What level of technology WON'T you go beyond with your tabletop gaming?

No computers at the table in our games.

A friend recently played in a game where everyone had a laptop at the table. Over the session everyone became quiet as they all focused on their machines instead - using the laptops as "little shields" to group interactivity.

Bullseye!!!

That is exactly why I have banned laptops at the game table.
 

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Gunpowder.
I refuse to have it in my fantasy games.
Steam power is also right out.
Im not against machine like golems, or even warforged in the proper place,
but the primary force should be magic not machinery.

Any character trying to introduce a computer into my world is going to have a very short life expectancy .

I would have gunpowder in my games if it was used realistically. Unfortunately, it seems that when I've been involved with fantasy rpgs that have guns, the guns are from the 19th century, while the armor & swords are still 13th century.

There were gunpowder weapons in the late medieval era - however, they were inaccurate and unreliable and took 90 seconds to reload. Plus, they would not pierce plate armor.
 

I would object, in some sense, to a GM telling me what I can/can't bring to play the game. It's my tools, I'll use what I want.

I don't object to a GM telling me what non-game related stuff to leave at home. My own house-rules guide includes a "No CCG, no gameboy" rule as those items don't pertain to the game. When Magic first came out, I had a player trying to trade with another player during my game. I kicked him out. It wasn't a technology problem. It was a "trying to do non-game-related stuff during my game" problem.

My printer has been out of ink for about a year. I didn't like the idea of paying $50 per cartridge (and refills have failed). So I write my adventures in Word and run them from Word. I run my PC from Excel.

I roll real dice. The only time electronic dice are valuable, are when they are incorporated into other systems. Meaning, if I have JUST a dice roller app. It's pretty useless. If my character sheet has a d20 icon next to my sword, and it rolls attacks and damage for that weapon, then it is useful.

I'm looking into MapTools for online gaming, as I've got friends 1500 miles away.

As for videogaming, I don't see the point of lan parties. I, and all of my friends have HD TVs. Why would I want to move my xbox and risk RROD to go to your house, to use your old SD TV, when I can sit on MY couch on MY HD TV and play online with you.

Furthermore, to up the ante, this last x-mas, I was shocked to find that all my friends at work, who have Xboxes, have done LAN parties with each other, but never Friended each other and played online. Worse, they complained about the foul mouthed kids online. The idea to Friend each other and ONLY play with people you know had never occurred to them. I fixed that, and during the break, we had some pretty good games with people we know, rather than strangers.

The key to technology is to use it for fun. Location doesn't matter. We had fun on our Xboxes because we removed the stranger element, and made it easier for all of us to find people we know to play with.

Technology doesn't have to distract at the real game table. But you do have to get everyone to only use it FOR the game, and to not let cell phones, PDAs, IMing, texting, gameboys be distractions. That's as simple as saying "No using stuff for non-game-related purposes during the game."
 

Holodecks.

Seriously though, people are free to bring/use whatever they want to our game sessions (I even let them on the wireless network).
 

I was going to do this in a poll, but there were way too many options and combinations.

Granted, nobody can predict the future, but given the state of technology today, and the way things are trending with:

Laptops
Chat programs
.pdf's
Virtual tabletops
Electronic dice rollers
Kindle
Electronic character sheet creation and update programs
DDI

etc.

What level WON'T you go beyond in your tabletop gaming?

For me, with a 3.5 game its nice to have an electronic character sheet generator/updater, but I print out the sheets. Core rule books and setting books are hardcover. I use the laptop at the game table for .pdf's of rarely used or referenced books. Everything else is pen and paper. Even my adventures I design. The DM notes are by hand, with reference to books if need be.

That's pretty much how I see myself playing until I die. I mean, there might be some technology on the horizon which I can't envision right now, that totally blows me away. But with what we have today, and with how those things look like they are going to develop, here I stand, pen and paper in hand.

How about you guys?

I'm in transition to go to a laptop. I write my own adventures, I make scans of rules, monsters, or other pertinent stuff and then label it accordingly so I don't have to take 500 rule books and just have the core rulebook. Right now, I draw the line with dice and minis, but I can see myself replacing dice in the future because already for groups of NPC's I have their pre-rolls set up from a dice roller.

I actually been buying more pdfs than spending money on hardbacks even though I like the feel of a hardback in my hands, but it's a pain to carry with me to a game.

In the future, I can see myself fully transitioning to whatever technology becomes available if makes game handling so much easier than having tons of books and paper.
 

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