Lessons from the iPhone community

[Wordman]

While this forum is not about computer games, I'm wondering if anyone gained any inspiration for pen & paper RPGs from the recent explosion of iPhone games (and other apps). Is such a thing even possible? In spite of a sea of total garbage (one farting app was more than sufficient), there seem to be a lot of rather clever gaming concepts, some that I've not seen before. They certainly wouldn't directly translate, but I'm wondering if anyone has seen something that has taken their brain in a particular direction.

I dunno. I just read a review for Theseus and it tickled the RPG part of my brain for reasons I can't really explain (or even appreciate).

[Vulpinoid]

I've considered the notion of an automatic dice rolling and calculation app for the iPhone, I've seen a few other applications working on the notion of shaking/moving the device so this wouldn't be much of a stretch.

The benefits of using this type of technology would be the ability to instantly cross reference tables and simply produce the relevant data in a text box somewhere on the screen.

The down side would be the limited market of such an application (you'd have to write a set of tables and dice algorithms for each game...or at least a modular set of add-ons for the app).

That's just been my thoughts on the issue lately.

V