Tantale

A role-playing night without the paperwork

Tantale is a one-shot sci-fi horror game, played at home by three to six players, with rules inspired by Mothership. The starting problem was a practical one. In this kind of session the game master spends half the evening juggling character sheets, timers and secret notes passed under the table, instead of scaring the players.

So we handed all of that machinery to an app. Not instead of the tabletop game, but alongside it. Real dice stay on the table, the sheets are still printed, and the clues are still hidden around the living room.

Three screens playing together

The game master runs the ship from a console on a laptop. Each player picks up their phone, which becomes their on-board terminal: private messages, a scanner, the state of their character. The living-room TV is the shared screen, showing maps, security cameras and events as they happen.

Phones join over the home Wi-Fi by scanning a QR code, with nothing to install from an app store. Under every printed code there is a five-character token players can type by hand if the camera won't cooperate. That sort of detail matters on the night, when six phones from six different makers all need to work first time.

The game runs on a clock of twelve candles, twenty-five minutes each, which adds up to five hours of play and keeps the tension climbing. Some voices are generated by speech synthesis, and a full kit prints straight from the app: the game master's crib sheet, choice cards, badges, character sheets and a map.

Under the bonnet

The server is Node.js, running on the game master's computer or in a Docker container. Updates reach every screen in real time through Server-Sent Events, a simpler technique than WebSockets and plenty for the job. On the players' side the interface is a progressive web app that recovers cleanly when a phone wakes from sleep.

We deliberately kept every online service out of the game itself. If the house loses its internet connection mid-session, play carries on.

What it taught us

Tantale is live. It is a good example of the work we enjoy: a purpose-built tool for one specific moment, where the technology gets out of the way. The same building blocks (real-time updates, several synchronised screens, joining by QR code) would serve an escape room, a trade-show stand or a guided tour just as well.