Wired has a blog post on some ideas for sprucing up board games with technology.

While the idea is very cool, and I’m sure it would appeal to those looking for a crossover between tabletop and video gaming, I can’t help but feel this won’t take off.  There’s a certain visceral feel to have hand-painted miniatures (or the wee plastic ones that Wizards is big on right now), drawing out a map (or building one from 3-D tiles and what have you), that this won’t capture.

Yes, having moving stuff on the board is neat.  Hell, little robotic minis that did what they were instructed would be pisser! but it loses some of the fun of the board game.  My favorite remains Supremacy! — the original version with the highly abstract map with it’s square and ovoid pieces, and of course the mushroom-shaped “clouds” for the nukes.

Normally, I’m a technophile.  I really want a Surface table with multi touch where the players can all manipulate dice programs, their pdf character sheets, and I can have map overlays for pieces, etc.  (Not too different from this idea, really…) so I don’t know why this particular bit of application doesn’t thrill me.