So, this article showed up on Gamespy before the weekend… yes, I’m a wee bit slow. The lead designers of 4th Edition (Rob Heinsoo, Andy Collins and James Wyatt) talked about various aspects of 4E as it pertains to digital applications (this is Gamespy, after all…).
One thing that I do appreciate about the interview is that they don’t hide from any of the questions, and their answers are, for the most part, thoughtful. It’s always a little depressing, though, when you hear a hardcore geek (and come on, these guys HAD to be from the geekdom born, right?) wax corp-speak. For example:
GameSpy: Will the digital game table be able to adjudicate rules, similar to what’s in Magic Online? Will it keep track of in-game information, like ongoing spell effects?
Collins: There’s going to be some tools like that, that will help the DM track things, but there are a couple of reasons behind us not turning it into an automated system. The first is that we don’t have a right to do so. Digital game rights to Dungeons & Dragons aren’t owned by Wizards of the Coast. That property is licensed out, and has been for a number of years now. We can’t compete with our licensors; it’s not fair, and it’s not really nice, either, nor is it legal.
So stop right there, Andy. You nailed it (although it not being legal is the only answer that matters). But no, he keeps going:
Second, and I think this is an even more compelling reason than the legal one, D&D is a game that invites so much customization on the part of the players and DMs, that hard-coding things into the game table, I believe would actually make it less useful for people rather than a more useful tool. If the table said, “No, you can’t move your dwarf six spaces, because dwarves only have a speed of five!” and you want to say, “No, there’s something in this room that lets me move one extra,” that’s an ungodly amount of coding for very little payoff. It’s much easier for game table to say, “OK, if you want to move your dwarf from square A to square B, I’m just going to say that that’s six spaces. You know what your dwarf’s speed is. Whether that’s legal or not, I’m just going to tell you that’s six spaces.
Wiiight, wiiiight… having to do it all manually is better than having a base set of rules that you could then modify when necessary. Totally. Fortunately, you can totally add those rules yourself:
GameSpy: Will the digital game table allow for user-generated scripts to automate certain aspects of play? For instance, if a DM wants to use a Beholder in a game, would it be possible to write scripts that describe what its different eyestalks do?
Collins: It sort of depends on what exactly you mean. When I choose to put a Beholder figure down on my digital board, the game doesn’t recognize that as having any special rules content. It doesn’t say, “Oh, that’s a Beholder. Therefore, X, Y, and Z have to happen.” Because what if it’s not a Beholder? What if it’s a ghost Beholder? What if it’s an illusion of a Beholder? What if it’s some other kind of Beholder that we’ve invented but we haven’t gotten around to making a mini of yet? Again, the DM has to be able use the tools in whatever way he wants and befits his game without us saying, “No, if you don’t use a Beholder in this way, your game doesn’t work right.”
Wyatt: If I were the DM using a Beholder in my game, what I might do ahead of time, which the game table supports now, is attach two or three different light sources to it, one with a range of five squares, and one with a range of 10, so that I can turn those on and off and say, “Here’s the ‘aura five’ that’s around the Beholder.” There’s that light source, and if I turn it on, I can see who’s in the aura, and who’s going to get blasted by the eyes at the start of the turn. That’s something that I could really attach to the mini as I’m getting ready for my game to help me run the game, without doing rules adjudication.
See? I can put custom light sources on the mini. That’s awesome. :p
I really am not dying to seed the blog with such a negative tone, but this is just silly. You can’t have rules adjudication. Too bad, so sad. Practically everyone knew it was a bad idea to sell the digital rights off. Heck, Richard Garfield left because Crawl died with that deal. The good news in all of this is that kLoOge will continue to be uncontested in the awesome digital tabletop arena. The bells and whistles of Dungeons & Dragons Interactive seem pretty, but the fundamental usefulness of the program is still lacking. It’ll have superior usage numbers thanks to the strength of brand and market awareness, but please - if you’re interested in this sort of thing, try kLoOge.
If you have another digital solution that you prefer, please let me know. I’m always on the lookout for an improved game experience. 
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