Best practices for running games

[meek75]

I've run several sessions with RW. I love it as a GM tool for organizing information and running the game. It has replaced OneNote as my GMing application. Even in its current level of development it is better than any of the other products I've used for game prep and game running. I don't use the player view options at all and don't think I will be using them for a long time if ever. As mentioned above the process for sharing the proper info is a bit cumbersome and reading the info on a normal sized monitor screen is very hard. I could see using it to show NPC pics or maps, but it's not enough of a boon to motivate me to set up an extra display every week. Maybe one day in the future if a tablet version is available it would make it worth using for the player view stuff. I think that is probably years off though. Especially since my group has multiple tablet OS (iPad, Windows, and Android all at the same table).

[davidp]

Originally Posted by meek75

I could see using it to show NPC pics or maps, but it's not enough of a boon to motivate me to set up an extra display every week. Maybe one day in the future if a tablet version is available it would make it worth using for the player view stuff.

There are apps available for at least the iPad that make the iPad appear as a second display to a PC. The player view window can then be displayed on the iPad. I have done this with a free app that appears to no longer be available in the App Store and it works well, giving you a secondary display easily and wirelessly for showing the maps and pictures.

[AEIOU]

The one thing that's really been helpful with RW at the table is access to NPC's. Notes, personalities, known/unknown facts, relationships, stats, locations -- these are absolutely golden. And if I need crunchy info, RW links directly to HL. And everything is nicely kept in context due to the interlinkages.

Being able to quickly see these things for NPC's (and locations to a lesser degree) is really worth the price of admission. I may whine about other things I'd like to see in RW, but this is the core for me and it's solid for planning and gaming.

[mirtos]

I often use it for quickly accessing past found treasures. Mostly because I can now know exactly what an item is evenif the PC isnt.

[EightBitz]

This past weekend, I started plugging Mouse Guard mechanics into it. As a GM, I've run GURPS 4, Dresden Files, AD&D thru D&D 3.5, Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space, and I've read through several other systems, including the original Doctor Who, Mutants and Masterminds 3, Shadowrun 5, Cortex ... and I gotta say that Mouse Guard is, surprisingly to me, the most rules heavy system I've seen so far.

Instead of having a core mechanic with a few situations in which conditional modifiers might apply, it has various and sundry conditions in which the mechanics change.

Realm Works is allowing me to organize and streamline all the mechanics so I have a decent chance at running a reasonably competent game.

[AEIOU]

In a few weeks/months when it becomes possible, my son would love if you could share the Mouse Guard mechanics files.

[EightBitz]

Originally Posted by AEIOU

In a few weeks/months when it becomes possible, my son would love if you could share the Mouse Guard mechanics files.

As long as a copy of the book is legally owned on both sides of the share, I think that's OK.

[Pollution]

I ran my first session using Realm Works this weekend. We've been playing RotRL for a while, but I haven't gotten around to putting things in the software to give it a real try (mostly just history stuff, notes, custom rules/items, NPC info, etc...). We use HL for chargen, and I use it for tracking battles/effects/etc...

We got all the way to Thistletop before the last game. So, I thought, let's try maps and player view.

This last weekend, I borrowed one of the LCD TV's and plugged it in to the laptop, and started the game. As my previous posts show, I didn't get the player view to work EXACTLY as I wanted, we used it mostly for tracking where the party was in the dungeon, with me revealing sections as they got to them. For the most part it worked great (I had to keep concealing to recenter the map so they could see where they were, didn't know about panning in player view cause I'm a blind ID10T).

Some interesting things came up that I didn't think of before (having watched zero tutorial videos or thinking about things before hand). One example was when they fought the warchief. I was able to reveal to them a picture I had of him already in the program, never thought about showing them a "Here's the dude you're murdering" before. They loved that. The Pawns we use are neat, but the detail they can see on the screen is awesome.

They also liked the way the reveal system worked and with careful revealing techniques on my part, I was able to keep secret areas hidden when they failed perception checks to find hidden doors. They thought that was cool.

I fell in LOVE with the integration into HL. The ability to click a button and have the encounter auto load into our HL Portfolio as an enemy team was MAD useful and saved a ton of time.

I've since learned to pan around images in the player view, so that'll be amazing come next weekend's game.

Some things I'm going to start doing:
* I'll be starting the game with the story line plot points on the screen. This will show them where they've been quickly and efficiently to help them remember where we left off.
* I'll no longer be printing out handouts. Copy+Paste from my PDF will allow me to just show them the thing on the display. NICE!
* I've taken to hyper-linking new items/spells to the PRD. That way, when they find a wand of shocking grasp or what have you that they don't have experience with, I can just click the item and it'll link me to the site (I can also send that browser window to the TV for their own quick reference). This will save a TON of time.
* I hadn't thought of revealing things other than maps or images until now. Seeing some videos on what this looks like will REALLY help keep them on track when they forget details that they learned 2 weeks ago (which would be an hour ago in game).
* I won't put the room descriptions on the pins anymore. They fade too fast for some of the more lengthy descriptions. From now on, Pins will say, "D2" and maybe "Enemies/Treasure/Secret/Trap/Locked" or something like that so that I know immediately that there's something I need to know before getting to the room topic.

Loving what I experienced, and I think the next games will be even more awesome.