D to D
D to D
Most networking conversations start the same way:
There’s nothing wrong with those questions, but after a while they might become procedural. Especially at industry events, where everyone is constantly switching between social mode and professional mode.
D to D came from a very simple idea: giving people a small shared activity inside an environment where most interactions are usually transactional.
At industry events, conversations often happen with a purpose already attached to them: pitching, networking, recruiting, scheduling, presenting.
We liked the idea of creating something much smaller and less structured. A game that could exist in the background of the event rather than at the center of it.
Something playable in a queue, between meetings, during a coffee break, or while waiting for a presentation to start.
Sometimes between strangers, sometimes between people who already knew each other.. the interesting part was never the game alone: It was the kind of interactions the game could quietly make more likely.
A shared space does not automatically create interaction.
At events like First Playable you have students, junior developers, studio founders, freelancers, publishers, artists, programmers, writers, and producers all sharing the same space, but not necessarily interacting with each other naturally.
There’s always a small social barrier at the beginning: not knowing if you’re interrupting, not knowing how to start, not knowing whether the other person actually wants to talk.
Games are very good at solving this problem.
Not because they force interaction, but because they replace uncertainty with structure. Even extremely lightweight structure.
With D to D, the interaction already has a format: you compare characters, challenge stats, argue about absurd builds, accuse each other of min-maxing, and somewhere in the middle of that exchange the real conversation usually starts on its own.
The game itself is almost secondary.
Nostalgia is interface design.
The old-school tabletop aesthetic was intentional from the start.
A lot of people at this event grew up with character sheets, printed manuals, handwritten campaigns, and games that existed as much around the table as inside the game itself.
We liked the idea of using that visual language because it communicates something immediately, even before reading the rules.
You already know this object.
You already know how you’re supposed to feel holding it.
That kind of familiarity lowers the barrier to participation in a way that’s difficult to achieve with cleaner or more modern design styles.
Nostalgia, in this case, is not just decoration.
It’s interface design.
Small game. Larger outcomes.
What we liked about the idea is that the game stays extremely small while the outcomes don’t.
Some people finish a match in thirty seconds and move on.
Others start discussing game balance, tabletop memories, studio life, RPG classes, badly optimized builds, or why every programmer apparently wants to play a Warrior....
...that was the real goal from the beginning!
Not competition.
Not balance.
Just giving people an easier way to begin.
At Caracal, we tend to like systems that are simple to enter but capable of producing unexpected situations once real people get involved.
Sometimes that becomes a videogame.
Sometimes it becomes the back of a convention badge.
