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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Radiating Gnome" data-source="post: 5851018" data-attributes="member: 150">A couple of things: 1. I feel like this is being needlessly reductive. As I said above, our game table -- very much exactly what you've described ("friends sitting around a table together and socializing over a game we all enjoy") and yet most of the players at the table are using iPads.  We use them to manage characters (rather than pen-and-paper), we use them to look up rules (a quick search on the compendium is a lot faster than flipping through books). Between sessions we use them to build our characters, the DMs in the group use online tools to create maps, monsters, and so on. None of that digitalization takes anything away from the experience at the table. It's still roleplaying & dick jokes, mostly, like every game table I've sat at for the past 30 years. The difference is we're using the tools we have available to us to manage the nuts and bolts of the game. 2. I believe wholeheartedly that it's the sort of social experience you describe that is the most critical part of D&D, and it's the one essential ingredient that makes tabletop RPGs a better experience than MMO play (which I also enjoy). It's the one thing that gives me hope that the hobby will survive.  I also believe that to recruit new players -- not keep us old timers happy, but to find new players -- I think it's in the interest of Wizards and the other companies producing game content to do everything they have the resources to do that either facilitates game prep and game play or have a permissive enough license that others who are interested can design their own.  Having said that, in response to,,,Again, it's not either.  But I think it will gradually become more important to think "Content" rather than "Books".  Sure, we still get books now, and I'm still buying them, but in the long run the important thing is the words on the pages, not the paper and the binding.  I think the content and the apps are both vital for the future of the game -- again, not for us, because we'll keep playing on paper until the bitter end -- but of the sake of new players, players who were given iPads to do their work on in grade school, who think the angry birds theme song is the national anthem, and who will never know the sweet agony of the paper cut.....-rg</blockquote>

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