Vision of the Future?

[Ker42]

Hi, all!  I just had an incredible dream.  I was pulling out tiles to start a game of Carcassonne, and one of the tiles "TURNED ON!"  It was a double-tile, and it had a little switch on the top edge like an iPad.  When clicked on, it actually displayed images of how to play the tile!  Unfortunately, I woke up before seeing what the full artwork or mechanics entailed, but it got me wondering.  What will Carcassonne of the future look like?  If we or machines don't wipe ourselves out, what amazing technology might exist a hundred years from now?  Carc tiles with moving artwork (an actual flowing river or tiny people bustling about in a busy city)?  A connected device could play audio: when you play a dragon tile, it roars.  And tiny tile sensors could track the dragon token's movement and make chomping sounds when it eats your meeple.  Or will everything be holographic like Star Wars chess?  Or better yet, imagine a Star Trek type holo-deck experience where you interact with visuals from the game (although I'm not sure I'd want to interact with a life-size dragon)! 

If anyone has a time machine, kindly pop into the future, check it out, and come back and tell us what Carcassonne of the future looks like.  I'm curious.  Anyone else?

Linkback: https://www.carcassonnecentral.com/community/index.php?topic=6445.0

[oldbonz]

I'll go there straight away and tell you when I get back

[kothmann]

Check put this Mahjong technology:

For context, classical Mahjong has 136 tiles, with each player having a hand of 13 tiles.  You draw 1 and discard 1 each turn, until you make “Hu” with 14 tiles (no final discard).  The other players can claim your discard if it makes some pattern of 3 tiles in their hand, but then they have to discard.

So, you only need 13 tiles for each player plus 1 tile to be drawn (plus one other tile for certain special cases), for a total of 54.  The discarded tile magically becomes some other tile if it is not claimed by another player!

It isn’t too hard to imagine similar technology for electronic Carcassonne tiles, with some expansion tiles that change the edge configuration of neighboring tiles, or turn knights into farmers (meeples would be virtual, rendered on the tile face), etc.

This is a fun thought experiment thanks!