outrider

I consider myself old school about a lot of things in gaming. I grew up putting everything to paper and keeping copious records of my games. I found my first player by advertising in a gaming magazine. He had some friends and we were off and running. My major tabletop group I met while working in a game store and at least three of them are still with me after thirty years of gaming.
I find myself amazed by the progress of technology and how it has changed the gaming scene. The proliferation of sites like paperandpen and others, players don’t have to actually meet each other to have a game. I am currently running two games online as well as my tabletop. Instead of players who live within twenty miles of each other, I have two players from Canada, one from Denmark, two from the Boston area, and some folks from Texas.
I am now using a graphics program to build encounter maps for the tabletop and online games. I am now moving information about my campaign to a website (Obsidianportal.com) and have been doing so for the last couple of years. I am translating my handwritten notes to my laptop and of course backing up the information. What I haven’t done yet is to try the Skype or web cam live games yet. It will come at some time.
What I have seen that I haven’t liked about the new technology, is the lack of commitment to games. I have had people who come to you that want to play, create characters and then never show up or show up inconsistently and don’t notify you that they will not be there. It has never been a problem with my tabletop game.
The other thing I see is the increase in things like social contracts and such to avoid what I consider common sense and courtesy. It’s never been a problem in my thirty four years of gaming with well over a hundred different people in my various games.
I expect that I shall continue to see more changes and hopefully most of it will be good.