codified and recorded what had taken place. This simple piece of paper, which contained a blow by blow account of the battle told from each player's unique perspective, made the experience more real and more permanent. It was a written story in which each player was the central character.
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With Golem Arcana, we have the opportunity to bring a much better version of this same concept to the tabletop so that every game played generates a story in which your Golems and Knights are the protagonists and, of course, your opponents' characters are the antagonists. These stories will be shared via Facebook, Twitter, and of course email so that the tales of your victories (or defeats if you wish to share those) can be sung by bards for generations to come. (Okay, that's pushing a bit, but you get the idea.) We plan for this feature to be part of the base game.
But my storytelling aspirations for Golem Arcana don't end there. The long-term goal with Golem Arcana is to create what I guess could be called a Massively Multiplayer Tabletop Game in which every story scenario played, whether at your home or at an organized event, impacts the world of Golem Arcana. As with the After Action Report, this is not the first time I have attempted this kind of feature; thirty years ago with BattleTech we started integrating what happened at key tournaments into our very popular BattleTech novels. The community really appreciated the effort, but the time it took to gather the information, integrate it into the novel, submit it to the publisher, and wait a loooong time for publication meant that the story element the players impacted didn't show up in print until 12+ months after the tournament was held.
With the TDI platform, Golem Arcana can download new fiction and new scenarios to players' phones or tablets and the results of their scenario play can be uploaded to our servers to be aggregated with other players' scenario results, determining how battles within the fiction are resolved and thus changing the face of the geopolitical map (visible in the App or online) and impacting future story events.
But even this would just be the start of my dreams of the Living Fiction System. I would love to see different players receive scenarios that then change which scenarios other players receive. For instance, what if each faction had a leaderboard and top players of a faction's leaderboard received their own scenarios on Week One, and then the results of the faction leaders' scenarios determine the stories and scenarios for all the other players in Week Two? The results of the Week Two scenarios would then set the stage for the leaders' scenarios in the next week. Now imagine this same scenario except that the Week One players are not from the top of the faction's leaderboards but are the result of fellowship "up" votes from the community. Or they're determined randomly. Or a combination of all of the above. Or other stuff we haven't thought of yet.
Anyway, the idea is that in each story cycle, a smaller group of players' gameplay has a large impact on the story and scenarios that the larger group of players are involved in, and that in total ALL of the players drive the story of the world forward.
Okay, I've rambled on long enough about my decade-long quest to bring this type of gameplay to the tabletop, and I really appreciate all the efforts our fans and Kickstarter backers have made to help make it a reality. We love our supporters. Obviously, the funding of our Kickstarter is not the end of the road, but just the beginning for the TDI stylus and Golem Arcana. It will likely take years before many of my dreams for Golem Arcana are made a reality.
Jordan Weisman
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