Here's the thing: you can't really make Dungeons & Dragons into a video game. It's a game that lets players do basically anything that they want to, and that's not something that can be translated to a digital world. That hasn't stopped a lot of people from trying, though, and we're about to see another attempt at it.

Making you a digital Dungeon Master

Backflip Studios, the developer behind DragonVale, announced at PAX this afternoon that it's creating a mobile D&D game. It doesn't look much like the table-top role playing game that's been around for decades, but it does attempt to recreate at least one of its key elements. Namely, it sounds as though players will be able to create (or at least modify) the game world that they're about to play in, essentially bringing over some of the creativity that the traditional game affords its players. (A press representative for Backflip could not confirm exactly what the creation feature planned for the game will be, however.)

The similarities may not go much further than that, though. While Backflip isn't detailing very much about what its upcoming game is like or how it'll work, the studio mentions in a making-of video that this game will have real-time combat (unlike the turn-based tabletop game), and what you can do with your character appears to be altogether simpler. Admittedly, that's a logical approach for a mobile game — and it may well be a good one — it just doesn't suggest that it'll feel all that much like D&D.

Backflip doesn't say when it expects the game to be ready or what platforms it'll be available for. It looks like the game is still relatively early in production too, so it may be a while before you can play it.