DreadBall Goes Digital…

The recent deluge of Digital Products from Games Workshop certainly turned the game of Warhammer 40K upside down (if you buy into the digital). It seems not a Codex will be released in the future, without a batch of eBooks to go with it.

Quality, price and utility of Games Workshop’s eBooks have been discussed a lot. I also know that other tabletop games use Apps (X-Wing being one of them) and eBooks.

Now Mantic Games is stepping into the ring with an offering of interactive eBooks for DreadBall, which they developed with a company called Purple Guerrilla.

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#1 – Mantic Games new DreadBall Apps

Companion Apps – The DreadBall Playbook

The DreadBall Playbook is a new type of gaming app that lets you cut down on in-game “paperwork” without taking away from the fun, or slowing down the game. It’s a team builder and gaming companion that can keep track of your score, while showing your player stats abilities and keeping track of their actions. It also lets you access your Mantic Digital content from within the Playbook itself when you need to check a rule or consult a chart.

It’s got all these features and more on the way!

• Team builder. Choose from famous teams like the Trontek 29ers and Greenmoon Smackers, or build your own.
• In-Game Reference. The playbook shows legal actions and abilities for ever member of your team.
• Game Tracker. As the game progresses, the playbook keeps track of actions, strikes and kills and updates your roster accordingly.
• Easy Access. With a few taps you can easily look up definitions for abilities directly from the the PlayBook.
• More to come! League management software, stats tracking and plenty more will roll out over the next few months…

That’s a lot of cool features to play with, if you’re into DreadBall. I have no idea what it will cost, but it sounds fund.

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#2 – Buy Once, Use Everywhere

More revolutionary (for wargaming in the digital world), however, are Mantic’s plans to cut across platforms and combat the eFragmentation across different devices and formats. At least, that’s their plan!

Mantic Digital eBooks

Mantic Digital is all about buying once and reading anywhere. That means every book and companion app will work as well on the web as on your tablet, smartphone and even on e-Ink devices like the Kindle.*

Gaming eBooks tend to fall under three categories: straight-from-print PDFs (such as the current Mantic titles available from Wargame Vault), cut-down EPUBs,  and bells-and-whistles, iPad-only iBooks. Today, we introduce the fourth category: mobile-ready, interactivity-rich media eBooks powered by our cross-platform eReading engine, Reactor. [Translation - ultra cool interactive books FROM THE FUTURE! - James]

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#3 – Thoughts?

We’ll have to see how this plays out in the actual app (and what it will cost), but it sounds very, very, very interesting.

That’s certainly a roadmap for developing digital support for tabletop games, that other companies (including, but certainly not limited to GW) should take a page from.

What do you think?

Z.