There have been plenty of advances in online tabletop RPG tools in recent years, but sometimes you can’t beat the old fashioned experience of a face-to-face Dungeons & Dragons game. So what do you if you want useful tools, but still want to have a real tabletop experience? Gameboard-1 aims to solve this problem, giving players a digital tabletop game board that has all the features you need for a tabletop game.
Gameboard-1 is a 16” x 16” lightweight device that can play a wide variety of board games and tabletop RPGs. Players can buy games from an extensive library and play them as much as they want, just like buying a board game from the store. In fact, a lot of care has gone into making sure that the Gameboard-1 can be played just like a regular tabletop game. This includes the ability to interact with physical game pieces and miniatures and roll real dice. They can even connect together to form a larger board and interact with mobile devices.
The goal of the Gameboard-1, which is designed by Rob Wyatt, the architect of the original Xbox, is to be “a video game console… for board games.” As part of this goal, Gameboard-1 has partnered with some of the biggest names in the industry to create a healthy library of games and gaming tools on the platform.
Some of Gameboard-1’s partners are big names indeed. Dungeons & Dragons will be supported, of course, but players won’t be limited to a single roleplaying system. Games like Pathfinder and Esper Genesis are also listed, among many, many others. Developers will even be able to design their own games and easily publish them to the Gameboard-1’s marketplace, using the Software Developer Kit, which will be released in January, 2020 with Unity and Unreal Engine game maker support.
The project is currently on Kickstarter, and has reached $87,000 of their $100,000 goal, with less than a month to go before its November 8th deadline. So, if you’re a fan of board games or a dungeon master who wants to bring a new experience to your players, you might want to keep an eye on the Gameboard-1.