How Do Mobile Devices Affect Your Game?

How does mobile technology affect your game? On the one hand, it provides access to resources - dice rollers, looking up rules, character managers, game-specific apps; on the other hand phones provide the distraction of Facebook, email, and text. I've been in many situations where a fellow player is just randomly showing another one a (hilarious?) YouTube video rather than playing the tabletop game in progress. Of course, it's far from a gaming-specific question; I've sat in pubs and liked around at tables of 3-4 people where all of them were looking at their phones rather than each other, and I'm far from innocent of that particular transgression myself. So, when gaming, how do you adopt technology? Do you have rules or restrictions, or are you lucky enough that your game is so captivating that it overrides the impulse to check Facebook?

One thing I've seen happening in London is that diners at a restaurant put their phones in the centre of the table. Anyone who touches their phone buys (depending on the strictness of the rules) a round of drinks, or everybody's dinner - and the result is that everybody engages with each other the whole time, as though mobile phones had never existed.

That doesn't translate easily to a roleplaying game scenario (unless you're ordering pizza for the group). But some groups, I've heard, enact in-game penalties. Touching your phone negates your next crit, for example.

On the flip side, there are many mobile applications which enhance games. A mere browser allows for instant rules lookups; dice rollers and character managers abound, as do initiative trackers and GM helper applications.

What are your mobile device policies at the game table?

 

[RedSiegfried]

We do have players who get distracted by smartphones during our games, but it's not a big enough deal to make a big deal out of. A simple "Hey buddy, wake up, it's your turn," is enough. What's worse is I've played with any number of people who were not distracted by tech but still looked like a deer in the headlights when their turn came up and tried to make us all wait while they looked stuff up in the book. They were either failing to take the time to prepare for their turn or simply were prone to option paralysis, an issue that playing 4e does not help with.

I do enjoy having the ability to pull up the complete 4e compendium on my smartphone and as a DM I probably use it at on average once a session to look up a game element that's in doubt, which, as opposed to finding the right book, makes it easy and quick with minimal interruption to the game.

My experience with players having characters on their tablets, on the other hand, is that it seems to actually be slower and less convenient than just having a character sheet printed out from an electronic character builder. With a printout, you get almost all the same completeness of an electronic record, but without fiddling with menus and submenus and figuring out how to subtract HP, etc.

I do also have (instrumental only) background music playing. But I need to figure out a better way to normalize the volume level on all my songs - sudden dramatic changes in volume are distracting and always seem to come at the wrong moment.

 

[fjw70]

Mobile devices has never been an issue for my game. I use my iPad for most of my pre-game prep (one reason I haven't run the 5e APs yet -- no electronic version of them). At the table I use the iPad sometimes to look things up or may pull up material when players do something unexpected. Other than that the players may use smart phones or tablets for character sheets or dice rollers but it isn't a problem.

 

[mrm1138]

My previous GM had to ban phones/tablets at the table because one player would start messing around with his when he got bored. In fairness to that player, though, his character—in a circumstance completely beyond his control—had gotten possessed and would occasionally lose autonomy. I think that really caused him to mentally check out of the campaign.

As a GM myself, I haven't really had too much of a problem with people using phones at the table, and I'm hoping it's because I run a good game that holds the players' attention. I'm always striving to keep people involved and do what I can to speed up combat so people aren't just waiting for their turn. (After having just run my first ever session of Savage Worlds as a one-shot, I think I'm going to steal its initiative system for every game from now on.)

 

[Brian Perlis]

I think mobile phones at a table are a great thing both as a player and a GM. As a GM I dont require/need the undivided attention of my players. As a player there are times in any game session where there is a lull in the action and my attention goes to my phone from everything to texting with my wife to looking up rules and pictures on the internet.

As for the usefulness of a mobile phone I have an entire screen dedicated to apps just for Pathfinder. Apps include dice rollers and I'll name off the others just in case someone may wish to look them up for themselves for download from the app store:
PF Battle
CritGen
iFumble
iCrit
Laying Waste
PM Pro OGL
Fantasy Name
Spellbook Pathfinder
Pathfinder Toolkit
Pathfinder Spellbook
Archivist Elements
D20 Complete
Spellbook D&D 3.5
Summoner
Pathfinder Grimoire
Masterwork Tools
Pathfinder Monsters
The Crawler
Pathfinder RPG

whew! That was a lot. But a lot of times I can look up information for the GM quicker on my phone using these apps then I can scrolling through all the PDF's on my laptop. Yay technology!

 

[Cergorach]

As a DM I have used a laptop at the table to track high level complex 3E combat. With 5E at lower levels, not necessary! We sometimes used tablets for the rules, but we can often find the rules quicker with the physical book, so those went away quite quickly. I used to track my character sheet on my pda, but to much work! Once someone used a smartphone to use their charactersheet that they forgot (downloaded a copy through the cloud)...

As for mobile phones... We got a political power house at the table who needs to be available 24/7 for the party, two guys have young kids, when their partners call/sms they need to respond, I have a very sick parent at home and I'm pretty much available 24/7 for IT support. So as long as the smartphone is necessary, it's OK, but no playing clash of clans during gaming sessions, you'll be bitch slapped upside the head. Often things go fine with this rule in effect, but things get annoying just before elections, but it's that or not gaming at all. We're grown ups we think we can handle this ;-) Twice folks had to leave right away do to trouble with one of the kids...

 

[maedsl]

In my Games only the DM is allowed a Mobile / Tablet on the Desk all others are put away on silent / vibrate.
Mobile devices linked to a small speaker are great for sound effects, atmospheric music, etc.
Also as a visual aid eg if you find an image of a cool temple, tunnel, creature, magic item, woodland scene, etc on Google to show the Players helps to illustrate and set the mood.
I only play D&D, Cthulhu, etc as the systems are fun yet simple enough to just flick through a book for rules clarification unlike Pathfinder where the use of a Tablet / Laptop is almost compulsory