Support for face to face RPG gamers.

[Spence]

My questions areabout how RW will support the GM that is only interested in face to face RPG gaming.

While I agree that remote gaming via the internet is growing, it is still a very small fraction of the overall face to face RPG gamer (this based on my small bit of the world). Using computers to prepare everything from characters to adventures, yes. Actually running the game, not so much. In my local area I personally know over a hundred RPG gamers, about half of them GM. And of that number only two actually participate in a PbM or other remote version of a Paper-n-Pencil RPG. Of course that does not mean that this sample is representative of the gaming world as a whole. Just my corner of it.

Now to the actual questions.

So far RW looks great for planning and managing a campaign and then being able to print off documentation should be fairly routine. If, and here is a big “if”, RW will allow the GM to see or print items exactly as the player would see it. In the screenshots and video we saw that the GM can select area’s to be revealed to the players and on his screen he can see the extent of the revealed area cleanly with the rest of the map shaded. The problem with that is I cannot print that image to show the players because the entire map is visible. How much thought has gone into the ability of face-to-face gamers to be able to actually use the information in a face to face format?

I know that like gamers tend to drift together, but most of the local gaming community I know prefers the more personal social element of face to face gaming. Our computers are not the venue, but rather tools to support the face to face game.

So another big question is whether or not RW will be supporting that style of gamer, or is it primarily intended to support computer based remote gaming with face to face gaming an afterthought?

I do want to emphasis that I am just asking for clarification and in no way am saying that computer based remote gaming is bad or anything. I am just wanting to see if RW will meet my personal gaming needs and those of people like me.

[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!

[mirtos]

I too am a fan of the in person gaming groups.


I run a kindof in between. I run a face to face game, but two of my players moved away. So we use maptools and skype to include them in. Instead of using a standard battlemat with minuatures, We have one computer hooked up to a flat panel tv screen, so the res tof the player see pretty much the same thing. But due to complications of real life, we game maybe twice a month, sometimes once. I keep my notes on my laptop, but its still a pain to find them. Sometimes it takes me some time to remember an NPC's name. Or what I revealed to players about a town. So one of the things we always spend a lot of time on is "recap". Its a very role play oriented and story oriented game, so recap is important. I am planning to make realms works not so much useful DURING the game session, but making sure that players have as much time as they want in between sessions to look at what they know.

Im also planning to use realmsworks with its printing capabilities to produce handouts. Hopefully in color. For the "away" gamers, i havent decided what im going to do with that. Anyway, Im definitely looking forward to trying it out.

[rob]

Originally Posted by mirtos

I keep my notes on my laptop, but its still a pain to find them. Sometimes it takes me some time to remember an NPC's name. Or what I revealed to players about a town.

Realm Works should help immensely in these areas. So it ought to be very useful during the game as well as between games.

Originally Posted by mirtos

So one of the things we always spend a lot of time on is "recap". Its a very role play oriented and story oriented game, so recap is important. I am planning to make realms works not so much useful DURING the game session, but making sure that players have as much time as they want in between sessions to look at what they know.

This sounds very much like the way we typically play. Using the Reveal History mechanism within Realm Works ought to make your recaps much more efficient. It should also eliminate a lot of the confusion that often ensues when Player1 remembers something one way and Player2 remembers it a bit differently. It will be easy to double-check with Realm Works and get everyone on the same page quickly.

Originally Posted by mirtos

Im also planning to use realmsworks with its printing capabilities to produce handouts. Hopefully in color. For the "away" gamers, i havent decided what im going to do with that.

One option would be to get yourself a free PDF printer driver and just print to PDF. Then you can share the handouts with your remote players via PDF.

[mirtos]

Originally Posted by rob

One option would be to get yourself a free PDF printer driver and just print to PDF. Then you can share the handouts with your remote players via PDF.

Yeah, i assumed id do something like that. This is why i was glad to hear about the printing functionality.

[Spence]

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.

Spence

[Truwen]

Very impressed with what I have seen thus far on the kickstarter page. I have 2 players out of state, and the rest local. I generate monsters within herolab (for 3.5e) and import them into d20pro. But I usually fumble/juggle and basically am clumsy going back and forth between my notes, pdfs, books and spreadsheets.

I look forward to incorporating RW into my campaigns. I have been searching high and low for a product such as this to streamline my campaigns.

[JTStorm]

Hello,

The way I have things set up, I use a laptop while I GM, and another PC connected to a TV to show things to the players. Would it be possible to have Realm Works on both, make 'player view' updates on the 'GM machine' and have those updates appear on the other PC easily (real time) without using a cloud server?

[rob]

@JTStorm: That's exactly how it works now. The cloud allows your players to have access to everything outside of the game session. During the session, you'll utilize Realm Works exactly the way you've outlined. You can see how this looks within the product in the KS video. I believe the pertinent section starts at around the 5-minute mark or a little after.

[JTStorm]

I watched the video, and I will be signing up soon! I am not planning on using cloud access at all, which is where my questions are coming from.

So, I would just need to open the same file on both machines? As I make changes on my GM machine, it would be available on my PC machine? Sorry, I'm just trying to make sure I am understanding this part correctly. I'm old and don't understand all of this new fangled technology. :-)