Gaming by I Phone

[italwars]

Hello
I had an idea that will probably make people laugh but i ll submit it just in case somebody already experimented with it:
I have large collections of minis in both 1:72 and 28mm, I m an avid war gamer but I have two problems as concern opponents:
I live in Italy and I only like to game periods quite “out of the beaten path “ and with rulesets in English that nobody knows here (TSATF colonial and Rapid Fire)...untill 2 years ago I used to play with a foreign friend that lived in Rome but now he has changed country for jobs reasons. And he has experimented same problems to find opponents.
Well my idea would be to try to play our usual games while visually connected trough I Phone. We both have similar and huge armies, game tables ecc...the ideas could be to set two identical tables and duplicate movies , once fulfilled orders and dice trows, on both tables in order that each one of us see the battlefield of each other trough cam or , in alternative, only one of us stage the table and moove miniatures while we both give orders and trow dices.?
Any ideas? Did somebody tried it? Maybe if a tabletop game whith both us taking part simultaneously is not feasible a campaign could be?
Thanks in advance for your ideas/experiences

[FionaWhite]

I've not tried it myself so I can't attest to its usefulness, but many people supposedly use Vassal (LINK) for playing various tabletop games with others via online.
I can't, at a glance, unfortunately find any ready-made modules for the rulesets you mention. 

[mcfonz]

There was a game that actually really did have this potential called Golumns of Arcana.

In many ways, if that concept could be made a bit more refined I think there would be a lot of scope for grid/hex based wargames via phone/tablet app.

[FramFramson]

I think it would work with any table with fixed numerically-divided terrain, e.g. grid, hex, etc. Wouldn't be much different than chess-by-mail or online, it'd just have more moving parts.

Without that organization though, I don't think it'd work. Freeform measuring on two separate tables is bound to cause problems and discrepancies over time even if both players are acting in completely good faith.

[Ultravanillasmurf]

If you could find an umpire who provided the views of the battlefield and moved your forces in response to your orders, that might work.

It would make the "fog of war" easy to represent, and prevent the "god view" prevalent in table top gaming.

I am reminded of the mechanical flight simulators using miniatures that were used for combat training in the 'eighties.

[Harry von Fleischmann]

I’ve done it - one person “hosts” the game and sets up the table.

You then use FaceTime to view the game, the host using his phone or iPad to show the other player whatever needs to be seen.

Dice rolling needs good faith and it does create unintended fog of war because if the camera is fixed, so is your view; if it’s moved around it’s easy to get disoriented. In some games I’ve misjudged distance, not stopped things and in one famous moment mistook a pair of red dice in the distance for a car.

I’ve not tried to play a game with a table at both ends of the link - I think you’d get too many things not quite the same re distance.

Try a small game - say a recce unit motoring down a road past 3-4 terrain items, over face time or similar and see how it works.

[italwars]

many thanks for your attention and dedicated answers to my bizarre idea 
Above all Harry Von Fleischmann and i'm happy that somebody already experimented with it...i should have a try with the guidelines that you suggest me. Maybe i could try with a fixed camera looking above the table and mutually connected to our PCs ...and , in addition, use our phones with Face Time or Whattssap apps to moove the bird eye view at different angles trough the battlefiled....your suggestion of one player only hosting the table and miniatures seem the more apppropriate..
thanks again

[Harry von Fleischmann]

My pleasure, if you need an example try

http://winterof79.blogspot.com/2014/02/mae-pont-yn-rhybyell1979-after-action.html?m=1

That was an iPad game. So was the Pegasus Bridge game a bit later on. In fact many of the games on W79 were on FaceTime.

[italwars]

thanks ...interesting
so maybe you're the man behind  Winter 79?..one of my favourite site 

[Harry von Fleischmann]

I’m one of the guys - I did nowhere near as much research, blogging and sheer W79 stuff as Mark. Glad you like it; it started from an idle comment or two and a sense of nostalgia fir the music of the time and grew from there.

The red dice incident was in an SAS raid game; I had an offtable sniper/spotter team and mark would use the iPad to show me what they could see. I could see a red rectangle shape at the far end of the lane and became convinced it was a car full of trots waiting to spring into action.

[italwars]

it started from an idle comment or two and a sense of nostalgia fir the music of the time and grew from there.

well ..i'm Italian...in wargame (and history fascination) therms i support my country's choices of field.even .including WW2 (at least in Africa) and our "embarassing" recent football team..but for very similar reasons and for having been a few time and spent holidays  in UK during end of Seventies i'm also very fascinated for that period...above all someway " Dark" but extremely stimulant atmosphere , of course the music that is still my absolute favourite, the fashion, of course the British girls  ...i even collected , during those times, English first division shirts ..(i still play five a side football sporting my very old vintage Arsenal shirt ) and at time i dared, with great enjoyment, to go see a match and familiarize with very intersting Millawall supporters in London...of course i remenbered and felt the atmosphere of  the Tatcherian history..Irish question, Falklands (even if, sorry for that, i support Argentina claims) ...the cold war UK uniforms, weapons and unit's esprit de corps are also very cool..nothing to compare with continenatl/Italan ones...and .thanks to your blog i began to buy and recuperate from my lead mountain 1:72 Platoon 20 , Matchbox NATO Paras, Hotspur minis and among my project too propose to a gamer friend living abroad there is the first clashes between SBS, Paras and Argentinian scouts at San Carlos Landing in 1982. well i love practically everything from your country also thanks to the atmosphere of Winter 79 ...excluding, maybe, the red beans at breakfast   ;)
thanks again..i'll study the sythem you proposed..

[Harry von Fleischmann]

This is the link to our Top Malo House game

http://winterof79.blogspot.com/2012/05/top-malo-house-30th-anniversary-game.html?m=1

Played over FaceTime or Skype, I can’t remember. The long range photos are what I could see, more or less. I didn’t get to see close detail unless the Boswell figure was near. So, managing that was both fun and illuminating.

[italwars]

This is the link to our Top Malo House game

http://winterof79.blogspot.com/2012/05/top-malo-house-30th-anniversary-game.html?m=1

Played over FaceTime or Skype, I can’t remember. The long range photos are what I could see, more or less. I didn’t get to see close detail unless the Boswell figure was near. So, managing that was both fun and illuminating.

Thanks ....i already know your game reconstruction of Top Malo...already printed in colour paper the same day you edit it at the expense of my office laser printer...already scanned and deeply studied ..the fact that you gamed it trough Face Time is encouraging....i played Top Malo House small battle  here in Rome with a former Scottish Friend also wargamer only a few years after the end of the war..i still have my converted Matchbox minis ...even some ones equipped with some M16 and scopes instead of SLR...at the time we did'nt have many sources..i did'nt know that quite a few Artic Quadre Royal Marines were equipped with LAWs that probably carried the day...we gave to the Argentine a support weapon but then i discovered that they had none  ...a 50mm Browning which his absolute anti historical ..but at time we did'nt know anything..so the conclusion was also unrealistic...in my bedside table there is, and i 'll continue to read for the second time tonight..a book in Spanish which is a kind of War Diary by one of the Officers of the Argentine Commando Company 602...Top Malo skirmish is explained in details and i find every possible detail from the "other side" ..if you need any info on falklands actions from the Argentine side,  especially from Elite units (601, 602 Commando 's,  25 Special Inf. Reg and Marine Infantry),  i already have quite a few sources from Argentine's published books bought for me by a friend in specialised bookshop in Buenos Aires and i can translate some specific infos from you

[Ultravanillasmurf]

If you have the required tech savvy (or know someone that does) one or more of these might be useful (plus they can double as Cthuloid monsters):
https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/octocam-pi-zero-w-project-kit
Powering them without trailing USB cables all over the table might be an issue.