New Realm Works Videos Released!
 

Three new videos to demonstrate specific functionality within Realm Works have been published. Each one expands upon particular aspects of the software described in the Kickstarter video. Here’s a summary of what’s featured in each:

1. Basic Content via Topics. Topics encompass the people, places, things, and events of your world. This video shows how easy it is to establish a Topic and flesh out its details. We build an NPC as an example, and demonstrate how information about the NPC can be established in multiple ways. The video highlights the ability to incorporate external elements, like images or Hero Lab portfolios, into the Topics you’re creating. The functionality around establishing tags for your content and Realm Works’ sophistication at automatically creating links are also on display. Finally, we show how you can disclose individual elements of your topics to your players.

2. Story-Driven Content. Realm Works offers unique capabilities to weave your story and content together as you evolve your world. Your ability to manage plots and storylines in a visual manner to accomplish this is highlighted in the video. We demonstrate the ease with which you can create a plot and establish its content. We also highlight how links are created and the use of plots while you’re playing the game to quickly move to relevant content.

3. Leveraging Maps. Maps in Realm Works provide powerful functionality for navigating through your world and can be revealed incrementally to your players as they journey across it. This video focuses on how you can use maps as a navigation tool and instantly access needed content. We show how easy it is to place pins on maps to represent places of interest, like a location or an encounter, and associate them with the relevant content. Finally, we show the power of our Fog of World™ technology and incrementally revealing content to your players using maps as an example.

We hope you enjoy the videos!

I just watched the 3 videos and have a quick question:

Can players place a Pin in a map on their own that is only revealed to them (and the GM)?

Maps are currently a one-way street, being only able to allow the GM to reveal material to the players. Of course, that could be changed post V1.0 based on the requests of users.

Could you please describe some scenarios you have in mind where this capability would be leveraged? That way, we can start thinking about how best to add something like this and how flexible it would need to be.

Thanks!

One that occurs to me is a PC separated from the party who hides something. He (or she) could want to mark that on the map as a private note that the other characters don't know about until the group re-joins.

Similarly, a less-than-team-player PC could decide to hide some of the treasure from the other PCs. It could then be revealed to any PC who made the appropriate check to observe the hiding or find it later.

In both cases, the GM *could* (and initially will need to) create the Pin and share it with the one PC. But it would be good for player involvement if the PCs can create such themselves.

Of course, this also gets back in some ways to the request for PC-level (not Player level) control over information.. because if the character who hid the loot is killed, it may be possible (or necessary) for others to find the lost loot.. especially if it was a major plot item.

Another player information note would be:

player can place notes so the GM is not having to note everything as it is happening. I, as the GM, rarely have pre-planned events happen, most everything comes from events the characters do.

for example:

Here is where I pick pocketed the nobleman

Here I found a nice little hidey hole from said nobleman

Now I have a map and I can find a better route to take to my hidey hole (point A to point B). I the GM do not really need nor care about this type of information enough to put it on the map so the players would do it.

I'm going to shoot for the moon here and go beyond map pins for players.

My son just started playing Pathfinder and is maybe a third of the way through his first adventure. It's very interesting watching the gears turn and seeing how he approaches things. Anyways, since he's unfamiliar with the setting, the mechanics, and roleplaying in general. So he's diligently been taking pages of notes on the NPC's, creatures encountered, plot elements, etc.

This got me thinking that it would be great if his character could start his own bestiary for uncommon creatures and add notes to the NPC's based on the character's impressions. Add quotes and leads and names and plans to everything. The players could flesh out the world from THEIR perspectives if they had limited write access. Add a prefix to each entry with the character's name so the GM can identify the player info easily. And make it shareable so the party can share their thoughts with each other if they wish.

As a GM, this would be amazingly helpful. I could skim their notes and see what interests them, what NPC's they trust or don't trust, see what areas they'd like to investigate, etc. Are they on track? Did I describe the situation/NPC/place clearly? What stuck out enough that they wrote it down? That's interesting, they all recorded that nobody NPC's name and each has ideas as to why he's important -- maybe I need to rethink things.... This is absolutely huge for campaign development.

Feel like I'm poking in the dark here. I don't have Beta access yet, but I've heard hints about player journals? If I assume that the journals can hyperlink to any object in campaign like other RW objects, then within the NPC object or location I'd see a link to the player journal for a given game date where he/it was mentioned, so I can read up on the player's notes.

Or at least that's how I'm hoping it works. Character journaling as a part of the campaign world file would be uber-helpful, especially if it's linked just like everything else and incorporated into the campaign world information.

The Journal mechanism within Realm Works should provide exactly this sort of capability. Players will be able to maintain their own journals with all the notes they want. Full linking is provided within journal entries, so any mention of the NPC "Varigon" in the journal entry would be linked to the topic that you've revealed to the players. The key detail is that players enter their material separately from the material you create and reveal - it is all simply linked together.

The Journal mechanism will probably not be included in the V1.0 release. We have a preliminary version in the Beta right now, but it needs a major overhaul before it goes public. The current schedule calls for it to be included shortly after the V1.0 release. The thinking is that most GMs will spend the first weeks with Realm Works getting their content into it, so player-centric features aren't critical until after the GM starts utilizing RW during play. :)

That's exactly how Journals will work.

GMs can also use journals to reveal clues to players, as journals can be from the perspective of a user (player/GM) OR a persona within the campaign, such as an important NPC.

Well, this may happen sooner than you think.
For example, I'll be starting a new Dungeon World campaign in april along with another GM.
We will both run our campaigns in his personnal universe, so that both our groups (composed of the same players) will live their adventures at the same time, albeit in different part of his world at first.
On top of that, I'll be a player in his group and he'll be a player in mine.
Unfortunately, he is a Mac owner and doesn't want to invest in Parrallels desktop solution, so he won't be using RW anytime soon.
But I still want to integrate his main NPCs and locations and organizations into my campaign and I'm planning to use a player account (like a journal or diary from the perspective of an external storyteller) in order to do that.
See, there are so many ways to leverage the capabilities of your software, it's mind-boggling ;)