Hey guys, I’m here to bring you something that’s been on my mind for quite some time now. If you’re like me, then you most definitely enjoy playing tabletop games with your collectible miniatures. Nothing beats sitting down with friends and rolling some dice on a Friday night right? Well recently, I stumbled upon an idea entirely by accident: Why not try and use my miniature collection to play tabletop games on a computer?
Before we get into what this article is about, first I’d like to apologize for the lack of posts lately. It’s been a busy month full of family emergencies and things that just came up out of nowhere. But fear not! We’ll be back to our regularly scheduled programming very soon.
tabletop games on computer?
So I talked about this idea with a few friends and we decided to give it a try for ourselves. We set up a Skype group chat and did some Google searching because I didn’t know of any software that could do what we wanted. Lo and behold, we found a program that could allow us to use tabletop miniatures in a virtual tabletop environment with the use of a camera!
The program is called Tabletop Simulator. It was developed by Berserk Games and has been out for about 2 years now. A free version for this game exists, but there’s also DLC that you can use to further your gaming experiences.
tabletop simulator?
Tabletop Simulator is a physics sandbox game developed by Berserk Games , in which players construct, play and share tabletop games with others online. It allows gamers to let their imaginations run wild by building anything they can dream up through an intuitive sandbox-style interface and then share it online for others to play within seconds. To date, there are almost 1 million custom games that you can discover on the Steam Workshop .
Players can take any existing image from their computer and use it to create a custom game board such as their favorite map in a tabletop war game. They can even take it a step further and create custom models using just their web browser, an image editor or even by taking multiple screenshots in-game. With Steam Workshop, you can share your creations with the entire Tabletop Simulator community in just one click!
So there’s a few things I’d like to cover before we get into the nitty gritty.
What you’ll need: A webcam and a computer that runs Windows XP or higher (sorry Mac users). If you’re on the fence about investing in Tabletop Simulator, we’ll show you what we can do with it after the article. It should also be noted that this software requires Steam to work properly.
A lot of what we’ll be doing in this article will either involve the Steam Marketplace or Tabletop Simulator workshop.
So what can you do with Tabletop Simulator? You can play almost any tabletop game that exists on your computer screen! Want to play Dungeons and Dragons online, or maybe Pathfinder even? How about playing Warhammer 40k against your buddies on Battlegroup or Warmachine? No problem! Tabletop Simulator can do all of that and more. And yes, it can be played multiplayer too. We’ll touch on that later in the article.
conclusion
We’re going to be playing a tabletop game called Imperial Assault. If you’ve never heard of it, don’t worry because neither had I before this article series! It was actually the answer to my “What can I do with Tabletop Simulator?” question. Imperial Assault is a dungeon crawler board game set in the Star Wars universe. Players choose one of several characters to play as during the campaign, gaining new abilities and equipment through three different game modes: a skirmish mode in which they face off against AI opponents over predetermined scenarios; an Imperial Assault mode in which two players compete against each other, including running a campaign with multiple missions; and a tutorial that teaches the rules. A fourth mode, a campaign generator, is in development.
