Almost five and a half years ago, I made my RPS debut looking at what creative modders for Tabletop Simulator were doing. While frequently of grey legality (the majority of items on the Steam Workshop are still unofficial digital reproductions of expensive physical games), the platform is still thriving. Official adaptations of games for Berserk’s virtual play-space are now sold more readily, but few take quite as much advantage of Tabletop Simulator’s increasingly advanced scripting system like these showcase productions. Here’s a few stand-outs pushing the boundaries of what ‘tabletop’ even means.

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The first thing you need to know about Tabletop Simulator is that it isn’t goofy physics nonsense, in the vein of goat or bread. It’s an earnest attempt to let you play board games over the internet, recreating each component rather than translating games into a digital interface.

The second thing you need to know is that, for the most part, it works.

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Kerberos Productions – creators of the Sword of the Stars 4X strategy series – may have a slightly patchy track record, but they’re a studio that’s never short on heart. This month, they’ve been Kickstarting funds to start a board games division, adapting their universes into dice-and-cardboard form. Possibly hedging their bets, they also released a prototype of their upcoming Sword of The Stars: The Pit board game as a mod for Tabletop Simulator today, letting folks try it for free.

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Have you ever dreamed of a game where you scour the darkest, seediest corners of an over-populated, neon-saturated cyberpunk metropolis? Was that game a virtual board game with lots of deck building and dice rolling? Well, the good news is it might not be a dream after all. Spanish team Quantum Goose are working on a cyberpunk virtual tabletop game called Quantum Quest [official site] and it’s on Steam Concept now.

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Imagine playing a boardgame that actually allows you to reach toward the cardboard and plastic with your hands, or a virtual representation thereof. Imagine being able to pick up the pieces and move them around. Imagine being able to lob a chit at your opponent. All of that is now (sort of) possible thanks to Tabletop Simulator’s [official site] VR support. Currently in beta, the Vive implementation received a beefy update in yesterday’s patch, and full details along with a trailer are below.

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Cosmic Encounter is a fantastic board game, a wheeling, dealing, warring strategy game about vying for control of the cosmos as one of many aliens factions who each throw a different wrench in its simple rules. It’s Rab’s favourite board game and, as a sign of things to come, Quinns wrote about it too. “But Alice,” you say, “you clearly can’t be civil for the duration of a board game, so what are you> doing writing about it now?”

It’s simple: Cosmic Encounter has become the second cardboard game officially released as DLC for virtuaboard ‘em up Tabletop Simulator [official site].

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You’ve probably heard of Tabletop Simulator, the clever piece of software that allows users to recreate boardgames on a virtual table. There are many modules to download, and we’ve covered the thoughts of boardgame creators and publishers about the availability of their own games in simulated form.

Now there’s a new kid on the tabletop block in the shape of Revolution: Virtual Playspace. Aimed at cooperative pen and paper RPGs rather than boardgames, it supports up to ten players and comes with a host of editors.

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One of the best things about The Witcher 3 is its awareness that fetch quests are absolutely silly. The other fantastic thing is Gwent. I like Gwent. A lot. In case you don’t know what it is, it’s this in-game collectible card game that has two players take control of different armies and duke it out to see who is the better general-leader-hypothetical-head-of-army. While not the deepest mini-game I’ve encountered, it’s certainly fun and has, to date, consumed a worrying amount of my time in the Witcher 3. And now it is available as a mod for Tabletop Simulator [official site], which is similarly awesome.

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We asked Paul Dean of splendid boardgaming website Shut Up & Sit Down to investigate the future of the enormously successful boardgame software, Tabletop Simulator [official site]. He spoke to the creators, as well as boardgame designers, to discover their feelings towards copyright-infringing mods that replicate their games, plus the possible benefits of paid mods and licensed DLC.>

The first time I saw anyone playing Tabletop Simulator, I was pointed toward a jury-rigged version of the hidden identity game Mascarade, cobbled together using Dota 2 art for the cards. My immediate response was, Well, this definitely isn t going to last. What I saw in this new software wasn t just an explosion of interest in board games, but also the potential for so many copyrights to be infringed.

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Tabletop Simulator [official site] and all its boardgame-replication and physics-enabled table-flipping will leave Early Access on June 5th. The switch to a full release might not mean much since updates will continue, but it will also see the price increase and herald the addition of the first DLC, an officially-licensed digital recreation of the card game Superfight.

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