Player/GM view on separate screens?

[Toblakai]

Well, sorry, that about being worth it was kind of redundant as you already made clear that you think it is worth it. I only wanted to point out that it is not you personally but the unawareness of the "blurry grey line" that is between critique and accusation that people sometimes have what causes a slightly passionate comment of mine in this thread

That's it. Over and out.

PS: I hope you will have fun :-D That's why we're here.

Now I am thinking about buying a projector and use a convenient wall for display.

 

[Farling]

Monitor's is not an issue, I have a half a dozen monitors in my closet. It's a place to put them that would be the issue. My place, using my TV and a wireless HDMI adapater works great. The 2 friends houses I play at do not have anywhere to put a monitor (small room, small table) laptops take up all the space, would be nice to use the laptops for this.

The plug-in panel is really just a panel - it can be propped up against the back of your laptop screen (mine has a fitting where it can literally be fitted onto the back of a laptop if you really wanted that as an option). There are makes available that don't come with a a big awkward stand.

 

[rob]

<rant on>

There are as many different ways to run a game session as there are GMs out there. When we set out to create Realm Works, we focused on addressing needs that other products didn't touch. So we very intentionally designed Realm Works to NOT be a Virtual Tabletop. Of course, that doesn't stop anyone from thinking we SHOULD be a VTT.

But the simple reality is that, if we did add more VTT capabilities, then we'd start being directly compared to other VTTs. And then people would be complaining that we don't support light sources, or whatever else they think we SHOULD have in the product. So it doesn't matter what we do, someone out there will consider us stupid for not creating exactly the product they happen to want. Our objective is to create a product that a significant number of GMs DO want, with a tiny team, and I believe we've largely achieved that thus far - plus the list of what we DO offer continues to grow over time.

For those who want a VTT, Realm Works is not the best choice. There are multiple other products out there that do that stuff reasonably well. However, Realm Works overs a vast array of capabilities that NOBODY ELSE offers. If you want THOSE features, then Realm Works is an excellent option and well worth the investment.

Adding "live sync" was included in the feature survey we did early last year. It was not high on the collective list that everyone voted on, which means it's a capability that some felt is a "must have", while others couldn't care less. It will again be on the next survey, which will follow at some point after the Content Market goes live. Perhaps it will fare better this time around. You'll all have an opportunity to lobby the community for your personal favorites at that time.

<rant off>

 

[Toblakai]

<A Rant>

I don't really want a VTT, I use a mat to play on with mini's, don't plan on changing that. I would like the ability to reveal things like room descriptions, pictures of monsters/characters, treasure found in rooms, the name of businesses (and the associated NPC's) as the players wander through towns, etc. Do VTT's do this (never really looked), I thought they were mostly for combat management and dynamic mapping?

I also really would not want to enter the same information into 2 different places, one is already enough...

 

[Toblakai]

The plug-in panel is really just a panel - it can be propped up against the back of your laptop screen (mine has a fitting where it can literally be fitted onto the back of a laptop if you really wanted that as an option). There are makes available that don't come with a a big awkward stand.

Would you mind giving me a link to one? I may be searching for the wrong thing, can't find one.

 

[rob]

I don't really want a VTT, I use a mat to play on with mini's, don't plan on changing that. I would like the ability to reveal things like room descriptions, pictures of monsters/characters, treasure found in rooms, the name of businesses (and the associated NPC's) as the players wander through towns, etc. Do VTT's do this (never really looked), I thought they were mostly for combat management and dynamic mapping?

I also really would not want to enter the same information into 2 different places, one is already enough...

I guess I'm confused then. How does the current Player View mechanism come up short? It allows exactly what you outline as important to you. Unless your players all sit around the table staring at their own laptops, which does NOT sound like the case, Player View should give you what you're asking for. You can show everything directly to the players. If you use a laptop, you can turn it around to show them. If you have a tablet to show them, you can use something like Splashtop or sharing a window via Skype. But it certainly does not sound like you should be needing real-time updates on separate player laptops via syncing. What am I missing?

 

[adzling]

you can't live display text from snippets in player view rob.
at least that's the problem i have, no live text reveal for players at the table....

 

[AEIOU]

I use a VTT to interact with players, provide handouts, track combat and display maps. Sometimes there is chat but I prefer talking using TeamSpeak and we talk about rooms, encounters, etc rather than reveal text for everyone to read. Sometimes the players roll online using the VTT, sometimes they tell me their rolls -- we're all mature adults.

I use RW to plan before I hit the table, run the adventure and provide a record for everyone after the game. I don't reveal in real-time as it's just a distraction to me -- I'm old, whatevah. I reformat material in RW to flow more naturally (to me), have a consistent feel between products that I mash together and to modify stuff to better fit my players and games.

I think this general model is what Rob might be envisioning.

I would like better integration between my VTT (d20Pro) and RW. And I'd like to be able to print material out or export it so I can present it in the best format for the situation. These will come to RW someday and are what I will lobby for.

 

[Toblakai]

I guess I'm confused then. How does the current Player View mechanism come up short? It allows exactly what you outline as important to you. Unless your players all sit around the table staring at their own laptops, which does NOT sound like the case, Player View should give you what you're asking for. You can show everything directly to the players. If you use a laptop, you can turn it around to show them. If you have a tablet to show them, you can use something like Splashtop or sharing a window via Skype. But it certainly does not sound like you should be needing real-time updates on separate player laptops via syncing. What am I missing?

Well 5 of the 8 I play with, use laptops and hero lab. I was just very surprised that the product didn't have live update to player version. i will survive without it, either using a projector or something else. I find the laptop turning to be a bit cumbersome, and as soon as I turn it back its not something they can see anymore. Having a product that they can interact with on their laptops would be nice.

You also have the revealing of images a little bit at a time, that screams for live updates IMO too.

I am a new customer (6 months-ish) and have not seen a survey. Live updates will be at the top of my list if you send another out.

 

[Toblakai]

I use a VTT to interact with players, provide handouts, track combat and display maps. Sometimes there is chat but I prefer talking using TeamSpeak and we talk about rooms, encounters, etc rather than reveal text for everyone to read. Sometimes the players roll online using the VTT, sometimes they tell me their rolls -- we're all mature adults.

I use RW to plan before I hit the table, run the adventure and provide a record for everyone after the game. I don't reveal in real-time as it's just a distraction to me -- I'm old, whatevah. I reformat material in RW to flow more naturally (to me), have a consistent feel between products that I mash together and to modify stuff to better fit my players and games.

I think this general model is what Rob might be envisioning.

I would like better integration between my VTT (d20Pro) and RW. And I'd like to be able to print material out or export it so I can present it in the best format for the situation. These will come to RW someday and are what I will lobby for.

i don't ever play online. Just at my table, so using a mat and mini's is what I do. I haven't actually used RW in a session yet, just picked it up a week and a half ago. From reading about RW, I did not get the impression that it was a VTT, but I did get the impression it had live updates.

One of the things I was planning on doing was entering the treasure in the room, and revealing snippets as they found and identified items. Another was when they identified a monster via a knowledge check I would reveal snippets based on their knowledge roll.

These 2 items don't work well with monitor turning. Do VTT's have this?

 

[MNBlockHead]

There have been more threads on this topic than I care to lookup and link to. Setting aside those who mistook RW for a VTT and are upset it is not that (which isn't the folks in this thread) there are two camps of GMs running at-table, in-person (NOT remote) who use RW to share content with players during the game. The first are those who are content to connect a second display to their computer and use that to display content to their party. I'm mostly in this camp. I've been happy with RW's current functionality for sharing content in game.

The second camp are those who want to multicast content to all their players' devices in game. For those who hate everyone having their laptops, tablets, smart phones, etc. at the table, this sounds like an aweful idea. But having read enough posts from the other side, they are starting to win me over.

I'm starting to like the idea of the team having a tablet in hands that they can interact with, look up notes, and watch a map being revealed during the game. Actually, what I've been thinking of for my next game, is the following:

I would buy a players license and install it on a tablet computer or lightweight windows laptop. One party member, probably a wizard, would be the designated lore keeper and cartographer. If the party has questions about past events that they took poor notes on, they could ask the lore keeper to look it up. Also, while I'm liking the current setup with everyone looking at the same large map on a giant plasma screen, I think it would be neat to have a handheld device that they would need to huddle around. It will give a different dynamic and feel to the game.

To do this, live sync would by nice. In the meantime, I plan to have the player's version on the tablet, which they can access information from prior sessions (for current session, they would need to rely on their own handheld notes). For map sharing, I would have small monitor hidden under the table that is connected as a second monitor and would share that via Google Hangouts to the player's tablet.

As for multicasting to all the players devices, I could see how in some games like Shadow Run, it would really add to the game rather then detract. Instead of worrying bout whether you allow laptops and smart phones at the table, you make them props in your game.

So, while live sync is not a top priority for me, I've come to understand how it could be very helpful.

 

[Toblakai]

I am thinking one of the cell phone sized projectors and a wall will work for me for now. I could do the skype sharing too. Wasn't looking to make Rob go on a rant about this... I was just truly surprised when I learned it didn't do live updates. RW is great, and will still be quite useful, especially for those campaigns where we play maybe once every few months.

I play Pathfinder, and it's complexity at higher levels almost requires a laptop. But honestly I love that complexity about the Pathfinder system. Sort of look forward to the day where someone releases a new role playing system that requires a computer

I was waiting for the content market to show up before I bought RW, but my impatience got the better of me. Was hoping time entering a lot of data, but if content doesn't come soon they might miss sales from me. Currently nearing the end of book 4 in Rise of the rune lords.. the clock is ticking!
(though I would probably buy it anyways to look at it)

 

[rob]

Wasn't looking to make Rob go on a rant about this... I was just truly surprised when I learned it didn't do live updates.

This is the issue for me. From our perspective, Realm Works DOES live updates. Via the Player View mechanism. What is doesn't do is live computer-to-computer updates, which entails a heck of a lot more work. If we had done all that work, we would have had to NOT do a bunch of other stuff that is fundamental to RW. If you want a single device that the players can see, that can be achieved via Player View. If you want it to be a separate device that can be passed around, you can attach a tablet that is controlled via Splashtop. So the only thing we don't do for live updating is broadcast to all the computers at the table. Yet your assessment is that we "don't do live updates". <sigh>

I can only return to my initial post above at this point...

 

[rob]

you can't live display text from snippets in player view rob.
at least that's the problem i have, no live text reveal for players at the table....

You CAN show the topic in the Player View, and any new snippets you reveal become visible immediately. Managing snippets individually within the Player View would be incredibly fiddly, and that would detract greatly from the flow of the game. The obvious exception is pictures and maps, which are typically handled very differently from text for most GMs. And that's why we handle them specially.

Again, this comes back to my initial post above, where every GM has his/her own definition of "ideal". We do a very good job for the needs of a large percentage of GMs out there, but we'll never make everybody perfectly happy. The moment we add something for one person, someone else will decry us for having not added their favorite feature. And then we'll reach the point where adding one feature makes the product less useful for someone else that has an opposing approach to GMing.

Each of you probably have more fingers on your right hand than we have developers on this product. We're not some big corporation with an army of developers. There is only so much we can do. We have to choose what we focus on carefully to maximize the utility of Realm Works to the maximum number of GMs out there. There is no way that we can make everyone perfectly happy - even with infinite time and resources - and it really frustrates me when users lose sight of that fact. In one breath, I hear users say Realm Works is crippled (or some similar term) due to a particular feature not being present, when there are usually pretty good alternative approaches that simply aren't ideal. In the next breath, that same user says they can't live without Realm Works.

If someone honestly can't live without Realm Works, saying it's crippled (or whatever) is disingenuous and does the product a serious disservice. Why? Because someone else visiting these forums will read that hyperbole and walk away with a negative impression of the product, without ever having tried it themselves. That's a shame, as it hurts the product in the long run and ultimately our ability to add the features everyone clamors for. But the kicker is that it's completely unnecessary.

Meanwhile, the team here is working their tails off. It honestly makes me question whether it's worth slaving away on this product when there are loud voices proclaiming "it sucks" over limitations that are IMO minor inconveniences. If it really sucks, then why should we bother? Believe me, the attitudes expressed here on the forums have a profound impact on us. We're certainly not doing this to get rich. It's a labor of love. And it's a lot harder to maintain that passion when confronted with a steady flow of negativity.

I wish everyone would keep that in mind when choosing their words - not just here, but everywhere in their lives. The world would be a much better place if people could focus their energies on being CONSTRUCTIVE instead of all the other (negative) ways they spend that energy.

 

[Toblakai]

You CAN show the topic in the Player View, and any new snippets you reveal become visible immediately. Managing snippets individually within the Player View would be incredibly fiddly, and that would detract greatly from the flow of the game. The obvious exception is pictures and maps, which are typically handled very differently from text for most GMs. And that's why we handle them specially.

Again, this comes back to my initial post above, where every GM has his/her own definition of "ideal". We do a very good job for the needs of a large percentage of GMs out there, but we'll never make everybody perfectly happy. The moment we add something for one person, someone else will decry us for having not added their favorite feature. And then we'll reach the point where adding one feature makes the product less useful for someone else that has an opposing approach to GMing.

Each of you probably have more fingers on your right hand than we have developers on this product. We're not some big corporation with an army of developers. There is only so much we can do. We have to choose what we focus on carefully to maximize the utility of Realm Works to the maximum number of GMs out there. There is no way that we can make everyone perfectly happy - even with infinite time and resources - and it really frustrates me when users lose sight of that fact. In one breath, I hear users say Realm Works is crippled (or some similar term) due to a particular feature not being present, when there are usually pretty good alternative approaches that simply aren't ideal. In the next breath, that same user says they can't live without Realm Works.

If someone honestly can't live without Realm Works, saying it's crippled (or whatever) is disingenuous and does the product a serious disservice. Why? Because someone else visiting these forums will read that hyperbole and walk away with a negative impression of the product, without ever having tried it themselves. That's a shame, as it hurts the product in the long run and ultimately our ability to add the features everyone clamors for. But the kicker is that it's completely unnecessary.

Meanwhile, the team here is working their tails off. It honestly makes me question whether it's worth slaving away on this product when there are loud voices proclaiming "it sucks" over limitations that are IMO minor inconveniences. If it really sucks, then why should we bother? Believe me, the attitudes expressed here on the forums have a profound impact on us. We're certainly not doing this to get rich. It's a labor of love. And it's a lot harder to maintain that passion when confronted with a steady flow of negativity.

I wish everyone would keep that in mind when choosing their words - not just here, but everywhere in their lives. The world would be a much better place if people could focus their energies on being CONSTRUCTIVE instead of all the other (negative) ways they spend that energy.

Sorry for upsetting you on this Rob (I went and removed a bit of my hyperbole), I will be working around the live update issue like many have suggested, not planning on returning the software, and plan on spending way too much money in the content market when it's released.

I am a developer too, and once worked for a company with me being one of 2 developers, never could get all the features everyone wanted into the product so I understand that aspect.

Now, I think you should probably be sleeping so you can get a good days work in on the content market!! And ignore us forum trolls!

 

[adzling]

urm I wasn't attacking you or the product Rob.

Realmworks has become an indispensable tool for running our Srun campaign (you may have noticed my cross-post entitled "the Joy or Realmworks".

Regardless I think lonewolf has an opportunity to enrich the player / GM experience by doing some work on integrating the player view and player edition/ webview more tightly.

Roll20 and the VTTs are all fine and good but what has really empowered my GM experience has been the depth of content I have accessible to me at a moment's notice within Realmworks.

Players plans go wrong and they get captured by the cops and now the rest of the group has to bust them out of jail?
No problem I have a precint police station with security details all setup in realmworks ready to pull out at a moment's notice.

That combination of depth of content easily shareable with players has become the core of our in-person tabletop experience and realmworks is positioned best to supply that experience imho.

whether the above sways you in your development plans will depend a lot on whether most of your customers buy realmworks for in-person play or as an aid for online play.

it makes a lot of sense for the former and not so much for the latter.

 

[ThatOneMike]

I'm going to divert from Realm Works' feature list for a moment, because this is madness.

What I'm reading is that some of you guys want your players to be reading paragraphs/sentences of texts as they encounter NPCs, fight monsters, and explore the world. There is even a suggestion that players should be referencing this stuff as they go, interrupting the gameplay to remind their companions what the NPC or location or whatever is. A designated "lore keeper", right?

The designated lore keeper who reminds the players who that NPC's father was or when they learned that city was conquered or whether they know that ice demon resists fire spells is YOU. You as the GM are the one telling the story and running the game, and that means you should be giving players ALL of the information they need (and earned) to make decisions about what their characters do. And you should be doing this by describing the scene and the effect of their decisions. You allow a website or wiki to do this for you to your detriment.

I have had GMs dump statblocks on me when I did Knowledge checks on a monster, and it's ridiculous. Your players do not want a stat block. They want to know if they should be flanking the ooze or not. They want to know if they should be casting fireballs at the ice demon, or if he will resist their spell. All of this is information you could give a player in one or two sentences, even by just describing the effect of their actions, without having to STOP the game to let the players read a wiki entry.

If they encounter an NPC their characters would remember, but their players do not, then you as the GM should be reminding them of what their characters would know. "You recognize the gatekeeper as your old friend from Bartertown, and remember the time you also burned off his hair with your fireball spell. He swore he would get you back for it one day." There. Done. Two sentences that would take less than 15 seconds to say, and now your players can make decisions about how to handle him and get through the gate, and no one has to stop and read anything. Not only that, rather than have your lore keeper read the guys' entire backstory, you can give them the info they need for the situation they are in at that moment - "hey this guy may hold a grudge".

The stuff you guys are asking Realm Works to do is functionality that is YOUR job as the GM. You should never be interrupting a game to have players read a snippet/wiki/whatever. And if your players are having trouble remembering content in a session that they learned DURING THAT SESSION, then you need to ask yourself some hard questions about your players' engagement.

Realm Works is more than a sufficient tool for a GM to run a session, because the only one who needs to be pouring through a wiki to remind themselves what the world is, is you, the GM. It is your job to describe the world to them, and any time you allow documentation to do that for you, you are missing an opportunity. Consider what you give up, and let your players focus on playing the game.

 

[ThatOneMike]

Meanwhile, the team here is working their tails off. It honestly makes me question whether it's worth slaving away on this product when there are loud voices proclaiming "it sucks" over limitations that are IMO minor inconveniences. If it really sucks, then why should we bother? Believe me, the attitudes expressed here on the forums have a profound impact on us. We're certainly not doing this to get rich. It's a labor of love. And it's a lot harder to maintain that passion when confronted with a steady flow of negativity.

It's a shame, because Realm Works is not only best of its class, but for what it does it is the only one of its class. I use it to build and run all of my games (I have a few), and I honestly cannot fathom how I ever did business without it.

I can build my own wiki database that self-references itself, automatically. This is huge in and of itself, and its usefulness can hardly be overstated.

I can also add dates to those topics, which automatically sort themselves into a chronology.

I can storyboard quickly, which is a huge value add for a GM - but then I can also sync up that storyboard to that database. That's awesome. I can even make that storyboard my menu, letting me easily navigate through topics that are relevant to the session at hand.

I can easily attach images and maps to my topics and show them to players during the game on a second monitor, showing them exactly the map I need them to see.

I can attach portfolios from Hero Lab to an encounter, giving me all of my encounter notes and stat block info in ONE place, in ONE program.

As for those encounters, I can easily attach a hand drawn (or computer drafted) map and notate it. And those notations can send me to other topics.

Someone elsewhere called Realm Works "busy work", but the amount of busy work it has saved me is incalculable. There is no competition for Realm Works. It is invaluable during planning, and the ease which it gives me to run a session from those plans is truly stunning, compared to any other solution I have seen.

Thanks for the product, Rob.

 

[Toblakai]

[Edited to remove a comment that was in no way constructive or useful]

@ThatOneMike: Get off your high horse. Run your sessions the way YOU want to, you have no right to lecture anyone on how to run a game. If I want to reveal information in an application it is my right.

 

[AEIOU]

i don't ever play online. Just at my table, so using a mat and mini's is what I do. I haven't actually used RW in a session yet, just picked it up a week and a half ago. From reading about RW, I did not get the impression that it was a VTT, but I did get the impression it had live updates.

One of the things I was planning on doing was entering the treasure in the room, and revealing snippets as they found and identified items. Another was when they identified a monster via a knowledge check I would reveal snippets based on their knowledge roll.

These 2 items don't work well with monitor turning. Do VTT's have this

Half the time, I play at the table as well. In those cases, I have a second monitor running the player client for d20Pro giving the players their view of the happenings. I don't use mini's but that's my preference. Others here in the forum do use minis with their VTT using TV's embedded in their table or projectors overhead.

Again, for "reveals" it's a conversation. The players write down the treasure and then divvy it up. They take notes or memorize monster details for the session. After the game, I do click the snippet sections that need to be revealed so there is a history to refer back to. But it is not in any way real time. And since my players don't use the player version, it's really for my own tracking to keep my stories straight.

For reveals the way you describe, I could easily cut/paste to the VTT for display during the session.