Keeping track of adventures - Journal or Game Session?

[gloranphile]

I'm wondering what others are doing to keep track of games - the Journal or Game Session?

Journals seem somewhat slow for me, perhaps since I write in a bunch of text that then can get linked out and revealed to the players, so it has its pros and cons.

Game Sessions are interesting, because the time can be adjusted easily, but there are no links in the comments section, and to be honest, I often forget to start up the Game Session once we get going. Another downside is that they're not as easily accessible as Journals (you need to go to Manage, Realm, then Game Sessions).

Finally, to the devs - which of these two is intended for actual game bookkeeping? There was not much in the Help documents for either.

[Silveras]

Honestly, long-term, I think the intention is for you to modify the Topics in your realm as the game goes on.

That's what the Repository is for; so you can have a pristine "base copy" of the Realm. You make a copy of it when you start a new game, and modify it as you go.. chance the status of NPCs from "Fine" to "Deceased".. change the current holder of a Noble title from X to Y... and so on, as your PCs change the world.

A RealmWorks Realm is essentially a "living document".. change it as the game progresses to reflect the current state.

[kate]

I use Game Sessions, but only to have a rough idea of chronology that's more convenient than searching through reveal history. For example, in one session "the PCs meet the commander, end the plague, and discover the saint's lost tomb" and two weeks later "The PCs explore the saint's tomb and recover an artifact." The commander's backstory, the tomb's layout, and the artifact's powers are detailed and revealed in their topics, ideally using the quick-reveal to prevent lots of in-game typing, but sometimes I do have to make stuff up on the fly or record PC actions.

It would be nice if the Game Sessions supported links but I don't find it necessary since I usually use them as a between-session refresher rather than an in-session reference.

[rob]

Sorry for taking so long to respond. We just got back from GenCon late last night.

We envisioned that Game Sessions would be used in basically the way that @kate outlined above. One of the things we have on the todo list is to add links to game sessions, but we weren't sure how useful that would really be. Another thing on the todo list is a direct link from a Game Session to access the Reveal History for that session, which I think would be more useful overall. Once you jump to the Reveal History, you can instantly see the topics involved and click on them (even individual snippets) to view the details.

Does that sound useful to you?

[Dark Lord Galen]

Originally Posted by rob

Another thing on the todo list is a direct link from a Game Session to access the Reveal History for that session, which I think would be more useful overall.

+1 to this.... Would be helpful for the DM to have a list of what was revealed from session to session for the long haul....

[Solus3]

[QUOTE=rob;190608] a direct link from a Game Session to access the Reveal History for that session, which I think would be more useful overall. Once you jump to the Reveal History, you can instantly see the topics involved and click on them (even individual snippets) to view the details.[QUOTE]

+1 from me. I ability to review what was reviewed would be a great help.

[gloranphile]

Rob, that sounds great. I would prefer to have Game Sessions with links too, if feasible.

[Sleepwalk]

If game sessions were just topics that could be auto-created with the "Begin Game Session" button, that would be great. A way to see what snippets were revealed during a given game session would also be great.

Right now we use a shared google document to act as a campaign journal. At some point after each session, I edit it and tack on the information for the most recent session. If it were a topic in Realm Works, the topic type could serve as a template for the typical session information. For me, a typical campaign journal entry for a session has these pieces of information:
-A summary of what the party did during the session (i.e. where they traveled, who they interacted with, what encounters they had, anything else noteworthy that happened)
-The session date (earth calendar)
-The in-game end date (campaign calendar)
-Loot acquired (including values of appraised items, and known information about magic items)
-Experience points gained

Links in game sessions would be nice for allowing me to link pieces of loot against individual item topics to track known information about the item (maybe it's a homebrew item that I'm providing stats for, or maybe it's an unidentified magic item where they only know the appearance and aura, or maybe it's a cursed item but they don't know it yet...). I haven't tried using plots yet, but if I do, it might be nice to link sessions against plot points.

[vendolis]

@Rob: there was a Journal feature in an early build of the Pre Release. It had the ability to put a date into a journal entry and the use it like the 'User Notes' where you can link to content.
Is that in any form returning? We have some extensive note takers in our group and we use Realm works mainly to keep track of the Player side (since the GM does not use it). So having the session notes and sorting them by date is very useful for us.
The player noted are a little hard to use for this since they are not well sorting via a date.

I would really like to see this to return in one or the other form.

[rob]

Originally Posted by vendolis

@Rob: there was a Journal feature in an early build of the Pre Release. It had the ability to put a date into a journal entry and the use it like the 'User Notes' where you can link to content.
Is that in any form returning? We have some extensive note takers in our group and we use Realm works mainly to keep track of the Player side (since the GM does not use it). So having the session notes and sorting them by date is very useful for us.
The player noted are a little hard to use for this since they are not well sorting via a date.

I would really like to see this to return in one or the other form.

Apologies for not seeing this till now. I'm scouring through the forums as we put together the survey and I just noticed that I missed this question.

Based on feedback from the Beta team, journals needed to be substantively reworked. That's been done under the covers and we've mapped out how the interface will work, but we haven't actually written the code for the new interface design. As such, they are definitely planned for release at some point, but they are in the mix with everything else that needs to be done. They will definitely an item for everyone to vote on in the upcoming survey, which will help us prioritize them appropriately.