How Do Mobile Devices Affect Your Game?

How does mobile technology affect your game? On the one hand, it provides access to resources - dice rollers, looking up rules, character managers, game-specific apps; on the other hand phones provide the distraction of Facebook, email, and text. I've been in many situations where a fellow player is just randomly showing another one a (hilarious?) YouTube video rather than playing the tabletop game in progress. Of course, it's far from a gaming-specific question; I've sat in pubs and liked around at tables of 3-4 people where all of them were looking at their phones rather than each other, and I'm far from innocent of that particular transgression myself. So, when gaming, how do you adopt technology? Do you have rules or restrictions, or are you lucky enough that your game is so captivating that it overrides the impulse to check Facebook?

One thing I've seen happening in London is that diners at a restaurant put their phones in the centre of the table. Anyone who touches their phone buys (depending on the strictness of the rules) a round of drinks, or everybody's dinner - and the result is that everybody engages with each other the whole time, as though mobile phones had never existed.

That doesn't translate easily to a roleplaying game scenario (unless you're ordering pizza for the group). But some groups, I've heard, enact in-game penalties. Touching your phone negates your next crit, for example.

On the flip side, there are many mobile applications which enhance games. A mere browser allows for instant rules lookups; dice rollers and character managers abound, as do initiative trackers and GM helper applications.

What are your mobile device policies at the game table?

 

[evilbob]

A question where everyone has an opinion! Mostly because there's no wrong or right way to do this. There still aren't really universal social rules when it comes to mobile devices, although thankfully it only took about 10 years for people to realize that screaming to someone on the phone in a restaurant - simultaneously ignoring your own table and shutting down their ability to converse without you - is rude. In other 20 years we'll probably have more.

In the two groups with which I'm most familiar, only one has a person where the phone gets in the way fairly often. We've not set any rules but the distraction level for this person is high, and it's disappointing. (Sometimes they'll get embarrassed at how "out of it" they were and put it away for a while... but only a little while.) To be fair, this is true in all other areas of their life as well. But mostly it just makes me not want to game with them, since they're indicating that they'd rather be doing something else than what we're doing. But I think I just revealed my bias there. I think some people don't believe that when you're on your phone you're telling everyone around you that you don't care about their presence and you'd rather be somewhere else (you're just "multitasking" or whatever) but I guess I'm not one of those people.

In the other group, I run it and use a tablet for reference and nothing else, ever. We have two people who will sometimes take/send texts, but they're ever only distracted for a moment, so it's well-tolerated. Another person will openly start playing on their device when they are bored as a way of signalling that they are unhappy with the situation. (More of a "you aren't really giving me agency so why should I care" sort of thing, or letting me know as a GM that they think what's going on is boring - like combat where it takes 5 minutes before they get their next turn, that sort of thing.) It's harsh but frankly justified. Also sometimes they are just insanely tired and can't focus on the game, so they zone out, and the tech is just a visualization of them zoning out (otherwise they'd be doing something else). In these cases, since I'm the one who wants to play the most - everyone else enjoys it but ultimately they are supporting my habit - I am willing to tolerate a lot, even though my normal tolerance level is much lower.

 

[Tzarevitch]

I run my 13th age game off of a Surface Pro. I have PDFs of all the books and I store my game data in OneNote so I can annotate it. Our other DM uses a laptop. Everyone else at the table uses a tablet or a laptop and keeps the books and character sheets in PDF form.

I'm too old to haul bagsful of books around. If I can't run the game off of my Surface, I won't run it. (That's a good part of my dislike for 5th Edition and why I abandoned my 5e game).

 

[ShinHakkaider]

I run my 13th age game off of a Surface Pro. I have PDFs of all the books and I store my game data in OneNote so I can annotate it. Our other DM uses a laptop. Everyone else at the table uses a tablet or a laptop and keeps the books and character sheets in PDF form.

I'm too old to haul bagful of books around. If I can't run the game off of my Surface, I won't run it. (That's a good part of my dislike for 5th Edition and why I abandoned my 5e game).

I'm exactly the same way. Just replace the Surface with my iPad and it's the same deal especially since now there's a version of OneNote for iOS and OS X.

If there's no PDF support for a game? I'm not running that game.

 

[S'mon]

I don't like it unless players are looking up rules (& we don't have the rules in hardcopy) or there is a genuine family emergency. I rarely see a problem in my own games - maybe in 4e, due to the slow combat turns, but not with 5e or Classic. Personally if I'm a player & my phone buzzes I may check the text if it's not too obvious (yesterday I let it buzz & checked later) but I'll not start typing on my phone unless it's an actual emergency.

Playing a game on your phone or random Internet browsing during the session seems like
grotesquely bad behaviour, I don't think I've seen anyone do that - usually it's texting, or "here's this funny video I saw earlier" - the group I played in yesterday has a bit too much of that.

Using electronics as a substitute for paper - IME this often goes wrong, Internet connection goes
down or player doesn't have a record of their hit point tally etc. And everything always seems to take much longer (though looking stuff up in the 5e PHB index is terrible too....) I don't think there's any substitute for pencil & paper, though electronics may supplement. I find that players over-reliant on electronics often have no
real understanding of the rules even after years of play.

 

[AngryGreek]

I like them as tools (spell cards for D&D, for example), but I loathe it when people sit and text / facebook all night when sitting down for a game. It doesn't bode well for them when I am DMing.

 

[EthanSental]

Using electronics as a substitute for paper - IME this often goes wrong, Internet connection goes
down or player doesn't have a record of their hit point tally etc. And everything always seems to take much longer (though looking stuff up in the 5e PHB index is terrible too....) I don't think there's any substitute for pencil & paper, though electronics may supplement. I find that players over-reliant on electronics often have no
real understanding of the rules even after years of play.

I find that as well, no understanding of the rules...it's just a checkmark on an APP. And good point about the no internet issue. A player left his ipad at home by mistake in our PF game where all of us were using herolabs and we didn't have his newest character file. Made that character pretty much useless as we were guessing at stuff. Also the host had a slow internet connect and with 6 devices hooked up to his wifi, it turned what seemed to be a 1200 baud speed modem Looking in a book was quicker than waiting on it to load.

 

[omniscitoad]

I find that as well, no understanding of the rules...it's just a checkmark on an APP. And good point about the no internet issue. A player left his ipad at home by mistake in our PF game where all of us were using herolabs and we didn't have his newest character file. Made that character pretty much useless as we were guessing at stuff. Also the host had a slow internet connect and with 6 devices hooked up to his wifi, it turned what seemed to be a 1200 baud speed modem Looking in a book was quicker than waiting on it to load.

First time posting to enWorld I think, but this topic is interesting to me.

My wife has been playing dnd for longer than we've known each other (13 years), long before either of us had any devices, and she still doesn't have much of a grasp of the rules. I think some people just don't really care for crunch - even when she ran her own games she mostly focused on the RP part of the RPG, even though the base game was always DnD.

In our case, we now game with people spread across China, Kazakhstan, and Canada. On a VTT it is pretty much impossible to know when someone isn't entirely engaged, but for the most part we are all just happy to be doing something together since we can't physically be in the same room anymore. Even our DM has been known to boot up a game in the background during some of the more lengthy character to character discussions and interactions that pop up regularly with us - which can go on so long at times it would be madness for those not involved to not have something else to do on the side! 5 years strong now, and we are still having fun, so I guess it really does depend on the group dynamic.

I wonder if the facelessness of the VTT softens the issue a bit, given that all the social cues and norms of a face-to-face session go screaming out the window 50ft. to their death when skype is your only method of communicating...

 

[S'mon]

Even our DM has been known to boot up a game in the background during some of the more lengthy character to character discussions and interactions that pop up regularly with us - which can go on so long at times it would be madness for those not involved to not have something else to do on the side! 5 years strong now, and we are still having fun, so I guess it really does depend on the group dynamic.

I wonder if the facelessness of the VTT softens the issue a bit, given that all the social cues and norms of a face-to-face session go screaming out the window 50ft. to their death when skype is your only method of communicating...

When I'm GMing a text-chat game I may be going getting a cup of tea, toilet break etc, I may even say "afk - need to put boy to bed - back in 40 minutes, ok?". No way would I ever start playing some *other* game though - especially not in preference to watching an in-character intra-PC conversation. I really don't understand that! If I played another game (a) I'd be missing out on the actual scheduled entertainment and (b) I wouldn't know what the PCs had decided, I would miss character-development elements etc - my GMing would suck.

 

[omniscitoad]

I don't know, seems to work ok with us. Some of our more marathon discussions can really go a little overboard, twisting back on themselves multiple times (mostly due to a particular character/ageing player with a particularly thick skull). When we get caught in one of those, anyone outside the conversation tends to drift off (my character manages his business interests, for example). It is also the kingmaker AP, and two of our players couldn't care less about the kingdom building aspect, but are enjoying the rest of the adventure, so they will drift off while a few of us work on that. I suppose this isn't really the forum to discuss the issues of my play group, ha ha.

I think what I'm just wondering is if the injection of tech "at the table" is an issue more because of distraction, or because it messes with social cues in ways that are already turned upside down by having only voice communication (we use Skype voice, not text). The advantage of the vtt is that there is a ding when your turn in combat comes up. There is also two characters with leadership, and summoning, and an animal companion, and a paladin mount, so combat can take a long time. Again, not the place to pick apart what my group is doing right and wrong, but illustrative of how methods of relieving boredom until your turn comes around may be less of an issue when you can't see that the person is doing something else, because those social cues we use face to face just aren't there. You don't see Bob sending a text or Sue checking facebook quickly because you don't SEE them. Also, when someone seems a YouTube video, we all get it on Skype and enjoy it together at the same time, so again there isn't a disruption by only one or two players, were all partake as a group.

It may also be that we use this as our way to keep in touch and hang out with friends now spread across the world which makes it different for us. We spend an hour just catching up every time!

 

[sleypy]

I like them as tools (spell cards for D&D, for example), but I loathe it when people sit and text / facebook all night when sitting down for a game. It doesn't bode well for them when I am DMing.

That is where I sit on the issue as well. I am fine with using electronic devices to help support gameplay. It is very aggravating to have to constantly repeat things because a player decides to check out of the game until their turn came back around.

With that said, just like I don't pick up my phone to look for an answer until after there is a rules question, a player doesn't surf facebook until after they are checked out. I think people mistakenly attribute distractions to electronic devices when they are not the cause of the problem.