Kickstarter Clarification Questions

[kristof65]

Originally Posted by rob

Could you please give me an example of what this might be? I'm not coming up with a scenario that makes sense in my head. Then again, it's 5am and I need to get some sleep soon, so that could be the problem.

I can think of a good reason for being able to easily track differences in NPC knowledge:

Example:

Let's say your campaign centers around a revolution. As such the, the revolutionaries, consisting of both PCs and NPCs, have compartmentalized themselves into cells, so as not to reveal too much if someone gets captured.

In a situation like this, some of the information the NPCs know would be easier to track if there was a way to simply link it from one to another. Because you're going to be tracking what information each cell knows, who's in each cell, who knows whom is a rebel, who knows who's in what cell, and who knows each other outside of the cells, but doesn't know about their rebel status.

And that's just within the rebel organization itself - then you have all the NPCs trying to stop the rebels.

Now you could go through and edit each individual NPC with that info as the need arises. But it would be easier if each PC (and NPC) could simply have a couple of fields that are "Is a Rebel" and "belongs to Cell X" that you could link to other PCs and NPCs as they find out.

[rob]

Originally Posted by pyremius

Much more important to me is that I get the ideas out as soon as possible. You can't decide to implement what you don't know anyone wants, and you also can't use those ideas to help shape your roadmap - even if you're not trying to implement them now, if you think they're valuable they will shape how you implement other ideas ranked higher, because you can weigh the current design decisions against their impact on your known future goals.

I see you've done this before.

Thanks for the ideas! And yes, we absolutely do keep them in mind while we're working on other features to simplify integrating them later down the line.

[rob]

Originally Posted by Ladyofdragons

Does the "Instancing" concept include a parent/child relationship, where changes to the parent are included in all children? I ask this because like I would bet 90+% of DMs who create their own worlds, my world is always under construction.

Absolutely. The actual mechanism is definitely not "instancing", which is why I've put the term in quotes. However, the concept of "instances" is widely understood due to the popularity of MMOs, and it evokes the right basic concept of how things work, even if it's not truly accurate.

The actual mechanism is more along the lines of having a "master" world and then one or more "derived" worlds. Changes to the master world are inherited by the derived worlds. Changes within the derived worlds are unique to those worlds.

[Ladyofdragons]

Originally Posted by rob

Absolutely. The actual mechanism is definitely not "instancing", which is why I've put the term in quotes. However, the concept of "instances" is widely understood due to the popularity of MMOs, and it evokes the right basic concept of how things work, even if it's not truly accurate.

The actual mechanism is more along the lines of having a "master" world and then one or more "derived" worlds. Changes to the master world are inherited by the derived worlds. Changes within the derived worlds are unique to those worlds.

Oh excellent. Thanks for the clarification. I'm a .NET developer currently working on supporting/development on Microsoft Project Server, so Instance means something completely different to me, especially since I'm not a video gamer.

[Mindcloud]

One thing I haven't seen anyone ask about is a plugin interface/API. This kind of product lends its self to all kinds of possibilities for extensions. Not to mention that would be a great way to interface with VTTs out there. For example I would guess that you guys will be doing a D20Pro interface at some point but I doubt you would do maptools but that would be a perfect community project. I also saw on another post "Fox Lee" wanted a random name generator that would be a great plugin someone could do.

[kristof65]

Mindcloud - someone asked that questions somewhere, and the answer was a conditional positive, but I don't recall the specifics, nor where it was asked. Probably here or on the KS comments

[rob]

Originally Posted by Mindcloud

One thing I haven't seen anyone ask about is a plugin interface/API. This kind of product lends its self to all kinds of possibilities for extensions. Not to mention that would be a great way to interface with VTTs out there. For example I would guess that you guys will be doing a D20Pro interface at some point but I doubt you would do maptools but that would be a perfect community project. I also saw on another post "Fox Lee" wanted a random name generator that would be a great plugin someone could do.

Here's what we posted about an API in the Kickstarter comments section (slightly edited):

Exposing a good API and fully documenting it is a ton of work, but we definitely believe in the approach, as evidenced by our Hero Lab and Army Builder products. We need to get the initial product launched and established as our first priority. However, this is something we'll start shifting our attention to once there's a solid foundation in place.

Realm Works will not have export capability in its initial release. As with most products, our focus in the initial launch is to have Realm Works do its own tasks exceptionally well, and to efficiently get material into the product. We wholly expect there will be demand for export to other products and formats, and we'll shift our focus to include those capabilities once we get the core product off the ground.

If there are specific export formats in which you are interested, we encourage you to let us know, either here or in the comments section of the KS. That will allow us to better anticipate future needs and capabilities while implementing the current feature set.

[kristof65]

An additional possible future feature of RW occurred to me today as I was going through some of my campaign material.

The ability to export or share a campaign "Primer". That is, information that is commonly known by everyone, but not necessarily everything a player could know. This would be useful in giving new players an overview of the campaign, and even using it to woo prospective players.

Many years ago, I put together a little 24 page 5.5"x8.5" booklet for my campaign setting that had a brief history, and overviews of the realms and common races. It is by no means everything that a player could know, but it's a good, handy overview of what "everyone knows." My biggest problem with it is that I haven't actually sat down and updated it for over a decade, despite having played a several campaigns in the setting since then.

I think that such a thing could be handled easily by the eventual promised feature of tracking PC level knowledge in RW, simply by creating a special character called "Primer" or "Common Knowledge", etc.

However, I'm mentioning it for two reasons - one, it might be worth considering having that special knowledge type set up as a feature of the program. Both for ease of use, and for any expansion of this feature that someone else can think of.

The other reason is to actually suggest a feature that does expand on it - it would be nice to have the ability to easily export it in a predefined template(s) for a booklet, webpage, etc. That would make keeping it updated even easier.

[rob]

Originally Posted by kristof65

The ability to export or share a campaign "Primer". That is, information that is commonly known by everyone, but not necessarily everything a player could know. This would be useful in giving new players an overview of the campaign, and even using it to woo prospective players.

This is one of the core content types we're building into Realm Works. We call them "articles", and they are ideally suited to material that's prose-oriented and revealed to players in large chunks. A "players' guide" for the campaign setting is the best example of this type of material, although it's suited for use with other material as well, such as house rules, custom spells/feats/etc available, etc. Articles are revealable, just like normal content, so you can keep reference material hidden and reveal it to players when they discover it, just as special spells, regional feats, bestiary information, etc.

[Truwen]

So I am extremely excited for this product. Admittedly, my excitement made me hit the reply button, I have read a few of the questions and answers here which lead me to some of my own.

1. Will all players have to purchase this to use it as a player? Can the DM purchase a liscense and the players be able to connect using a (Free) client/player client? My reason for this question is that I know some people (my brother and maybe father) will likely not want to buy a DM liscense for whatever reasons, not in budget, not enough money, not ever interested in DMing etc.

2. I am a huge fan of hero lab and how it is supported by D20pro. Will GW support some sort of "link" with D20pro. I will be using GW for orginzation, and D20pro for the visual/virtual gameplay aspect, so I would not want to "lose out" On my investment into D20pro and Herolab since I use them side by side any time I am dming. So I am just curious if there are any plans for these products to work together in any way.

3. Question #2 leads me to this, is GW a replacement for virtual tabletops or a companion to virtual tabletops?

I plan on contributing at the 35$ level. Good luck on getting everything into GW that you guys can, I look forward to using the software!