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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Man in the Funny Hat" data-source="post: 7928034" data-attributes="member: 32740">Wanting players to actually read, and understand the rules of the game they are playing rather than just following what software tells them to do is not, AFAIK, considered gatekeeping.  Look, you're mistaking the point I've made and am still making - it isn't that the digital tools have no use, nor that they never work for anyone.  It is that in my incontrovertible personal experience digital tools have resulted in players that actually don't know the rules and for that reason I prefer players to use books, both to learn and to play the game.Agreed.  They should game and be happy.  I'm not saying that a player has no business playing D&D if they don't know how to roll 8d6+12 or even which ones are the d6's .  I've DM'd (albeit briefly) for children and would extend full patience, understanding, tolerance and compassion for a player with learning disabilities.  But short of that sort of exception I ABSOLUTELY expect an otherwise intelligent and able player to learn the game rules and not NEED software to do it for them, even if software can then make playing the game easier to some degree.  When you assume that the SRD is as good as a physical PH in all respects, if not better, then you invite just such players who can play, but don't really know or understand the rules they're playing by. People can play baseball without knowing or understanding an infield fly rule, balk pitches, or the ground rule double.  But I don't have to accept them never learning that if we're gonna play a game in my back yard.More importantly and more to my original point, I have as many issues WITH THE GAME as with the players when it is complex enough that software BECOMES A SEEMING NECESSITY in order to keep up with play, and is then understandably used by players to avoid actually learning the rules.But that's just me.</blockquote>

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