Has lack of an insider account kept you from playing 4E?

[Ourph]

When I'm DMing 4e, I insist that people use the CB to create their character, just because it's an easy way to make sure everyone is following the rules and calculating their numbers correctly. But most of my players don't have a DDI account and I'm happy to either share my CB access to create and maintain their character in CB for them.

 

[pemerton]

I GM 4e and don't use insider. Most of my players do, but not all. And in my view the insider character sheets aren't very well designed for use at the table. Like someone else posted upthread, the best character sheet at my table is a microsoft word ( or maybe excel) summary page.

 

[Aegeri]

My IRL group don't use insider a lot but I allow them to make their doods on my computer (which has insider).

I'm not sure if all my PCs in my two online games have access to insider. Either way if people aren't using insider they should at least have the relevant books instead and the errata is all freely downloadable and per book.

Either way a PC not having insider or not is not a major issue for me.

 

[noretoc]

I'll bet this is more common than the posts are saying here. Most of the people on EN World are older gamers (In experience, not age). Because of that, many of them have played the game with paper, etc and know how to put together characters, etc. Alot of people out there playing the new edition are new players though, playing the flavor of the month. For them, the game is not the old style story/RP. It is the DDI CB and the power card and the tactical combat etc, and if you don't have the subscription for the latest foozle, then it is like playing MAGIC without any card from the last 5 explansions. Some of them may not even know HOW to make a character without the CB.

I think you are just running into the new school of players.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

[grognard]"You kids keep your ddi & CB off my LAN![/grognard]

*shakefist*

I don't know if its all newer players, but I bet newer players will gravitate to this in bigger numbers over time.

I hope I'm never in that group- keeping my PCs on a PDA or similar will be the extent of my use of electronics as a player.

 

[Dice4Hire]

I don't think it is weird to insist all characters are printed out via CB.

I would agree to this if is actually DID print out everything you need. But it does not, not even on the full pdf sheet. Feats especially, though sometimes it omits odd things. I have seen the sheets before(some people used them in my games).

In my group, no one uses DDI and it has not hurt our game at all. Most of our character sheets are a single page, because the book to look it up anything we need to is in the same room, but mostly we do not need to.

As for requiring hte sheets to play. I would steer clear of such gamers.

 

[Argyle King]

To some extent, I think it has.

At my table at home or with my normal gaming group - no problem. However, if I want to participate in events which take place at some of the local gaming clubs & stores, I'm not able to participate.

One thing I don't like about character builder is that the errata is all or nothing. I'm not able to choose which errata I want to use. Most of the time the errata makes sense and I agree with it, but there are also plenty of times when I don't agree with the changes and would rather not implement those changes into my game. It would be nice if there were some sort of checklist which would allow you to turn off parts of errata.

It's something of a self defeating problem too. Partly due to not being 100% sold on 4E, DDi didn't offer enough to entice me into purchasing it; this leads to me playing less D&D; that then leads to me needing DDi even less; etc, and so on.


edit: Also, I don't find the character builder to be a good tool for rules checking. The character builder isn't always correct in the way that it applies some of the rules. Building a 4E character is fairly simple too, so I never understood the need to pay for a program for that. There are times I've made mistakes, but the character builder makes mistakes too; my mistakes are free; the ones made by character builder come with a monthly fee.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

No, there are many reasons why I don't play 4e, but the Insider is not one of them. It does seem a trifle extreme to me, but then I like having books with bits of paper sticking out of them at random.... (You would be surprised (maybe) at the number of house rules that existed only as post its in the various books....) Maybe it is a public excuse for some other reason? (Though I can't see why just saying 'I don't like Spam green eggs and ham 4e would not work as well.)

The Auld Grump

 

[Dice4Hire]

Some of them may not even know HOW to make a character without the CB.

In my experience, if a gamer does not know how to make a character, then the gamer does not know how to play a character either. There are a lot of rules in the game, and if the gamer did not read the ones on making characters, it makes it very hard for me to beleive the gamer perfectly understood the ones on how to play the characters.

In my Yahoogroups games, I use the ability to make a character as a part of the weeding-out process.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Definitely seems extreme to me, I have DDI and I allow my players to use it for creating characters. Erratta is not that much of an issue, though I am happy to go along with the powers as on the cards, we have not had any isssues so far and very rarely needed to consult rules at the table so far.

As for the DM's in question, would you really want to play with people like that?