Player Edition Look

[Dr_Automaton]

Will players be able to see which topics are in the story almanac as opposed to the world almanac?

PLAYER: Hey, why's that old BBEG back in the story almanac? Didn't we kill him ten sessions back?

GM: Um . . . uh, oh. . . .

 

[Exmortis]

Great news that players can make notes, thats HUGE!

In the future, having the players able to toogle "player share" "player/GM share" and "unshared" would also be great, but I understand thats tricky and something to be added in time as it is not a huge deal. Players talk and can share their notes when required, the fact they can make notes to keep track of their ideas, well thats just awesome in itself.

Keep up the good work Rob and Team! I just scrapped my campiagn I have been working on for a few years in lieu of a whole new ground up work. I was using other material as a base, but have decided its too constrictive, so ground up new world here I come. Three "civilized" continents and 6 unique playable races per, I have my work cut out for me. Already fired up CC3 and beginning to map the new world!

Little tip o the hat to HeroLab here, what a great tool, I can create all the races and their abilities, and pass around the user file! Now if you can add "herolab user file" sync with realm works campaign??? We would be in heaven...... No Rob put down the gun.....

 

[rob]

Will players be able to see which topics are in the story almanac as opposed to the world almanac?

PLAYER: Hey, why's that old BBEG back in the story almanac? Didn't we kill him ten sessions back?

GM: Um . . . uh, oh. . . .

We never considered that. Hmm. Does this mean you think we should do away with the distinction of story and world almanac for players? It would sacrifice usefulness and keeping things simpler for players in the interest of safeguarding against this one rather rare exceptional case.

If it were MY game, I'd simply tell my players: "Oops. I completely overlooked that. Thanks for flagging it." Then I'd move the topic to the world almanac and make a mental note not to move it back until I launched the surprise return. I know that I could sell that easily to my group. And then I wouldn't have to lose the separation of story and world for the players. But that's just one opinion.

What do you folks all think???

 

[rob]

Little tip o the hat to HeroLab here, what a great tool, I can create all the races and their abilities, and pass around the user file! Now if you can add "herolab user file" sync with realm works campaign??? We would be in heaven...... No Rob put down the gun.....

That's already mapped out! We just need to reach the point of getting it implemented.

 

[AEIOU]

While I am normally in favor of simplification and a focus on the present, I think doing away with story/world distinction is necessary. To the players, anything they've learned is relevant information that may be applicable at any time. If we start deciding what is relevant and what is not for them, we're going to miss out on a lot of interesting gaming and I think railroading will become very obvious.

 

[killraven]

To all the staff and users which have been providing answers and contributing to this conversation:
Thanks for splitting this off and giving such a detailed answer. I was on vacation and didn't see this until I got back today.
I'll try and answer some of the questions I was asked and also clarify some of my meanings.

Additionally, GMs can put GM Edition into "Player Mode" in order to see their realm from a player's perspective, with the appropriate information and functionality hidden. This would be much more difficult to do if GM and Player editions looked and navigated very differently.

That will really help me a lot once it gets pushed to the live product. I'd be nice to see what the players will see.

I'm not exactly sure what you mean by "like a wiki interface". Both GM and Player edition both allow searching, both allow link-based browsing, and both provide hierarchical containment and relationship-based browsing. It also provides other things which might not be provided by a wiki, such as filtering by tags, timeline, reveal history, etc.

The web version will necessarily look and navigate differently from the Windows desktop applications. It will also (initially) be focusing on presenting content to players more than GMs, so it will be geared towards that audience from a depth/complexity/ease-of-use perspective. My goal for it is that anyone comfortable using basic modern web apps (Facebook, Twitter, G-Mail, YouTube, etc) will have no problems using the web app.

I'm curious about your statement "There seems to be a pretty steep learning curve for the interface." While I agree with this and we're working to improve it, I think the majority of the difficulty and learning curve of using Realm Works centers around content creation rather than reading and browsing. This is primarily because content creation, organizing, arranging, and interweaving are intrinsically complicated actions, regardless of the tools you're using. Players won't be doing any creating (initially), so a lot of that depth and complexity gets discarded.

Part of my concern is presenting the information in an organized layout which would immediately make sense to the players.

There are many different ways you can enter your data and have it related to each other: Relations, Governed Content, Containing Topics, etc.
Because of this, there are a lot of different options for the view/layout settings.
I have been able to play with the settings to get the content viewable in a way which makes sense to me and I'm building my content based on those view settings.

I'm concerned about the players needing to really delve into the view/layout settings just to find the method to my madness.

From the responses, the web version will probably be much closer to what I'm imagining.
It would be nice if we could customize the layout of the web interface.
It would also be great if you could specify default view/layout settings which would be used when anyone opens the realm in the app.

I want to know a little bit about specific pain points you foresee your players running into. So do me a favor: open a realm that you have a decent amount of content entered for. You will need to reveal some starting information beforehand (e.g. the starting region and town, famous NPCs, kingdoms, history, etc).

Now put the realm into "Player Mode" and browse the content. Put your player hat on and just focus on reading and navigation. What parts are you (imagining) your players will trip up on? What will they try to find and be unable to? What dead-ends will they hit, and what ways will they get lost and not know how to get back on track? Are there some advanced features that might get in the way, or are they tucked away safely enough that most players won't be tripped up by them? Let me know what you think.

As soon as this feature goes live, I will do exactly that and let you know what I think.

Again, thank you for all the feedback and responses.

 

[Dark Lord Galen]

We never considered that. Hmm. Does this mean you think we should do away with the distinction of story and world almanac for players? It would sacrifice usefulness and keeping things simpler for players in the interest of safeguarding against this one rather rare exceptional case.

If it were MY game, I'd simply tell my players: "Oops. I completely overlooked that. Thanks for flagging it."

Like you, I would move fast on my feet to camouflage the oversight...

Then I'd move the topic to the world almanac and make a mental note not to move it back until I launched the surprise return. I know that I could sell that easily to my group. And then I wouldn't have to lose the separation of story and world for the players. But that's just one opinion.

What do you folks all think???

I like the separation of the world versus the "story line" myself.... as I often plan various choices that the players PCs could take (we call them the probable, improbable and the WTF.. hehe) so there are many times the first choice may circle back to a "new first choice" that they had the option to do but returned to those old possibilities at a later date.

BUT this does lead me to a question...

Is your statement implying that Items Identified in the story side (checked green), then moved to the world side are no longer visible even if still checked on (ie Green)?
or
Are you removing the "flag" (toggling back to an off position) and relocating it back to the World to be "reallocated" and switched on at a later time?

 

[ibecker]

While I am normally in favor of simplification and a focus on the present, I think doing away with story/world distinction is necessary. To the players, anything they've learned is relevant information that may be applicable at any time. If we start deciding what is relevant and what is not for them, we're going to miss out on a lot of interesting gaming and I think railroading will become very obvious.

+1 to this. I think that from the Player point of view, there should be no distinction between the current "Story" that they're in, and the wider "World" - that's a GM distinction, one that will break immersion for the players.

 

[ibecker]

Perhaps the Player Client could give the players the ability to categorize information in their own view as either "Currently relevant" or "Not currently relevant". This would allow them to organize information in a way that will be useful to them (or at least, that they think will be useful to them...), independently of the way that the GM has categorized it. This will give them some organizational ability, without tipping the GM's hand.

 

[ShadowChemosh]

While I am normally in favor of simplification and a focus on the present, I think doing away with story/world distinction is necessary. To the players, anything they've learned is relevant information that may be applicable at any time. If we start deciding what is relevant and what is not for them, we're going to miss out on a lot of interesting gaming and I think railroading will become very obvious.

I am not sure I agree. When I explained Story vs World to my players who have the Player Edition they seemed to like the idea. Note I only run Adventure Paths. So I explained it to the players as the World contained everything they have done in the past few chapters of the AP and the Story contains the info from the current chapter.

From the point of view of a Paizo AP this separation is very nice as relevant info about the current chapter is in Story and other info is in World. This helps keep players focused on current story. I am of the school that it is very easy to overwhelm players with information so making them focus on a small sub-set of data is WAY better.

 

[ruhar]

Does this mean you think we should do away with the distinction of story and world almanac for players? It would sacrifice usefulness and keeping things simpler for players in the interest of safeguarding against this one rather rare exceptional case.

If it were MY game, I'd simply tell my players: "Oops. I completely overlooked that. Thanks for flagging it." Then I'd move the topic to the world almanac and make a mental note not to move it back until I launched the surprise return. I know that I could sell that easily to my group. And then I wouldn't have to lose the separation of story and world for the players. But that's just one opinion.

What do you folks all think???

I'm currently not using the world almanac so I didn't initially had any thoughts on this. But as I read through the responses I started thinking of the future of a game. In the future game the story is going to change from the present game. The vampire clan the PCs are currently tracking will have been dealt with in the future and the PCs will be tracking the lich queen. For simplicity sake in the future everything that pertains to just the vampire clan could be moved to the world almanac while everything pertaining to the lich queen could stay in the story almanac. The GM has to be careful about where the vampire lord, who, unbeknownst to the PCs, managed to survive the attack and is hunting the PCs, is located in RW and the reveal state. But GMs are required to think on their feet so if the vampire lord pops out too soon I'm sure the GM will quickly think of an excuse. So I say we keep the world almanac in the player version.

 

[AEIOU]

Good discussion. I can see the story/world being quite useful for modules or linear adventures. Whereas long term campaigns and sandboxes almost necessitate everything always being in play. Sounds like we need some way to toggle it per campaign....

 

[Exmortis]

I am not sure I agree. When I explained Story vs World to my players who have the Player Edition they seemed to like the idea. Note I only run Adventure Paths. So I explained it to the players as the World contained everything they have done in the past few chapters of the AP and the Story contains the info from the current chapter.

From the point of view of a Paizo AP this separation is very nice as relevant info about the current chapter is in Story and other info is in World. This helps keep players focused on current story. I am of the school that it is very easy to overwhelm players with information so making them focus on a small sub-set of data is WAY better.

Good response, and I agree with this, not from AP but from my own campaign.

Even for us who build our own worlds, having a distinction of what is the "current adventure" and what has transpired before is huge. Think of it this way, every world has lore, and it is important as players learn the lore to understand its place in the world, or their story.

So lets take the following example:

Players are working through the "Lord of Fire" story line adventure where their actions bring about the meeting between them and the Red Dragon ruling over northern mountain range. So as part of this they happen to be investigating old ruins and discover a small library of books and scrolls with some that have survived the ages. A player(s) actually state when they get "home" they will read the found books and scrolls. Now most of it is just world lore and back story, nothing to do with the current adventure.

So for me as GM, I would have this information in the World not the story, and will want to reveal it this way. This keeps the information from getting in the way so to speak.

Also from my perspective of creating my own living game world, for the first time I will use this campaign world for the rest of my years as GM. RW allows me to use the previous Campaign info as "world" and again new parties current adventure as "story". Beyond this, they may learn something cool about previous events their old characters witnessed but did not actually uncover the truth, again this info will be revealed under "world" as it does not have anything to offer them in discovering why the Hominex have suddenly begun attacking Daedrea northern settlements after hundreds of years in peace.

I think it is important to have both, as for me, there will always be a distinction on information revealed, some will be world lore (oft fore shadowing), or that which moves current story plot line forward.

 

[Bidmaron]

This must be configurable. Consider that the player has no way to know where the GM bins the information. Thus, if they look up something that has been moved to world, the search will simply fail. They will have no idea if it's because they aren't remembering and there was no 'Iskabibil' or whether they are misspelling it or what the problem is. Just because the God Uptyfratz isn't in the current AP doesn't mean the player(s) shouldn't be able to remind themselves just what the core beliefs are for this God (assuming they should know about the God). The GM has enough to worry about without wondering which topics the players might want to know about in a given AP and then move them into the Story topic.
There are good arguments to the contrary. In keeping with the design philosophy, this should be GM configurable.

Plus, think about the meta-gaming aspect. "Ah, I can't find the information on the Warrior King. Guess the Warrior King won't be in this AP!"

 

[ruhar]

Good discussion. I can see the story/world being quite useful for modules or linear adventures. Whereas long term campaigns and sandboxes almost necessitate everything always being in play. Sounds like we need some way to toggle it per campaign....

Why do we need to toggle it? If you're not using the World Almanac the players wouldn't find anything in it so there's no need to toggle it off.

 

[AEIOU]

Sorry for not being clear. As a GM, I will definitely be using both the Story and World Almanac to keep current information easily available and to organize gameplay. I need both Story and World. However, I'd like my players to view the information as if everything is in play and that they can view anything that has been revealed.

That said, I totally see where ShadowChermosh and others that want the players to also have the Story/World views. And I agree. Their points make perfect sense and would be helpful for keeping players focused.

I'd like to be able to toggle whether players have separate Story/World or combined Story/World. That way we can have "see everything" as the norm and I can very specifically choose things for Story when I need them to pay attention to a subset of the data.

 

[ruhar]

I'd like to be able to toggle whether players have separate Story/World or combined Story/World. That way we can have "see everything" as the norm and I can very specifically choose things for Story when I need them to pay attention to a subset of the data.

Is this what you're wanting? On your computer Topic A, C, D are under Story and Topic B is under World. When the toggle button is switched to Both the players see it like you see it and described above. When the toggle button is switched to Story then Topic A, B, C, and D are seen by the players under Story. Is that correct?

I don't know anything about programing, but if I'm understanding you correctly and that is what you're wanting I would think that would be a nightmare to program.

 

[Ladyofdragons]

I don't know anything about programing, but if I'm understanding you correctly and that is what you're wanting I would think that would be a nightmare to program.

I'm not about to stuff any "this is easy" Rob's way, but given how there's basically a flag on each topic that says story or world and when you view that it shows the topics that match, it might not be a nightmare.

I was wondering earlier if instead of the story/world buttons being one or the other, it was a pressed/unpressed state that would include that content in the current visualization. so, if you have story pressed it shows only story. press world and the UI refreshes to include both story and world. unpress world and it pops back to only showing story. Search would include whatever it is you have visualized at the time.

dunno, just how I would think of doing it. I can see where having only part available at a time would be great, and I can see where combining it all at times would be great too.

 

[Joe]

I was wondering earlier if instead of the story/world buttons being one or the other, it was a pressed/unpressed state that would include that content in the current visualization. so, if you have story pressed it shows only story. press world and the UI refreshes to include both story and world. unpress world and it pops back to only showing story. Search would include whatever it is you have visualized at the time.

I believe this would be relatively easy and I've been considering it for some time. However, there are some bigger fish for us to fry right now. I'm also lurking and watching this thread to see others' ideas about what they'd like to see.

 

[ruhar]

Joe, since you're lurking I have a question for you or anyone else who might know. Initially I thought player edition would show what the GM revealed at the time something was revealed. Now I've heard that it's more a reference for players to review what has been revealed in past sessions. In order to see what has been revealed in a current session the GM has to sync the realm. Obviously not a quick task for a large realm nor would everyone want to take time out with each reveal to do a sync.

Is there any plan to have the player edition do live reveals? Or will GMs have to invest in a projector/second monitor or rotate their monitor for the players to see? The reason I ask is because I bought a small projector only to realize that the room we play in doesn't really have room for screen/projector or a second monitor (the room is all windows and a door with a narrow conference table and enough room to scoot chairs out
). I thought the player edition would take care of the issue but now I don't think it will.