Laptops at the gaming table

[Eridanis]

I've only started using a laptop in the past few game sessions. I have my full character sheets on paper, and a paper cheat-sheet for each character. The thing is, I play two high-level casters (a CL16 wizard and a Cl17 cleric), and that's a LOT of spells to keep track of. Therefore, I have Word documents for each with the complete spell descriptions, and it's a lot easier to CTRL-F and search for a spell name than to flip through my printed-out documents to clarify a point. I keep the laptop out of the way until needed - there's really not enough room at the table for it (especially since three other players have their laptops there, and use them for their character sheets).

 

[Elf Witch]

I have found laptops to be a pain.

We had one player bring one so he could take notes. This sounded like a good idea. In practice he would be so busy concentrating on his writing and spellchecking and grammar that he would miss things and then ask us to repeat what had just happened. He was also a two finger typist and he typed slower than when he wrote notes by hand.

He also would also be so busy with the typing that he was never ready when his turn came up in combat and this slooooowed the game way down.

As for looking up things in books in the computer it always seemed faster to grab the right book flip to the page than to wait for the computer to load the page.

We had another player who kept his sheet on a laptop which was ancient and took forever to change pages so to look up say a skill would seem to take forever.

And then you had the player who would surf the net, get tons of IMs, check his email. The DM asked him to close the laptop and his attention then was fully on the game and he was very engaged in the game. So it was not that he was board he was just so used to multitasking when he was on the computer.

 

[Ghendar]

In my experience, I've found it ok when the person running the game is using it, but when it's a player, I've always found it obnoxious.

I quite agree.
Especially when said player decides he would rather surf the net, or play games than play D&D.

 

[thedungeondelver]

I had an absolutely wonderful gaming laptop: a 386/50 with 4mb RAM running DOS and Win3.11. I used the DUNGEON MASTER'S ASSISTANT I and DUNGEON MASTER'S ASSISTANT VOL. II. No sound, black and white screen (although it did do color VGA out). Absolutely no distractions.

I had to sell it to a vintage computer enthusiast to make ends meet one month.

Jeeze I wish I could find another one. It was a Sagar NP 933. (Anyone got one they wanna sell?)

 

[jollyninja]

I have not written anything down on paper for a game I was running since i got my laptop. adventures are just word docs with book name and page numbers for encounters with bad little ms paint maps when nessissary. I find that being able to quickly refference three books in a single encounter without having to actually have room for all three books invaluable.

as a player, i found the thing took away from my enjoyment of the game. I don't know why but i have more fun with a pencil and paper.

i also do not use dice rolling programs, i like dice.

 

[wildstarsreach]

For me it's convenience. Now, you can only surf the web if the player either pays for a wireless mobile broadband or has access to a router wireless or by cable that allows him access to the internet. This is the part I would ban. I have been guilty when my character is down and out to play a computer game but this is to keep me from doing the metagame thing. It sucks to have to sit there and sometimes wait for your character while watching everyone else have fun. This relieves the boredom factor. But while actively involved I wouldn't play a computer game.

Sometimes I will get distracted in plans and plotting for the future growth of my characters while reading game material but why would that be a minus since I am increasing my game knowledge.

 

[agjwilson]

When I was playing 4ed I started to try and use a laptop as a player ( it basically didn't do anything for me in the game, and why should it? I decided in the end to print out my power cards and sleeve them up in Ultra Pros). When 5th edition came out I didn't need my laptop either to play, but I was running games as a DM a lot more frequently (nearly every session) so I had been thinking for a long time about the right laptop to buy. I basically forked out a modest £300 for a Asus Vivo laptop, its a small screen, with touchscreen capability (not only does touchscreen save time in the game, but also its saves stupendous amounts of time when preparing, and makes reading through pre-prepared adventures and rulebooks a enjoyable experience (namely swipe, and pinch and zoom) The Asus Vivo, also has enough usb ports, a vga port, hdmi port, all to connect a second monitor.

So yay for DM, and nay for players!

 

[Ranes]

I use a laptop for DMing and have done for the last eight years. It's just so convenient and improves my game immensely. To my surprise, however, given the number of iThings and their ilk, only one of my players currently brings a device (an iPad) to the game. He uses it as a combination of character sheet, map and notepad. He's not an idiot with it; his focus is on the game, not his fondleslab.

 

[Umbran]

Note that the thread goes back to 2007. It will be interesting to see if there are shifts in attitudes.

 

[Morrus]

I might run a front page poll on this. Actually, not just might; I will!