What RW features have become your unexpected favorites?

Many of use bought RW for certain reasons, without truly understanding everything that the program offered. Over time, many of us have found that while our initial list of requirements may or may not still hold true, it is features that were never on our original list of must-haves that have become our current "can't live withouts."

When I was a perspective buyer of RW, I was looking for basically two things: (1) a way to create and manage my home-brewed world and campaign and (2) customer calendars. As for #1, I wanted something that offered more structure than I would have using a Wiki from scratch or trying to manage in Evernote, Google Docs, Onenote, etc., but would still allow for a lot of flexibility. For #2, I wanted to manage dates in a number of very different calendars, including back dating time lines.

Nothing on the market met #2, though RW was tantalizingly close. There were even video demos (by users with the beta, not from LWD) showing the unreleased feature. For #1, RW seemed to be the most mature product on the market that I could use offline. So I took the plunge.

Having used RW for well over a year, I've made do without custom calendars (though really would love to seem them finally made available), but there are a number of features I would find it very difficult to DM without.

1. AUTOLINKING

Seemed like a "neat" feature when I was looking into RW, but had little to no influence on my decision to buy. Now, I can't imagine building a campaign in a tool where I would have to link manually. The autolinking in RW and the granular control it gives you, with autolinking options, capitalization requirements, aliases, etc. is amazing.

2. STORYBOARD

You'll find some folks hating on the storyboard in the forums. I agree that for very complex plot lines, it can get unwieldy, and initially I thought it was just eye candy—something that looked cool in demos but not something particularly useful to me in creating a running adventures. I was wrong. The story board has become essential to helping me run any adventure that has a specific plot. True sandbox dungeon craws and hex maps may not make use of it (see below for more on this), but anything with a story and some railroading will benefit from the story board. Putting the story board for your adventure in the navigation pane, makes it really easy to run through the adventure. SO MUCH BETTER than flipping through a book or jumping around multiple tabs.

3. MAP AS NAVIGATION

When you run sandbox sessions or dungeon/hex crawls, putting the map in the navigation pane allows you to click on pins and have the associated content in the main pane. My god is this a nice feature! Again, so easy to pull up the content you need on the fly without lots of tabs open.

4. PLAYER VIEW

Really didn't think I would use it. Eventually I gave it a try and hooked up a large plasma TV that was set up above and behind me during the game. Players like having the map on the big screen. Being able to reveal as they progress and not making them have to map things out keeps the game flowing. Some people want to map things out, but I find it slows the game and takes away from the story. Sometimes, I'll make them map things out for a special challenge, but most of the time we have the map up in players view. It is also go to show symbols and riddles, etc. without having to have a stack of printed handouts.

5. HERO LAB INTEGRATION

This had no bearing on my decision to buy. There was no 5e support, so I had no intention of buying HL. Now that the SRD is in HL and the community has filled the gaps in the SRD, I am REALLY liking the ability to have the stats being managed by HL and not having to paste and format statblocks in RW. The integration with HL works very well and I can see it quickly becoming a cannot-live-without feature.

6. USER COMMUNITY

This isn't a feature but boy does the user community add to the value of RW (and HL). The engagement of the developers with the community is also great.


Anyway, that's my list. Any features that didn't figure much into your decisions to buy that you now couldn't live without?

I concur with your "pre-number" assessment and sentiments
As to the rest, (and following your lead)
1. Agreed this approach is superior to Wiki or any wiki-like approach (ie Obsidian Portal for example)

2. Disagree, unless you want something akin to a near zero logic path the story board in its current form is just above pencil and paper. The lack of ability to even do the most basic forms of flowcharting and forced layout make the feature IMO unusable.

3. Marginally agree, though the lack of differing types of pines and a better form of labeling (see other threads) would make this a much better feature.

4. For me I find it near useless, with too many short comings to list, one is better off utilizing a 3rd party (such as Fantasy Grounds, or D20PRo), but from a DM game management perspective the ability to jump to location details as you note, is the best part of this.

5. Agree, utilizing D20 HL platform this is a nice add bonus.

6. Agreed, the community as a whole (on both sides of the fence( ie LW and the public at large)) is far superior to say OP where the paying public were all but abandoned by the company until near the end of last year when there was a total revamp of the company management structure.

As to your last question..... unfortunately, the features I wanted most still lay quagmire in "soon".... As to surprises... as a sublime variant of the linking feature, I do really appreciate the ability for multiple ways to manage aliases, customizing other categories to fit my world needs, and false/truths..... these are the unexpected "nice" surprises in an other wise under construction software.

As limited as Realmworks is as a VTT it is the core of our session use of Realmworks.

I use it as a combination adventure script, world encyclopedia & location guide.

It's super useful to have the player view feature as I an add in google map satellite imagery, hand-drawn and google image source pictures to present to the players.

We use floorplans and satellite imagery as the vtt that players move their miniatures around on.

The ability to embed these resources directly in the entry for a location or adventure scene is the single most useful feature for me.

I have all my scene notes and opponent statistics at my fingertips in the same entry as the maps and pictures I present to the players.

Because this is the core of how we use Realmworks it's just painful that I can't reveal information that our players can read on their tablets or laptops.
Heck I can't even print it, I have to read it!

1.) Agree - This is much better than having to set the link my self as with other campaign management software I've used.

2.) Disagree - It has problems with some of the flow chart I've used in older games and I've done better story boards with flowchart making programs.

It only works for basic linear plots I've found.

3.) Agree- This is a big help when you have a map with many locations and don't went to spend time flipping through one or more books to get to the information about the location on the map.

4.) Agree Somewhat - I've shown maps, charter sketches, documents and other things, bu hooking my lap top with Realm Works up to my TV or when gaming at a friend's up to the TV. The only problems I've had is that it some time can take longer to pull up the info than it would be for me to just hand to the player or to reveal an area to the player's on graph paper at times I've found.

5.) Disagree - This wasn't abig thing for me,and I do own Hero Lab The only Hero Lab supported game I own is FATE and the way hero Lab handles some thing with FATE characters has problems currently. What would make this more of a factor would be if more systems were available for Hero Lab like Labyrinth Lord, Mutant Future, Stars Without Number, Kuro, etc.
6.) Agree- The user community has been a major deciding thing as I read several of posts which showed me waht I could do and the designer's were active on the fourms.

@MNBlockhead: This is a great topic and I keep trying to carve out time to add some comments. Soon. I keep hoping to login and see a bunch of comments as this is the kind of thing that helps LWD identify hidden gems and pinpoint key features that should be advertised more effectively.

Autolinking and HL integration are my runaway favorites.

I'll write the snippets for a new topic and, assuming I've actually connected it to the rest of the world, it will just fit right in like it was always there, with outgoing links at least.

Having the hero lab portfolio for every encounter already setup makes the transition to combat smooth and fast. Also, but this is a HL thing it is easy to add an orc or the like to an encounter if you feel like the encounters have been a little to easy without having to go find another statblock.

I never expected the player view to be of any relevance for me or my campaigns. During one of the last sessions I gave it a try just to slowly reveal a map, and the reaction from the players literally shot the player view to top importance.

Imho the true strength of Realmworks is as an interactive session tool that permits you to share your rich world content with your players.

Rich world content without any way to share it is, mostly, useless.

Meanwhile the standard VTT approach is only situationally helpful as you need access to more than just maps and tokens.

IMHO Realmworks focus should be being able to serve all that rich content you have created/ added to your world to your players.

Otherwise it's just a fancy wiki that only you can read....

wurzel said:

I never expected the player view to be of any relevance for me or my campaigns. During one of the last sessions I gave it a try just to slowly reveal a map, and the reaction from the players literally shot the player view to top importance.

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adzling said:

Imho the true strength of Realmworks is as an interactive session tool that permits you to share your rich world content with your players.

Rich world content without any way to share it is, mostly, useless.

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While I agree with some of your points, I do think you are underselling the usefulness of RW purely as a GM tool. Before RW, I had to organize my games with MS Onenote. Other GMs used other solutions, but we all needed a way to plan and have notes a the table. RW replaced Onenote and then some. Even if live sync and player view never happen (and I hope they will come soon) I will continue to find RW invaluable as GM tool.

meek75 said:

While I agree with some of your points, I do think you are underselling the usefulness of RW purely as a GM tool. Before RW, I had to organize my games with MS Onenote. Other GMs used other solutions, but we all needed a way to plan and have notes a the table. RW replaced Onenote and then some. Even if live sync and player view never happen (and I hope they will come soon) I will continue to find RW invaluable as GM tool.

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Meek75 makes a good point. When I bought RW it was solely for the purpose of helping make my world-building and campaign management easier. I originally had not intention to use it to provide content to players. That said, RW is advertised as a way to better interact with your players, so it is certainly appropriate to discuss what works well and cold be better about player interaction features.

For me, I'm very happy with current Player View functionality and don't have any desire to share things on the fly with my player's devices. But different DMs and players have different play styles and needs/wants.

MNBlockHead said:

For me, I'm very happy with current Player View functionality and don't have any desire to share things on the fly with my player's devices. But different DMs and players have different play styles and needs/wants.

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That is exactly the way I see it as well.

There are lots of other things that really need to be implemented and are IMHO way more important (for me, data export/import/realm copy etc.).

I've found that preparing one or two adventure paths before ever using RW at the table has meant that I have to go back and change some of the structure of the information in RW to make it more useful :-(

The reveal history function (as shown in the latest video) is actually surprisingly useful for players. One of my players uses it to remind himself what has happened so that his journal entry (on Obsidian Portal currently) contains more information for the other players who haven't yet discovered the wonder of RW.

Odd, for me this is THE single most important aspect of Realmworks.
Not being able to share content in real-time that I have spent countless hours entering into realmworks is rather crippling.....

I mean shouldn't we be able to print or share with players the content we spent countless hours entering into the dang software?!?

wurzel said:

That is exactly the way I see it as well.

There are lots of other things that really need to be implemented and are IMHO way more important (for me, data export/import/realm copy etc.).

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Export and print have always been my top two items. As a GM, they are absolutely indispensable. They are way more important than calendars or player journals as those we can and have worked around; but these two items we're dead in the water with absolutely no options.

RW is an ominous blackhole -- everything goes in and nothing comes out.

adzling said:

Odd, for me this is THE single most important aspect of Realmworks.
Not being able to share content in real-time that I have spent countless hours entering into realmworks is rather crippling.....

I mean shouldn't we be able to print or share with players the content we spent countless hours entering into the dang software?!?

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I see printing as distinct from instantaneous reveal outside of the player view. Yes, printing is needed. That, like so much else, it tied to development of the Content Market.

As for needing to have revealed content available for display on player devices as you reveal it, without needing both GM and players to manually sync, that is something that for some users is much more important than others.

RW was designed, for better or worse, to have live sharing done with the player view, which means connecting another monitor to your computer. The Player Version of RW is meant to be used to view revealed content between sessions or to look up information from past sessions at the table.

I don't mean to argue over whether that is good design choice or not and am not trying to discount your needs and preferences. I'm just explaining, how for my use use, I've found the player view as currently implemented meets my needs and is much more useful than I anticipated when I purchased the software.

Actually, I find it interesting that I seem to be on the other extreme. I just watched the most recent spotlight series. One feature I don't make good use of is session tracking. I always forget to start my session and end up just entering the dates and session notes retroactively. The Spotlight series showed how if you use session tracking you can later filter the review history to show what was revealed during that session. That looks very useful, but the problem is that I just don't see myself revealing topics and snippets during play. I find that distracting an unenjoyable. I apply all my reveals between sessions, which also gives me time to tidy up content and give some additional information.

So, even if I could share content during game without the current manual sync process, it wouldn't be much use to me as I don't reveal anything during play. I know that my process is not the workflow for which the reveal functionality was designed, but it may help explain why I feel less urgency for more instantaneous content sharing.

MNBlockHead said:

but the problem is that I just don't see myself revealing topics and snippets during play. I find that distracting an unenjoyable.

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I have found this be really helpful to do during the game. As I set each "scene/encounter" up in RW I pre-reveal the snippets that I know the PC's need to know right away. I add "DM" notes often to these sections if I need "rules" for DC's or skills in addition.

During the game as the Scene happens I reveal the whole topic and those "snippets" now show as bright green. This brings my attention to those sections to help remind me to "give" this information to the players. DM's have allot to remember and keep track off. Anything that highlights what I should be telling players is great in my book.

I still have other "snippets" that are not yet revealed because they are based on what the PCs do in the "scene/encounter". As the information or treasure is given to the PCs I then reveal those snippets as well. This is great for two reasons. 1) Players using RW can later see what they learned via the history or via searches. 2) This acts as a reminder to myself of what "exactly" did the PCs get out of the encounter/scene.

You just have to get use to talking to the players and quickly interacting with RW. But at most its a simple "button" press to reveal something and usually not very distracting (the first few games maybe but you will get better/faster). Just do it quickly and for myself I always keep the laptop angled to my "side". I don't want a barrier between me and the players so its not setup "directly" in front of me. The mouse is simply located where my hand naturally rests and just click the button and quickly return to looking at the players. This prevents the players from thinking I am not paying attention to them but instead that I as a DM have many things to track and they got 90% of my attention.

In regards to what MNblockhead wrote I would respond, what about text?
You can reveal image snippets to players but there is no way to show the players text snippets on your secondary display.

This is, plainly, nuts.

Most content entered is textual, so why should you not be able to share it via the player view (or even better via the Player Edition in a live manner)?

Although Realmworks is a central part of our gaming sessions now AEIOU is correct imho, Realmworks is a content blackhole.

The developers really should work on printing and live player previews via web or player edition. It would make our use of Realmworks 100% more beneficial.

100% is a lot, that's like double ;-)

adzling said:

In regards to what MNblockhead wrote I would respond, what about text?
You can reveal image snippets to players but there is no way to show the players text snippets on your secondary display.

This is, plainly, nuts.

Most content entered is textual, so why should you not be able to share it via the player view (or even better via the Player Edition in a live manner)?

Click to expand...

What are talking about? I display text all the time to my players. Especially if its a thing like a "note handout". They even have a really nice preset snippet type so I can have these as like 18+ font so easy to read.

urm, how do you display a single snippet in playerview?

I don't see any interface element that permits this (perhaps it's hidden somewhere?).

I only see the ability to display a whole topic, which is not very helpful when that topic contains many other snippets.

.............