D&D 5E What does this photo say to you? [Project: Morningstar)

[Sadras]

I must admit as a DM who utilises his laptop for designing adventures/encounters/monsters, recording house rules, making notes, looking up odd rules on a PDF and making some quick numerical calculations I find that I cannot function without a laptop and would be loathe to disallow another character from using electronic devices when I am so beholden to mine, unless of course it was distracting him during play.

My laptop has completely organised my life as a DM - no more mounds of paper of half adventures, notes, magical items...etc. It is all filed and labelled neatly. All notes relating to an adventure or filed under that adventure's name.
I regularly email players information on knowledge of locations, persons, organisations and items. It helps to have that easily accessible during sessions.
It also assists with recording battle grid encounters, capturing my grid design onto the phone and uploading it onto the laptop for later reference.
And when we would like to search the internet for 3rd party information - again back to the laptop.
Finally I use it for mood music.

Occasionally a player might bring an electronic device but it has never been an issue. They still use the old paper pencil.

When I was a player in an Eclipse game I remember using a laptop to record all relevant information/notes and I'm pretty sure that encouraged the GM as I was listening to his every word. At times he would even ask me for names or a reference he made. I do think if you are respectful of technology it shouldn't change the game.

That all being said - the type of game you running and system you are using might determine the need for electronics at the table. The above works for me because I'm running a rather long campaign - I might not utilise tech if I was a player at an open-closed 2-3 session DnD adventure.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

As an example of how it would be used in-game, what is your initial reaction to this image? A group sitting round a table, a battlemap in the middle, each has a tablet rather than a character sheet.

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well 16 year old me would have had a nerdgasim about it, 33 year old me isn't so sure.

My first thought was "What are the odds everyone at the table would have A tablet let alone the same one..." My second was to text the picture to my Tuesday night game and see what they thought...

I like the idea of being able to do this... but to be honest I have seen the down side to tech at the table.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I don't think you can reasonably argue that 4E needed an online reference any more than any other edition. You didn't NEED any of that stuff to be online, and we've played plenty of sessions offline and not noticed.

There's plenty of room for reasonable disagreement (hence, "arguably"), but as someone who's played the game with a player who doesn't subscribe to DDI, that guy is playing with a substantially different, more limited, and more poorly edited group of rules than the rest of us. It's such a tremendous multiplier that it colors the core experience of playing the game, and that's too deep for me.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

There's plenty of room for reasonable disagreement (hence, "arguably"), but as someone who's played the game with a player who doesn't subscribe to DDI, that guy is playing with a substantially different, more limited, and more poorly edited group of rules than the rest of us. It's such a tremendous multiplier that it colors the core experience of playing the game, and that's too deep for me.

Hmmmm.

I do see what you're saying, but I think that it's kind of bass-ackwards, as they say.

You're saying that, because 4E was regularly updated with errata, because the DDI was constantly improved and re-edited and so on (was it? apparently!), and so on, this made using the DDI "functionally" mandatory. Yes?

And you apparently object to 5E being this way? Am I misunderstanding?

I mean, to me, that seems like cutting off one's nose to spite one's face in a very serious way. I agree that 4E was drastically improved by errata, editing, and so on, and that yes, if you were playing a game with full information from the DDI, you were playing at game that, in certain ways, was much better than the default game (tbh, though, I've played dozens or hundreds of 4E sessions, and needing to access the DDI during the sessions is relatively rare, like, one in four sessions or something - outside of sessions, for character building, monster building, character updating, etc. that's a different story).

Maybe I'm misunderstand your argument entirely (it happens), but it seems like you're saying "If 5E has errata that regularly update and improve it, if 5E's rules are re-edited, improved, and so on, in the way they were with 4E's DDI, then 5E will 'functionally' require a DDI", and that will be, in your opinion, a bad thing? Yes/No?

Further, I think your case is kind of weird because you're citing the example of one guy in a group not having DDI access, and AFAIK, there was/is absolutely nothing stopping you sharing a login - indeed, I strongly recommend, personally, that all the PCs under one DM are created on the same DDI login (I found that very beneficial, myself). I certainly didn't need that access at the table, even in the way you're describing (if you feel you did, can you explain to me how, with examples? Because seriously, playing since release here, never hard-needed that - at worst I used it to get stuff that I would otherwise have had to get by dragging 7 tons of books around with me).

Hope I'm misunderstanding because I really don't want to see 5E avoid errata or other improvements just for the sake of people who are playing offline-only anyway, and who are, at worst, playing a game of quality X, rather than quality X+Y. Certainly they aren't playing a game of quality X minus anything, simply because the DDI or equivalent exists.

I hope I don't seem argumentative, I'm just struggling to understand this.

 

[nerfherder]

As an example of how it would be used in-game, what is your initial reaction to this image?
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I had another look at the photo, and the thing that jumped out at me is that they seem to be enjoying themselves - at least the one face I can see clearly is smiling. That's pretty important to me and my group.

 

[SteveC]

As I looked at this my reaction was, "there will be no pleasing people with this."

I use iPlay4E to manage my characters in our 4th Edition games, and it's crazy useful. It keeps track of everything for me so that I can keep my head in the game. This looks quite similar, and I know there were many threads during the 4E era about how WotC couldn't do something like this and how technologically backward they were. Now that we see this, we get the opposite reaction.

So for me, I love it. I just wish that the game attached to it was something I was getting more excited to play, although this does help.

For the folks who don't like it, relax. This is an entirely different company doing it, and there is no indication that anything like this will be required to play 5E. Paper and pencil will still work. I have been very impressed with the folks behind the project: they seem like a competent and friendly bunch, so I hope we don't scare them off.

 

[Boarstorm]

I have some trepidation about widespread tech toys at the table. It has been a problem in the past more than once. That said, nothing in that photo says (to me) that tablets and such will be REQUIRED -- they're simply an option for those groups who want them.

I have faith that the tools will be plenty useful in downtime for character creation/adventure planning/etc to justify their existence, even without the active character sheet component.

 

[Agamon]

The presence of tablets (presumably running Morningstar) was of far less interest to me than

(A) The lack of a DM Screen, and

(B) The presence of a battle map & minis.

What strikes me most about the picture is that - knowing nothing else about it beyond what I can see - is that there are no visual cues about which if the six players is the DM! No DM Screen, no pile of dice, no mound of miniatures, no conspicuous lack of a character sheet in front of one of them, no rules book opened in front of them. Who is the DM? The picture makes me wonder if they're playing some sort of collaborative or competitive rpg with no DM.

I honestly don't remember the last time I used a DM Screen. I have nothing to hide. Well, my notes, but I tend to hold those, anyway.

My EotE GM is the same. He's got the screen, but lays it flat and just uses it for the tables. My PF DM uses one though. Plus a a laptop and a tablet. I've been playing in that game for a few months now and still couldn't describe how he juggles that. My 4e GM uses one, too. But he uses a dice tower, and the results of his rolls are plainly visible to at least one or two players, so it's used more for hiding notes I think.

 

[I'm A Banana]

You're saying that, because 4E was regularly updated with errata, because the DDI was constantly improved and re-edited and so on (was it? apparently!), and so on, this made using the DDI "functionally" mandatory. Yes?

And you apparently object to 5E being this way? Am I misunderstanding?

I think there's two major elements of the "functionally mandatory" view.

#1 - Complexity. 4e's combat rules are complex. They interact in ways you can't easily forsee, they aren't always intuitive, and they're often very specific and jargony. Thus, there is a huge difference in play experience with relatively minor re-wording. Errata and rules updates and the like can dramatically change the experience you have at the table.

#2 - Option Sorting and Synergy. 4e's character building isn't simple -- the existence of 12 or more powers that you can have at a given level, the hundreds of feats (many of which are too minor to stand out in the mind). Building a character with access to all the rules enables remarkably different kinds and calibers of character than working with the books. Being able to sort, organize, and determine specialization can dramatically alter the kinds of characters you create.

So, this makes the experience for someone with DDI very different from the experience of someone without it. Noticeably. If you look at end characters, you can pretty easily tell who has DDI and who doesn't (even if they make the same characters with the same sources).

I don't want that to be the case in 5e - it should be a tabletop game that you can use e-tools to supplement, that you can perform equally as well (seamlessly, almost unnoticeably). And I'm kind of optimistic.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I think there's two major elements of the "functionally mandatory" view.

#1 - Complexity. 4e's combat rules are complex. They interact in ways you can't easily forsee, they aren't always intuitive, and they're often very specific and jargony. Thus, there is a huge difference in play experience with relatively minor re-wording. Errata and rules updates and the like can dramatically change the experience you have at the table.

But you still don't need to able to access the DDI at the table for this, no?

#2 - Option Sorting and Synergy. 4e's character building isn't simple -- the existence of 12 or more powers that you can have at a given level, the hundreds of feats (many of which are too minor to stand out in the mind). Building a character with access to all the rules enables remarkably different kinds and calibers of character than working with the books. Being able to sort, organize, and determine specialization can dramatically alter the kinds of characters you create.

So, this makes the experience for someone with DDI very different from the experience of someone without it. Noticeably. If you look at end characters, you can pretty easily tell who has DDI and who doesn't (even if they make the same characters with the same sources).

Mmmm, I think that's a really weak argument myself, and gets into very sketchy territory, as well as being very class/build-specific. Even if you didn't have the DDI, you could achieve the precise same thing or better by reading the CharOp guidebooks, which you merely require the internet for.

I would specifically dispute your last claim, too, but obviously neither of can prove anything there.

I don't want that to be the case in 5e - it should be a tabletop game that you can use e-tools to supplement, that you can perform equally as well (seamlessly, almost unnoticeably). And I'm kind of optimistic.

So when 5E comes out, and it turns out to need a big errata to run better/best, would you prefer that to happen or not happen?