Player's Guide and other world building woes

Still trying to move over from Obsidian Portal to Realmworks and it is it tough.
My god, I spend more time fighting with this program than just using OP, but I am still committed to trying.

So, in OP for all my campaigns I create a player's guide, similar to the AP's that Paizo creates. In this guide, I have campaign expectations which details the levels and the feeling of the game, any house rules for this campaign, as well as special traits, class options and alignments. With OP, it's pretty easy since I place it all in a page and just hyperlink: done. The formatting takes maybe 5 minutes and I have time to continue to world build.

With this, I am lost. Where do I put my player's guide information? How do I say that in this campaign, bugbears will generally be these classes and not there classes How do I say that human barbarians living in towns are rare, so the pc's should be wary of taking this class if they hail from the city?

Not to mention, my players write journal entries after each session, where do those go?

I really do want to move to this program, it looks superior. I am also realizing that I need to alter the way I notate my games to make this work. I think if I start to get some of the above questions answered, I can move forward a bit easier.

Thanks in advance.

For player notes u can create an event named Player Notes and make it viewable.
I’m also hoping for better journal options. I would like to have an option where players (and DM) can add entries in their user notes and share them with other users so it becomes a log.
Nevertheless, I think RW has way more campaign management options than OP, but atm the latter is better from a logging/wiki perspective.

For player information, in the World Almanac you can put it under a "Player Synopsis" topic (found in the Sources collection), or in the Mechanics Reference you can create a "Mechanics Source".

This will help separate out the in-character information from the mechanics that are campaign specific.

Player Journals are not yet available as an integrated function, so you would have to manually create a new topic for each player's log (and you would have to copy the log into RW yourself). I already copy the logs from OP into specific topics to help keep all the information linked together.

I have never used Obsidian Portal, so I have no idea how things work there.

For what it is worth, Real Works is a fantastic, capable and very flexible program, that does have a somewhat steep learning curve (as most worthwhile and complex programs). Once you get just a little into the program, you will probably never look back.

That being said, Realm Works is still being worked on, new features being added, others being improved, etc. so you might find features that are still not wholly in place, so to speak.

And as I am writing this I can see that I have been ninja'ed by Farling, so I will say no more

Vargr said:

And as I am writing this I can see that I have been ninja'ed by Farling, so I will say no more

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I only suggested one way of doing things, you may have a different approach

Well, you actually said what I was leading up to writing.

But I can add, that there is no "right" way of doing things in RW - which in the beginning can be intimidating. Take a look in the manuals, ask around and, more importantly, play around. You will find a way to do things that will suit you.

I strongly recommend you just use the "Home" topic of your realm for everything the players need to know. Or at least have all those pieces link from the "Home" topic. You can access this by clicking on the "home" button just to the left of the left/right arrow buttons at the top.

Hope this helps!

I second using the Home topic as the hub for all your player centric information.

Currently, I'm using it as a sort of Table of Contents for things the players need easy access to - the regional map, important NPCs, open side quests, etc. Basically the Home topic is broken into sub sections for each of these things with basic snippits that are little more than the corresponding topic names with maybe a sentence of added description. The links generated by the program then take you to the correct full topic.

I'm finding this has the added benefit of giving me a great place to easily navigate to things I need to get to in game like quest descriptions and rumor tables.

Honestly, we're not using RW for our session notes yet. Down the road, once web access and some of the other journaling features are in place we might revisit that, but for now we're using a shared Google Doc for our notes. This has the advantage of allowing the "official" notes to be a standard black on white font, and each of the players has a unique text color/background color combination to make in character comments or out of character meta-commentary. It has been working pretty well for us so far.

Yes, I believe this program to be superior, this is why I purchased it. The steep learning curve of this program is making it difficult for me to want to use it when OP is so much easier. If you haven’t used it, you should take a look. I am not saying choose OP over this program, but you should at least understand the differences. OP is like designing a campaign on paper, it’s easy to place your ideas and design. This program looks like it will help you make a better campaign, but you need to spend a lot of time learning the system before you can enjoy yourself. My complaint is that I purchased this program to save me time: it’s not.

Thankfully, everyone here is very friendly and it makes the pain more bearable.

Journals is something that will probably be added later. I cannot image this feature to be left out. In an attempt to learn how to use this program, I am trying to insert the campaign I am currently playing in into RW. For journals, I am using the “other” category as a container and the “further information” option to write the entry (or technically copy it from OP). Then I link to my character to show the relationship. This does not work very well. I was hoping to be able to show that I had written journals (it allows the GM to read it) but only show the players I have written something they cannot see. This allows RP and for them to find out what is going on with my character. This plan has not worked out well.

Journals aside, for the campaign I am designing, I still need to figure out how to create the player’s guide to character creation. I will try to place this in the home page, I think that is a good idea.

Where do I put race specific information? I have races and classes that pair together in this game, so I want to detail that to characters. This is so they know when then encounter hill giants, they are probably going to be barbarians. If they see a class outside of this list, then it is something special and they can choose to investigate why given interest.

I am also coming over from OP and am not having trouble migrating.

OP was never a tool that I liked all that much.

To make a players guide I simply wrote one in the mechanics source. It took me a bit of time to look over how things were laid out and to explore how things were set up. Then I made my existing campaigns players guide fit into that format. Pretty easy. The top level stuff went into the front page of the campaign.

Journals seem pretty much a non entity in RW so I hope it is on the todo list. In campaigns that meet once a month or every 2 weeks a written journal can be vital in keeping players up to date on what is going on, especially if someone misses a session. I'd much rather have a built in solution than a kluged one. Hopefully when the promised calendar comes out it will be part of that.

Globetrotter said:

Where do I put race specific information? I have races and classes that pair together in this game, so I want to detail that to characters. This is so they know when then encounter hill giants, they are probably going to be barbarians. If they see a class outside of this list, then it is something special and they can choose to investigate why given interest.

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That seems the sort of thing the mechanic source was meant for.

Under Dangers->monster/enemy write up what ever you want the characters to know about Hill Giants. Then reveal it. You can even make sure to make it available in player view during a fight with a variant Hill Giant as a clue that something is up, assuming you have a screen for player's view.

kbs666 said:

That seems the sort of thing the mechanic source was meant for.

Under Dangers->monster/enemy write up what ever you want the characters to know about Hill Giants. Then reveal it. You can even make sure to make it available in player view during a fight with a variant Hill Giant as a clue that something is up, assuming you have a screen for player's view.

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You can even set some of the information as Untrue (click the wrench to the right of the snippet and select Truth Level - the players will not be able to see the truth level.

So the folklore says that the hill giants turn to stone boulders when hit by the first rays of the sun. Put this fact in the description but mark it as untrue (for your convenience).

Imagine the shock of the players when they after a long nights fight discover, that not all old folk's tales are true and that the hill giants continue fighting as the sun rises.

kbs666 said:

Journals seem pretty much a non entity in RW so I hope it is on the todo list. In campaigns that meet once a month or every 2 weeks a written journal can be vital in keeping players up to date on what is going on, especially if someone misses a session. I'd much rather have a built in solution than a kluged one. Hopefully when the promised calendar comes out it will be part of that.

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Whilst I also look forward to Journals, primarily to get the player view of what is happening in the campaign (since it vary wildly from player to player, and from players to GM).

The "reveal snippet" functionality, along with game sessions, allows players (with the player edition, and later via the web) see what they have done or what information they have found even without having to explicitly write journal entries. The key is to lay out the snippets in your campaign topics so that you can reveal an individual snippet easily to a player.

Globetrotter said:

Yes, I believe this program to be superior, this is why I purchased it. The steep learning curve of this program is making it difficult for me to want to use it when OP is so much easier. If you haven’t used it, you should take a look. I am not saying choose OP over this program, but you should at least understand the differences. OP is like designing a campaign on paper, it’s easy to place your ideas and design. This program looks like it will help you make a better campaign, but you need to spend a lot of time learning the system before you can enjoy yourself. My complaint is that I purchased this program to save me time: it’s not.

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I had a look at Obsidian Portal and it seems to need an internet connection at all times to work (I might be wrong here). That alone - unfortunately - makes OP rather irrelevant for me.

We all have different needs so I am in no way belittleling (is that even a word?) Obsidian Portal. Besides, I haven't used it, so I can't really judge it, can I?

Globetrotter said:

For journals, I am using the “other” category as a container and the “further information” option to write the entry (or technically copy it from OP). Then I link to my character to show the relationship. This does not work very well. I was hoping to be able to show that I had written journals (it allows the GM to read it) but only show the players I have written something they cannot see. This allows RP and for them to find out what is going on with my character. This plan has not worked out well.

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I don't understand why using the "Other" category in the World Almanac shouldn't work. It should behave like any other snippet you reveal. Remember, you have the reveal the topic itself in order for revealed snippets to be seen by the players.

Globetrotter said:

Journals aside, for the campaign I am designing, I still need to figure out how to create the player’s guide to character creation. I will try to place this in the home page, I think that is a good idea.

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I would put in somewhere under Mechanics Reference and reveal the information. On the Home Page I would make a link to the information in Mechanics Reference.

But there are many ways to do it.

Globetrotter said:

Where do I put race specific information? I have races and classes that pair together in this game, so I want to detail that to characters. This is so they know when then encounter hill giants, they are probably going to be barbarians. If they see a class outside of this list, then it is something special and they can choose to investigate why given interest.

Click to expand...

I would place both in Mechanics Reference since both concern rules and they should be carved in stone (that is, constant and consistent). I would start with the classes and after that add the races.

When adding the hill giant you simply write "Favoured classes: barbarians, bards, necromancers" (or whatever, I have no idea). When you save the topic RW will link to all the mentioned classes automatically.

But maybe I am stating the obvious.

Farling said:

Whilst I also look forward to Journals, primarily to get the player view of what is happening in the campaign (since it vary wildly from player to player, and from players to GM).

The "reveal snippet" functionality, along with game sessions, allows players (with the player edition, and later via the web) see what they have done or what information they have found even without having to explicitly write journal entries. The key is to lay out the snippets in your campaign topics so that you can reveal an individual snippet easily to a player.

Click to expand...

In a small campaign that might work. But the bigger a campaign gets, and therefore the more stuff gets revealed, the less well that works.

Ideally a player journal contained in RW will link to topics mentioned in it which will let a player who has missed a session catch up to some degree.

Vargr, you are not stating the obvious, all your words are helpful. I will tell you that I feel very intimidated by this software, which is why I have all these seemingly simple questions. I watched the tutorials, but it seemed to generate more questions than it answered.

Let me spend the day trying your suggestions, and the other helpful suggestions from the other members and see what I come up with. Today and tomorrow I have a lot of free time, so I am going to play with this when I can.

kbs666 said:

Ideally a player journal contained in RW will link to topics mentioned in it which will let a player who has missed a session catch up to some degree.

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The date when each item is revealed is recorded, so using the "Reveal History" button on the Home ribbon will allow a player to see (for instance) what has been revealed since he last played.

Globetrotter said:

Let me spend the day trying your suggestions, and the other helpful suggestions from the other members and see what I come up with. Today and tomorrow I have a lot of free time, so I am going to play with this when I can.

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Honestly, this really is the best idea. I was also overwhelmed with the program when I started, but I found once I started working in earnest that the program makes more sense the more you use it.

I think you just have to give yourself permission to "screw up" a bit - you are more than likely going to figure out better ways of doing stuff after you've entered information. Fortunately, changing and reorganizing information is possible after you've put it in.

I am also a really big fan of the "Utility" tags - Empty, Incomplete, and Placeholder. By tagging new topics with these, you can relatively quickly build out structure, and later quickly filter down to the topics that need more work afterwards. This could let you experiment a bit with how you want to organize the big picture without getting you too bogged down in getting all the information into individual topics. That could make moving categories later easier if you decide to make major changes to your organization.

Realm Works is pretty robust - you're not going to break anything. However, I've always been a "learn by doing" type. I actually did more reading and tutorial watching with RW than I normally do, but at a certain point nothing beats logging hours with the system.

Funny, I found all these manual when I clicked the "help" tab... pretty obvious now that I think about it. I just started reading the "Quick Start Guide."

Is there a difference in this guide and the current version of the software? Everything seems to be in the world almanac but the guide keeps referring to everything being in the story almanac?

I am very confused about these, but as I keep reading I am sure they will become more clear.

The Story Almanac and World Almanac used to be 2 separate things, and topics could be moved between them (as they became important in the campaign, or lost importance).. the idea being the Story Almanac was the "current story" and the World Almanac was "the background information" (as one way to use them).

A couple of releases back, the Story Almanac as a separate "area" was replaced .... and the "Story Almanac" became the default first "Custom View" of your information.