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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dannager" data-source="post: 6085815" data-attributes="member: 73683">I don't quite get this. What "typing away" do you imagine taking place? There'd likely be very little typing going on - probably only to take the occasional note, just as you would on paper (and even that would be sped up, given the massive boost in speed while typing over speed while writing). Most of the interaction with a solid app would be flipping between portions of the character sheet or adjusting hit point totals. This is exactly what you'd get from an actual character sheet, just, y'know, on a tablet or what-have-you. The improvements over paper and pencil would be in areas like: avoiding paper waste, handling basic character math for you, reliably tracking power use, pop-up glossary or rules text boxes, setting reminders for beginning-of-turn or end-of-turn events, sending/receiving messages discreetly, allowing players to "queue up" their actions while waiting for their turn, automating the process of adding looted equipment to a character's stats, allowing the DM to "push" handouts, maps, NPC portraits, and other documents to players'd devices, etc. And this is just from the players' side of the table.All of the things that I listed speed up the game's play, and none of them involve any more head-in-the-books action than you would see with a table full of print sourcebooks and paper character sheets.That's what I'm talking about when I point to the promise of well-designed digital tools. They absolutely do have a place at your average D&D table - even some of the tables whose DMs haven't embraced the idea. The apps just haven't been developed yet.We're talking about a tabletop game. Everything is bells and whistles. It's a matter of deciding which bells and whistles move you closer to your ideal sort of game. I think that, for most people, well-designed digital tools will improve their game experience rather than detract from it.Assuming that the RPG market operates like any other market, it will be necessary to have solid digital apps if enough RPG products make use of them, because consumers will - all else held equal - show preference for the RPGs with dedicated digital support. And this is only going to become more true as time goes on.Again: Will you need digital tools to play? No, probably not. At least, not for a couple generations (i.e., not until digital platforms are so ubiquitous that nothing significant is lost by removing print from the equation). But will we see a point where you'd be crazy not to want to use those digital tools in order to improve your game experience? I'd bet money on it.</blockquote>

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