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

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sword of Spirit" data-source="post: 6314465" data-attributes="member: 6677017">My concern is the one about player distraction. Both the group I'm DMing and the group I'm playing in are online right now (the first didn't start that way, but people moved around). I haven't noticed a lot of distraction in the group I'm DMing--probably because we use a VTT, and even when there isn't any need to reference it, I play music and move people around to different rooms just to catch their attention and try to set a mood. In the game I'm playing in, we rarely make much use of the VTT (initiative tracking is about the extent of it lately), and distraction is a problem. Most of the players are multi-tasking during game. And the worse part is that it is contagious. I find myself fighting the urge to do it myself.1. Your eyes are there to be used. If they have nothing catching their attention, they will find something. Usually that something is on a screen. This is the bane tele-gaming.2. If other people are slowing the game down because they are distracted, you are more likely to expect the game to be slower, and in your impatience start doing something else yourself, thus creating a cycle. It's like people being late. If one player is always half an hour late and you always wait for him, soon most players will start showing up half and hour late because they know the game won't start until then anyway.#1 shouldn't be a problem when everyone is at the same table. It hopefully won't be any worse of a problem for tele-gaming with these tools than with any other software. I doubt it will help much though.#2 really doesn't have much to do with the tech.So the conclusion I've drawn from this stream of thought post is that the overall effect is likely to worsen the game experience only for a group that isn't currently using or allowing any electronic devices at the table. So very few groups.*Sigh* I still would really like to have a face to face game where everyone checks their tech at the door. Yep, phones too. There is just something about that experience that you can't get otherwise.</blockquote>

Verification