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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Man in the Funny Hat" data-source="post: 7928243" data-attributes="member: 32740">Mostly thinking of 3E as the d20 SRD was referenced specifically.  Right in the back of the first printing PH's was a CD with character creation software.  It wasn't awesome software as such things go but it was cool to have that.  It morphed into different software, and other people made their own software doing some of the same stuff.  This was all just for creating characters and keeping character sheets updated at this point for us.  I didn't need campaign management or combat management software.  Players RELIED on having that for their characters though.We sometimes gamed where we had no computers or internet to maintain or update digital copies of character sheets.  But EVERY player had a players handbook.  I provided them a spare if they didn't.  But they NEEDED that software to alter anything about their PC if they gained a level or something about their PC substantially changed.  If they didn't have it they didn't even know where to start the level-up process.  Unless I held their hands through it (which I quickly stopped doing) they would play entire sessions without leveling up, so they could go home, level up their character using the software, and then come back next session.  They just did not know even basic things about what would change when their PC gained a level, and with the book in front of them wouldn't learn it - because they NEEDED the software to do it for them.  I tolerated it all without much comment at the time, but I let them disadvantage themselves when they could have simply spent a few hours RTFM.After a while I actually sympathized somewhat more with them.  The list of things their PC's could do just got tediously long and they rarely used MOST of it, and much of it wasn't important.  They found the skills and abilities they liked, used strategies and tactics that employed those select things, and ignored the rest - again, while they had software keeping track of all of it for them.  On infrequent occasion they would go over their character sheet and maybe look up IN THE BOOK a thing or two and were repeatedly flabbergasted by all the things their PC could do.  But they still never took advantage of it because the game itself had at that point become bloated and unwieldly for them.  Using software was a crutch just to keep up.  In later years, when 3E had gone out of print and nobody knew where to find the same software or cared to try, I still ran some 3E games - and players used the books.  They learned the rules they hadn't learned before.  They occasionally used the d20 SRD to look up information at home for updating a character, but at the table they almost entirely used the PH (and my own printed house rules).PC's didn't get to the same high levels either in those games that they did in the earlier games.  Characters were simpler to create and manage because they knew the rules, their list of abilities remained more manageable and relevant, etc.  It all turned me off the idea of using software as a player to play the game, without first learning the rules.  It also sold me solidly on the E6 treatment of the 3E rules.  The game itself is kept more manageable, so software is FAR less of a necessity to cope.  It becomes what advocates want to say it is - a convenience for playing but not something a player would come to ever rely on as heavily.  And as a DM the burden in that kind of situation is also reduced because less complexity in terms of sheer volume of stuff requires less planning (and little or no software) to manage it in a campaign.And that has been my experience.</blockquote>

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