User shared content

[corycubbage]

I understand you don't want players to create content. You've given them the ability to take notes, but the collaboration feature of these notes are missing. It would be extremely beneficial to the team to be able to see notes by the group on various items.

For example:

The ability for users to create and share notes with other users.

The ability for GM's to see players notes.

The ability for players to make notes directly on objects (people, places, etc.) that their either they, their team, or the GM (and/or/all) can read/edit.

[LDD]

I'd take that one step further, and say that players very much DO need to be able to create content. The existing Player Edition is very much a passive experience. But an RPG isn't just listening to a story the GM tells. It's a much more collaborative experience, with input from everyone at the table. And so should be tools like Realm Works.

The most obvious content they create is of course their characters. There's no reason they can't show up in the database. But why make the GM into their secretary, transcribing all the player-generated material into the database, especially with all the other work the GM has to do? The players can just do it themselves. Also note that it's common for player characters to have secrets, just like NPCs. Players should be able to reveal snippets of items they "own", just like the GM does.

Some players get even more into it, and create complex backstories for their characters, which might involve past histories (plots), people, organizations, and plot hooks. This is all good stuff to have in the game database, especially as the GM weaves those people and hooks into his own plots to integrate the character into the world.

During play, players need to "take notes" that are about as elaborate as the GM's, not just text boxes. (I've got Notepad for that...) They encounter people, learn things or think they know things, and have their own view of the world. The players should be able to collaborate on their view of the universe, and build a structure. The GM's version is of course The Truth, but that doesn't mean the player version isn't important or shouldn't be allowed to exist. Player versions might be modeled with "secret identity" type relationships to link to the true GM version; or perhaps the distinction can be handled simply by ownership tags on snippets attached to a single object.

Then there's the scenario of co-GMs, who both share items and have secrets from each other (when they play in each others' games). This is a little more complicated than the one-GM setup. With one GM, you could assume whomever is marked as the "GM" has access rights to all the "player" topics. With co-GMs, that data structure has to admit overlapping sets of items, not just a strict hierarchy. This data structure also lets you have topics owned by a specific player (like their character) and topics that are owned by the players in common (like their campaign log, theories about important NPCs, and so on).

The Player Edition is a nice idea to help get people involved with using the tool at lower cost. But I suspect it's not worth the development effort. The upcoming web viewer will be just as good for the passive presentation use. Realm Works itself could revert to a single mode of operation, but with a richer notion of ownership of items and "reveal rights".

In practice, I found the Player Edition too limited to be worth using. Regular software like OneNote was better for just taking notes; mind-mapping software or drawing tools if I really wanted links and plot diagrams. The GM Edition of Realm Works is better yet than most of those things at creating a rich description of the game -- but the full functionality needs to be available to players, not just the GM, so that the players also have a rich experience.

[Acenoid]

If the GM is not using RW, I found it beneficial to create my character notes with the RW GM edition.

[Vargr]

All this sounds delightful. +1.

[corycubbage]

LDD expands my thoughts almost exactly.

What is presented here is the ideal collaboration tool for the GM and players. Instead of having players record all of their notes in text files independantly, they should be able to use the player edition to store and share these with other players.

Frequently I create quests/plots for one player or some players but not all players. A method to distribute this information to the players for their review and discussion would be ideal as well.

By not allowing the players to add comments/notes to items in RW, what is going to happen is that they now need to send them to me and as the GM I have even more work to do. RW could be used as an amazing tool to offset some of the tremendous workload that GM's already take on by allowing their players to update information from sessions, enter notes and partake in some of the time consuming aspects that the GM currently shoulders the burden for.

I purchased two 5-packs of the player version with the hopes that these features would be coming down the line as they would help us tremendously. The party has stated multiple times that in our campaign they have so much information to track and manage that a group wiki might be useful for them to maintain that. Realm Works has all the functionality (and more) that we need from this built-in aside from allowing players to add/edit content.

Please seriously consider this!!!

[Goran]

I want to express my desire for more player collaboration as well (my thoughts are in line with those presented by corycubbage and LDD).
In fact, this was the first thing my players asked about when we all started using the tool.

Currently, I have to play the role of secretary (as nicely described by LDD) and collect player notes from email, text messages, and Google drive to enter into RW. It would be fantastic if Realm Works in the future allowed players to directly contribute to the content to some degree.

I realize that player contributions would need to be designed properly to avoid source control style merge issues and such, but any enhancements in this area would be a phenomenal asset to this great tool.

[Zaphod Beebledoc]

+1...