Player View, Revealing Encounters

[morval]

From what I can see, if I want to reveal a snippet from lets say a room in a dungeon I first need to reveal that room's topic. Now of course players being players they could use the information they see from the room name or encounter name to some advantage. "Oh look its room #70 and we have only found 10 rooms so there must be more somewhere". Or the encounter name might give some clues that they haven't figured out yet "The Trapped Room", but there are snippets that they do know like the description of the room?

Is this something to worry about or just let it slide? How do others handle this?

[jkthomsen9]

You can prereveal the description ect without revealing the topic. The players can only see topics you have revealed. Anything you prereveal will not be seen until you reveal the topic. When you reveal room 70 they know there are at least 69 other topics but nothing more.

[Silveras]

What I think morval is getting at is the tendency of players to meta-game based on the revealed information.

If you're entering a published adventure, and the title of one room is "False Tomb", that tells the players they have not found the real tomb if you reveal the topic in order to reveal a snippet contained in it.

The answer is, don't set it up that way.
All revealable information should be put as snippets on topics you are going to reveal anyway.

I separate the room description from the encounters that occur in it (which also allows for repeat encounters in the same location, or re-using the location in a new adventure, and so on).

What this illustrates is my belief that entering any published adventure is not just a matter of cutting-and-pasting the content was it was in a PDF... the information needs to be organized differently.

For encounters, in my usage they generally have few or not revealable snippets (descriptions or read-aloud text only). Almost everything is in GM Notes. Or should be.

[morval]

Originally Posted by Silveras

What I think morval is getting at is the tendency of players to meta-game based on the revealed information.

If you're entering a published adventure, and the title of one room is "False Tomb", that tells the players they have not found the real tomb if you reveal the topic in order to reveal a snippet contained in it.

The answer is, don't set it up that way.
All revealable information should be put as snippets on topics you are going to reveal anyway.

I separate the room description from the encounters that occur in it (which also allows for repeat encounters in the same location, or re-using the location in a new adventure, and so on).

What this illustrates is my belief that entering any published adventure is not just a matter of cutting-and-pasting the content was it was in a PDF... the information needs to be organized differently.

For encounters, in my usage they generally have few or not revealable snippets (descriptions or read-aloud text only). Almost everything is in GM Notes. Or should be.

Ya, thats what I was getting at. Could you give an example of how you separate the room description from the encounter? Would you just give the encounter a generic name? How do you see at a glance on the lefthand side where you are if each encounter only has lets say a number?

Thanks!

[AEIOU]

Here are two partial views of rooms. The keep tower is three descriptions in one. The secret door is almost all GM text. If players see the prefix, I'm not that concerned.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B38...it?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B38...it?usp=sharing

[morval]

Originally Posted by AEIOU

Here are two partial views of rooms. The keep tower is three descriptions in one. The secret door is almost all GM text. If players see the prefix, I'm not that concerned.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B38...it?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B38...it?usp=sharing

Thanks, looks good. I know I'm on the right direction. Something like the secret door isn't a problem since you only reveal the topic if they find it anyways so that works.

[Silveras]

Right.. so "Scenes" include various types of Encounters.. and Events, etc. Locations are the rooms. You can assign the Location as the Container for the Scene (so the Encounter is now located in the Room), or you can make something else (like a Source Book) the Container for the Encounter and, in the "Location" field of the Scene enter the name of the Location topic. This way, you can take advantage of the many options for cross-linking the topics in whatever way works best for you.

The key, I think, is to separate the information. When published, the expectation is that the book will not be shown to the players. On the other hand, in RealmWorks, the expectation is that the topic may be revealed to the players.. so you need to edit (change the name, move where content is entered) it with that in mind.