Distractions and Dice

When I was making my way through the distraction addiction earlier in the semester, I kept getting distracted by my own thoughts. I'd stop randomly to consider how things would be relevant to my life, and there was one thing that I kept going back to, how this applies to my gaming sessions with my friends.

Whenever I'm home, I'll try to get some tabletop gaming in with some of my friends, and for a long time distractions have been a problem. Some of the games we play have the rules online so occasionally, “I'm looking up my spells” is a valid excuse, if not still equally annoying.

For me, tabletop gaming is about escaping my technology for a few hours and just focusing on the people at the table with you, be they elves, dwarves, twi'leks or early 20^th century businessmen. Even hiking can't provide that same level of limited technology use for me, as I always end up tracking my hike with GPS and taking pictures along the way.

In role playing games especially phones are just the outside world's way of leaking into a shared face to face experience. Homework, drunk siblings looking for a ride home, girlfriends and a multitude of other things could all start being an issue at any moment or throughout the entire gaming session.

In a better world my friends and I could all strive to achieve what the author of “The Distraction Addiction” accomplished when they started turning of their internet connection and using simpler more focused tools. Phones have modes to make sure only important notifications appear, and some even come with an off button for some extreme situations. Just like training people to not expect you to respond to email the second you get it, you also have to train people to understand that you need time to yourself so that you can let yourself turn your phone off.

 If I were a cruel person I would start to turn off my router whenever I host, and let the Faraday cage that is my house do the rest of the work for me, but just like technological distractions as a whole each person has to learn how to deal with this problem for themselves.