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MNBlockHead
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Dec 2014
Location: Twin Cities Area, MN, USA
Posts: 1,325

Old March 11th, 2016, 08:41 PM
@ShadowChemosh Thanks for the tip! Your workflow seems much more useful than what I was envisioning. Again, none of my players are going to access this information until after the session, but at least the reveal dates will be tied to the game session dates.

I can see myself following your workflow with published content. With my homebrew campaign, however, I find it helpful to do the reveals after the session so I can clean things up again. I often put just what I need to run the sessions and somethings are improvised. Perhaps I'm old fashioned, but jotting a few notes on my improvisations using pen and paper is easier. I find writing with a pen while talking to the players to be less distracting than typing notes. Also, I don't want to chance focus to, say, Evernote, or have to make edits directly to RW while running the game.

But this is what I like about these discussion, I learn a lot from hearing from other GMs on how they run their sessions. I still feel stuck in the 80s in my approach to session planning.

Quote:
You just have to get use to talking to the players and quickly interacting with RW. But at most its a simple "button" press to reveal something and usually not very distracting (the first few games maybe but you will get better/faster). Just do it quickly and for myself I always keep the laptop angled to my "side". I don't want a barrier between me and the players so its not setup "directly" in front of me. The mouse is simply located where my hand naturally rests and just click the button and quickly return to looking at the players. This prevents the players from thinking I am not paying attention to them but instead that I as a DM have many things to track and they got 90% of my attention.
What I've done instead is ditch my DM screen. For the most part I roll in plain sight of the players. My computer is on the smaller size and acts as a partial DM screen. I like having in front of me, just a bit off to the side, so I don't have to turn away from the players. I can just glance down. I don't use a mouse as that is just more clutter on the table for me and I suffer from RSI, so using a touchpad is easier on my hands and wrists.

RW Project: Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition homebrew world
Other Tools: CampaignCartographer, Cityographer, Dungeonographer, Evernote
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