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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 9855476" data-attributes="member: 18">Presumably you mean no reason not to use a computer?But that doesn't really follow, because just because someone "has access to" a computer of some kind doesn't mean that they have one which is appropriate for use at the table. In fact I would say, in my experience, it's a fairly small percentage of people who own tablets and laptops which are simultaneously large enough and functional enough to make good, practical tools at the table. Whilst it's not difficult to get one, it is, realistically, a few hundred dollars on top of everything else.You absolutely cannot use a phone or small tablet for stuff like this. They also seem to be expecting that literally every player and the DM all bring a laptop or tablet and use that to actually play, I guess just sitting around the table staring at it.That's interesting because it's a very different direction-of-travel to virtually all non-D&D RPGs, and it's identical to the much-criticised direction of travel of 4E D&D. Indeed it's the exact 4E vision that, when discussed, caused so much anger here on ENworld. Including from some of the same people who seem positive about this, I think.Using extremely loaded language in this seemingly disingenuous way is an awful way to make an argument, and shows a real apparent contempt for the reader, in my opinion.Do you think people are too stupid to notice how incredibly loaded and biased words like "antique" and "ritual" are? Good lord. It'd be one thing if there was a wink and a bit of irony here, but that doesn't seem to be the case.There's nothing "antique" about wipe-clean battlemats or the like, nor is "a form of ritual" to want to play RPGs the way most recent non-D&D RPGs play. What you're failing to show here is what we actually gain from this. Instead there's a high-handed dismissal of anyone who doesn't think this is great as a implied luddite or worse, some form of a cultist.What's funny is, if we had digital tableclothes and so on, which y'know, probably aren't decades away, the "what do you gain" case might be fairly easily made. But we don't. So this aggressive move to digital seems barely less premature now than it did in 2008 (indeed technology hasn't move on terribly far since about 2008 generally speaking, whereas from say 1990 to 2008 - the same 18 year period - saw gigantic changes - the tablets and laptops, we use aren't even fundamentally different to 2008 ones).</blockquote>

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