First thoughts about RW:PE

[Chemlak]

Okay, first let me start by saying that I'm probably not a typical user: due to distance, my group can't meet up in person, so we play remotely using Roll20 as a VTT, and chat via Skype (due to a number of problems using Roll20's own video/voice chat functionality).

The group consists of me (GM), my wife (who is at her own computer next to me when we play), and two of my best friends, who I've known for 28 years and 10 years respectively.

Ever since RW came out I've been slowly getting my campaign written up in it, from copious notes I've made over the last 25 years or so.

Now, I'm notorious for not reading manuals. I've skimmed it, read through some bits in detail, but I make no pretence that I've got all of the functions memorised. Or that I know everything Realm Works can do.

Most important to me was getting the current adventures in, which I've done (or at least thought I had) and revealing the things my players know about.

And then along comes Player Edition. Unfortunately, it was the version that didn't allow players to sync after they first grabbed the Realm, so I couldn't let them see the changes I'd made at the end of the session. But that's been fixed, so I don't consider it to be a problem (my wife and I spent yesterday rejigging my realm to better reflect player knowledge rather than the GM-centric snippets I had before, so I know it works now).

The biggest single "say what, now?" moment was with smart images. I'd forgotten to strip the reveal mask off any of my maps. Since it was maps of cities and countries my players were looking at, I wanted the whole thing revealed from the start - perhaps a "reveal all" option (if there is one already, I couldn't find it).

The next thing was about the storyboard - I hadn't considered that the notes associated with each plot point would be revealed to players, and I haven't yet spotted a GM Note equivalent for them. So I had a mild panic moment when one note revealed more of the plot than I actually wanted.

The last "negative" point was one of structuring: the PCs have recently met an NPC who was actually one of the bad guys pretending to help them. This NPC is a member of a group, and I had that group set up as a container for the members. Since the PCs know a bit about the group, I revealed it, and I revealed the NPC, too... which showed her as contained within the group. Not what I wanted. My players learned that she's a bad guy before they learned it in character. I know I could have got away with it by using a relationship and not revealing that, but she is meant to be contained in that group, with the way I've structured things. Perhaps make containers a revealable pseudo-snippet like relationships?

Now, on to the positives: my players just wanted to spend time following links around, to see where they went, and what they knew. They learned things that they'd forgotten, and the players being able to catch up on revealed information after an absence was excellent! (My wife, in particular, learned loads of things the others hadn't told her because it had simply slipped their minds.)

In the process of their trawling around the Realm, they also pointed out some things which they know that I had either failed to create snippets for, or forgotten to reveal, and it was the work of seconds to solve that.

And User Notes have been a big hit! My wife, in particular, has started keeping some brief jottings about things, and practically danced with joy when she discovered full linking! Together with the fact that the notes are private, she's basically overjoyed.

But now she wants a journal so that she can share stuff with the other players! Looks like I'll be adding Journals to my list of things to beg for lots in the survey, along with calendars.