Tabletop Role-playing and Board Games May Have a Digital Future Yet

We haven’t heard a whole lot about Carnegie Mellon’s Dungeons & Dragons application for Microsoft Surface over the past couple of years, and I’m starting to think that the device’s prohibitive cost has killed the idea before it even took off. But that doesn’t mean that it didn’t at least inspire other companies to pursue a more affordable route.

Enter ePawn, a French company that has actually created a 26″ tablet called the ePawn Arena that, thanks to its real-time object-tracking technology, will allow us to play tabletop RPGs and board games with actual miniatures, pawns, and other game pieces. Check out this promising trailer:

If you want to learn more, as I did, Wired and TechCrunch have informative write-ups about it:

At the risk of sounding a little old-fashioned, ePawn CEO Christophe Duteil thinks that there’s something missing with the way people play games these days. Modern gaming lacks (conviviality) the sensation of revelling with good company.

His vision of gaming aims to bring people into the same physical space once again, an experience that has become less relevant thanks to fat data pipes and networked consoles. To that end, Duteil and his team at ePawn are slaving away on the ePawn Arena: a Microsoft Surface-esque screen that aims to bring gamers back into the same room by adding a modern twist to an classic idea.

In essence, the ePawn Arena is a big screen that is capable of interacting with the physical pieces that sit on top of it. Up for a rousing game of air hockey? Break out the ePawn-compatible paddles and have at it. Or how about a little fantasy-RPG action? There are parts for those too. Curiously, the screen itself doesn’t have computing components in it rather, it relies on the horsepower from the smartphone (or computer) you connect it to.

According to CTO Valentin Lefevre, the Arena employs a sub-LCD tracking layer that is capable of detecting the ePawn tags attached to their game pieces. ePawn is planning on reaching out to big-name game development studios like Ubisoft, but doesn’t want to leave the little guys out too: iOS and Android SDKs are in the works, so developers of all stripes will soon to able to make ePawn-friendly apps.

Let me play a tabletized and persistent version of Dungeons & Dragons with my kids and I’ll buy every $9.99 adventure they release for it.