Old Computer Challange 2024, Day 4

  Today was game night, so not a lot of challenge-related things were
  done. After closing my work laptop, I almost immediately went out of
  the house to my RPG session...
  
 GAME MASTER SCREEN, 21st CENTURY VERSION
  Alas, there's an embarassing truth about my fantasy gaming setup
  these days: I basically had to apply the "modern equipment for work"
  loop hole.
  
  Back in the days, not even that long ago, going to a game meant an
  almost screen-less existance for a few precious hours. All you needed
  was a backpack full of books and some dice.
  
  Nowadays, I'm ending up staring at my laptop screen instead of a
  "Dungeon Master's Guide" or setting manual. The adventures & rules
  are PDFs, sometimes even rules wikis. That means fewer minutes spent
  looking up the right page. For me, it also means way more legible
  notes.
  
  And with today's group, I'm not the only one with a laptop. Which
  also means the most rare miracle of all: good notes taken by the
  players, like NPC names written down or clues gathered.
  
  But is it worth it?
  
 LAZINESS OR ACTUAL USE FOR THIS?
  Couldn't I just print things out? I like more complex rules, what's
  commonly referred to as "crunchy". That means more PDFs, with more
  pages, where the search function shines compared to an index (If the
  book has an index in the first place, RPGs often being pretty coffee
  table books with the UX of one).
  
  Besides other people at the kitchen table also having laptops, the
  Covid years where all gaming happened remotely, so a PC was
  *required* made this almost normal. PDFs being cheaper, more
  sustainable and "lighter" are at least a good excuse, if not a matter
  of fact.
  
  But that's the nice thing of this challenge: I might have paid less
  attention to this if it weren't a "breach of etiquette" this week.
  Although by now it's technically possible to stay within the limits,
  white still hiding behind a laptop screen at the gaming table. I've
  carried a ThinkPad T43 with a 1600x1200 screen as a (backup)
  reference and gaming map server before, pulled out when needed. And
  that would both be enough for game book PDFs and even the rules wiki
  web pages.
  
 OLD GAMING STYLE CHALLENGE
  I've decided to go more low tech soon again.  Print out notes
  beforehand, get copies of all the books I need, ignore rules not in
  those.  Let's see if the players will do the same.
  
  One benefit that might arise from this: I'll probably end up more
  organized. Having a whole bestiary, adventure library and random name
  generator always in front of me, means I can go in pretty unprepared.
  I feel that a bit of more work here would pay off.
  
  Also, jotting down notes forces me to type those in later, or I'll
  lose the context and thus wouldn't be able to read my own
  handwriting (yes, I'm that bad).
  
 FURTHER PLANS
  Tomorrow might be another game session, this time fully remote.
  There's simple no way to avoid this, and I won't cancel a night of
  fun for some digital minimalism.
  
  But I have some additional ideas for Tcl/Tk tools that would help me
  with preparing and running roleplaying games. After all, I don't just
  want to do regular "productivity" software, I'm not that into
  self-optimization.