Dungeon Masters in Cyberspace
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While pen-and-paper role playing usually involves thick rule books and sacks of special dice, in D&D Online the computer handles the number-crunching and rules adjudication while the players can see a computerized representation of their actions rather than having to (or being enabled to) imagine them.
While players in most online games communicate by typing, Turbine has tried to enhance the in-person feel of D&D Online by building voice-chat software into the game so players can speak with one another using a microphone plugged into their computer. And while most video games try to adopt a cinematic mode of storytelling, D&D Online plainly reminds users that they are playing a computer approximation of a pen-and-paper game. During combat, an icon of a spinning 20-sided die appears in a corner of the screen, just as modern slot machines still show spinning reels even though a microchip has already decided if you've won the jackpot.
