Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="evilbob" data-source="post: 7697794" data-attributes="member: 9789">A question where everyone has an opinion!  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />  Mostly because there's no wrong or right way to do this.  There still aren't really universal social rules when it comes to mobile devices, although thankfully it only took about 10 years for people to realize that screaming to someone on the phone in a restaurant - simultaneously ignoring your own table and shutting down their ability to converse without you - is rude.  In other 20 years we'll probably have more.In the two groups with which I'm most familiar, only one has a person where the phone gets in the way fairly often.  We've not set any rules but the distraction level for this person is high, and it's disappointing.  (Sometimes they'll get embarrassed at how "out of it" they were and put it away for a while... but only a little while.)  To be fair, this is true in all other areas of their life as well.  But mostly it just makes me not want to game with them, since they're indicating that they'd rather be doing something else than what we're doing.  But I think I just revealed my bias there.  I think some people don't believe that when you're on your phone you're telling everyone around you that you don't care about their presence and you'd rather be somewhere else (you're just "multitasking" or whatever) but I guess I'm not one of those people.In the other group, I run it and use a tablet for reference and nothing else, ever.  We have two people who will sometimes take/send texts, but they're ever only distracted for a moment, so it's well-tolerated.  Another person will openly start playing on their device when they are bored as a way of signalling that they are unhappy with the situation.  (More of a "you aren't really giving me agency so why should I care" sort of thing, or letting me know as a GM that they think what's going on is boring - like combat where it takes 5 minutes before they get their next turn, that sort of thing.)  It's harsh but frankly justified.  Also sometimes they are just insanely tired and can't focus on the game, so they zone out, and the tech is just a visualization of them zoning out (otherwise they'd be doing something else).  In these cases, since I'm the one who wants to play the most - everyone else enjoys it but ultimately they are supporting my habit - I am willing to tolerate a lot, <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> even though my normal tolerance level is much lower.</blockquote>

Verification