The Background
I worked on a team of two to bring digital enhancements to Dungeons and Dragons by building an augmented dice tower.
If you aren’t familiar with Dungeons and Dragons (D&D), check out the introduction from the publisher here. At its heart, D&D is a storytelling game that explores a fantasy world, using dice to decide the players’ interactions. While great strides have been made in recent years to lower the barrier to entry, getting started can be daunting. The Player’s Handbook is 200 pages long and a lot to keep track of. We looked for an opportunity to simplify some of that complexity and flatten the learning curve for new players.
The Research
We conducted research in two ways:
1. We published a survey on several prominent D&D forums as well our own social media.
2. We interviewed and observed 11 players across two D&D groups.
With such a body of qualitative data, clear themes emerged. First, players told us that one of the major draws of D&D is its aspect of escapism; role playing as a hero was their way of winding down after the work week. They mentioned that traditional tools such as pen and paper are a part of the ethos of the game, whereas digital tools felt antithetical. Despite saying that during interviews, we noticed that those same players would use apps on their phone to manage spells and more than one of them would use a laptop and Microsoft OneNote to keep track of the quest lines and general knowledge. Some players seemed much more open to using anything and everything to keep track of all the details, while others stubbornly clung to traditional techniques. One thing all interviewed players agreed on was the desire to roll physical dice; a random number generator or even physically accurate digital dice on a dice rolling app did not interest them. These physical dice seemed to give the players a sense of agency and control over the randomness of the roll and their actions in the game.
One major conclusion we can make is that players enjoy the tactile experience of interacting with the physical environment and game. This can come in the form of dice, character sheets, miniatures, etc. In general, the players will choose a tactile interface over a GUI-based interface unless the task is complex or if the player is used to solving the problem in a digital way.
During our interviews, we noticed that one area every player struggled with was dice math. This occurred mostly in the combat phase of the game, when players would have to hunt through their character sheet to figure out which options were available to them, what to roll, and how to add all the dice up. Putting aside silly difficulties with basic math, the process was rife with error and slowed the pace of the game; very few people had anything positive to say about the experience. This is the area of the game we zeroed in on.
The Design
The Final Project
Our solution to this problem was to design a digital dice tower, a device that allowed players to see the options available to them, choose one, roll the dice, and then have the resulting roll calculated and displayed for them. I designed and constructed the dice tower and the app, while my partner developed the app.
The final design uses a Raspberry Pi, Pi Touchscreen, and Pi camera. The players interact with the Touchscreen and the tower itself, dropping their dice in. The camera looks at the playing surface and reads the dice, displaying the resulting dice math for the player. The algorithm looks for the white squares of the dice, then within the white squares looks for the round circles (or pips). The app takes the information from the player’s character sheet and uses it to calculate the bonuses and modifiers that the players use during the game.
The Reflections
Our solution to this problem was to design a digital dice tower, a device that allowed players to see the options available to them, choose one, roll the dice, and then have the resulting roll calculated and displayed for them. I designed and constructed the dice tower and the app, while my partner developed the app.
The final design uses a Raspberry Pi, Pi Touchscreen, and Pi camera. The players interact with the Touchscreen and the tower itself, dropping their dice in. The camera looks at the playing surface and reads the dice, displaying the resulting dice math for the player. The algorithm looks for the white squares of the dice, then within the white squares looks for the round circles (or pips). The app takes the information from the player’s character sheet and uses it to calculate the bonuses and modifiers that the players use during the game.
