doesn't anyone play low-tech anymore?

[TheUltramark]

I know I am old, and old fashioned, and an old dog that can't learn many new tricks, but my game that's been running for nearly 30 years still uses paper and pencils. We use those big sheets of 1" grid paper on the easels (layed flat on the table), we have the same 200 or so miniatures we have had for at least 20 years, and while we used the character builder initially, we find it faster and easier to just use the pencil and eraser. As a DM I "make up" monsters, or level them up, or magic them up however I choose, and write it all down in a notebook. I've played at the table, I've played play-by-post, and I've played live chat, and still the easiest, most comfortable way for me to make a pc is with paper and pencil.

Am I in the minority? or even worse, am I the only one?

 

[kaomera]

I know I am old, and old fashioned, and an old dog that can't learn many new tricks, but my game that's been running for nearly 30 years still uses paper and pencils. We use those big sheets of 1" grid paper on the easels (layed flat on the table), we have the same 200 or so miniatures we have had for at least 20 years, and while we used the character builder initially, we find it faster and easier to just use the pencil and eraser. As a DM I "make up" monsters, or level them up, or magic them up however I choose, and write it all down in a notebook. I've played at the table, I've played play-by-post, and I've played live chat, and still the easiest, most comfortable way for me to make a pc is with paper and pencil.

Am I in the minority? or even worse, am I the only one?

Insofar as you find it easiest, I think you're in the minority. Most comfortable, I'm less sure of. The key factor in the success of the CB has been convenience - which is also why you see so much complaint about the online version vs. the offline. A lot of that convenience evaporated for a time, and while it's arguably back to where it was in terms of usability, I think a lot of users' patience has been worn thin.

This is one of the things I like about the newer approach of the HotWS books, the Class Compendium (although it's online-only in a sense), and the new focus on eliminating potential errata-able issues before a product sees print. The overall effect (IMO) is to make character creation (and play in general) without the electronic aids much more convenient / efficient. At the same time, however, the DDI was part of what was used to sell 4e. And while I have yet to have a game where everyone at the table had access to the online tools, I think that a decent portion of the 4e "userbase" expects them.

Personally, I dislike electronic aids at the table, although I will admit that they can be damned useful. They just bug me in a generally illogical way. However, away from the table I rely heavily on the DDI and other stuff like email to keep the game going and cut down on the workload of DMing 4e. I think that WotC has put themselves in a position where they need to cater to both sides of the equation at once, and it's not working out too well.

(As an aside, and somewhat OT, is there a specific and up-to-date list of what you need to do to re-level creatures, preferably including what to do to bring older monsters "up to code" without having to fiddle with figuring average damage values, or if a power is supposed to be high-damage or low?)

 

[Siuis]

The only downside to pen and paper is when you grab someone else's notes, they can be hard to read. One of my players writes his character sheets in a stream-of-consciousness fashion, where I have been trained to make character sheets a certain way since back before I found a red box in the dumpster with a handful of dice and minis. It makes his sheets mind-numbing to plumb.

For 4e, the design is leaning heavily towards "you must have online functionality to play" rather than make me get online functionality though, I just don't play 4e very often. It's sad really.

Some of the appeal of the game are the connotations I have with pencil shavings, graph paper and cheesy black and white art. 3.5 keeps that by association, but 4e lost it withs it's high gloss, color-coded print run.

 

[malraux]

I did book reports in 4th grade on my Apple IIe. I'm right at the edge of the computer generation,so I've almost never found pencil and paper to be faster or easier.

 

[Hussar]

Well, to be honest, since I run my games on a VTT, about 50% of my prep is on the computer, but, in approach, I'm pretty similar to Ultramark.

 

[S'mon]

My own Essentials Thief PC is pencil & paper only, but I use the offline charbuilder to build PCs for other people. I don't use any electronic aids at the table, but I certainly use Word on my netbook a lot! Not to mention bulletin boards. And the old monster builder is useful too.

I do think it's good not to over-use electronic stuff. No random dungeon generator compares to pencil & paper IME. Knowing the right balance is a fine art.

 

[S'mon]

(As an aside, and somewhat OT, is there a specific and up-to-date list of what you need to do to re-level creatures, preferably including what to do to bring older monsters "up to code" without having to fiddle with figuring average damage values, or if a power is supposed to be high-damage or low?)

Adding 1/2 level to listed monster damage usually works, but IME it's much better to base off L+8, +25% for brutes, -25% for low, +50% for limited.

Attacks should always be L+5. For old Elites & Solos take 2 off AC and the best 2 NADs.

 

[TheUltramark]

when I am DM, I do a lot of the prep work at the computer, no question, but rarely if ever do i even turn on the lap top at the table. As a player, I spend a lot of time reading the books, trying to formulate my plan for when next we level up. (We split up a lot as a group - kind of a perk from playing together so long)

To each their own, I don't mean to insinuate otherwise, I was just wondering if I were alone in my taste for a more old school feel.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Despite spending a huge amount of time online, I'm not particularly fond of computers at the gaming table.

Yesterday, I ran a game at a too-small gaming table (the one we always use) with three laptops running on it simultaneously. Needless to say, this took up a lot of space, a problem since we use a battlemat.

One player's laptop had died and we spent a lot of time resurrecting his character sheet. Even then, the CB wasn't working on his new laptop (we had to transfer it by USB stick to another player's laptop and of course, no printer) and he had to rely on small blurry images of his character sheet on his laptop, so small he could hardly read the attack bonuses. (They were all +6, not sure where the confusion was coming from.)

Another player had a working laptop and working CB but for some reason needed a lot of hand-holding with his character's attack bonuses too and seemingly needed to recalculate them every round. He'd say "we agreed it was +7, right?" (No, he wasn't cheating.)

And would you believe, said players were of a telepath and a bard? It occurs to me I've literally never seen the telepath's character sheet, and had requested it be emailed to me. (Not in CB format, I don't even have that.) However, his laptop died as I made the request.

But there are some some things I like to keep online. We have a gaming wiki that we use to expand settings and (in cases where people's computers haven't died) store character sheets, so the DM can look at them whenever they need to.

 

[wedgeski]

I don't like laptops at the table unless they're notebook or tablet-sized, but I do most prep electronically. I've played for many years and built my AD&D campaigns by hand in meticulously crafted notebooks which I, of course, still have and treasure, but since I work in the software industry the shift to electronic prep has seemed natural and convenient to me.