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Originally Posted by rob

Everyone here at Lone Wolf plays almost exclusively face-to-face RPGs. Players will occasionally be looped in remotely for a game when they are out of town, but that's the exception and not the rule.

I started with that statement because I want to emphasize that Realm Works is very much written for use with face-to-face gaming in mind. In fact, it's always the first usage model that I think of when designing how the product works, and I've been one of the key people driving the design. As you point out, this is definitely the most common practice among gaming groups, so that's where our emphasis is as well.

The one aspect of Realm Works that is generally assumed, though, is that the GM will have a device at the table during play. If all the GM has is a laptop and nobody else has personal machines, it still works great, and that's what we've optimized for. Using the Player View mechanism, the GM can reveal portions of a map, press a button to show it to the players on the laptop screen, and then turn the laptop to face the players. The same logic applies to all aspects of showing material to the players. So in-play support for face-to-face GMs is absolutely a cornerstone of how Realm Works is designed.

If the GM has *no* device during the game, then some important aspects of Realm Works can't be leveraged. However, it can still be used in such games. At that point, though, the incremental reveal of maps doesn't make much sense, since the GM can't reveal areas during play anyways.

I'm going to point you back to the video we released with the Kickstarter to illustrate how this works. Jump to the 5:25 mark. You'll see a few tabs showing what content has and hasn't been revealed. Then you'll see the Player View mechanism at work. There's a tab where the GM sees exactly the players will see. And then there's a full-screen mode that can be shown to the players. You can trigger this on a laptop screen and turn it to face the players, or you can put the player content on a second monitor for viewing by the players. With either approach, the players only get to see what's been revealed during play.

Hope this helps!

Absolutely,

You covered everything perfectly and it looks like RM be as close to what I am looking for as I could possibly expect.

I went back and re-watched the video from the time mark and I really don't understand how I missed something that obvious. Old age or something I guess.

Anyway thanks for the prompt answer and apologies for my not so prompt reply.

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