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Grgbobe
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Old April 8th, 2017, 10:03 AM
How do you add new data gathered during play? I've only DM'd twice with RW and I'm already wondering how best to handle info that becomes available as the players interact with the world.

For example, the players were hired by a group of families to help clear out a "haunted house". Before they went in, they asked a lot of questions that I hadn't anticipated and some that someone agreed to find out for them. Where would you "store" this info?

Essentially, I'm asking for suggestions on how to keep data that the players create as they help tell the story? I haven't seen any videos that seem to address this. If you've made one, shoot me the link so I can watch what others have done.Otherwise, your advice is greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Grg
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kbs666
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Old April 8th, 2017, 10:50 AM
I generally have textpad open during each session and if I need to write something down I switch over to it and jot down a quick note there. Then after the session is over I'll take those notes and expand them into a more formal RW entry.

RW itself is not really conducive, at least for me, for at the table adding of info. Hopefully after the Content Market finally goes live Rob can be talked into working on game journals.

The trick is no matter how you do it, even hand written notes, stay organized. There will inevitably be a player who is and will have better notes than your memory.

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Silveras
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Old April 8th, 2017, 11:35 AM
I get the feeling the question is less about adding data on-the-fly at the table, and more about... where to add it at all.

In that case.. you can add as many snippets as you want to the Topics. You are not at all restricted to the initial setup of information. The "Vision" is that once a world or adventure is set up in RW, it will be "cloned" for use in an actual campaign.. and so it represents the "starting conditions". The copy used to run a game is subject to as many changes as the game goes on as you need to make.. NPCs will die, PCs will die and be replaced or raised, enemies will move from place to place, buildings may be destroyed, vehicles will change locations, rumors will be proved or disproved... the data is all subject to change as the game goes on.

If you have revealed the "Adventure Area" to the players at the Topic level, then the sections "Story" or "Additional Information" seem like good places to put in the Q&A. In cases where the Q&A takes place during an Encounter, I have put them there to reflect that the PCs got the information during the Encounter and not before/after.

A "Further Information" topic with the original as the Container can be used to add information after the fact, such as the answers to the follow-up questions.

Information about the "Adventure Area" should be easily reached from the Adventure Area Topic (both for your convenience and the players'); it should not be put somewhere that you would have to work to figure out how to get from the Adventure Area Topic to the additional information. Most often, that's going to be right on the Topic itself; sometimes, it would be in a "Further Information" Topic "under" it.

For Q&A (anticipated or not), I use a snippet per Question & Answer as a set, bolding the Question part :

Q: Question?
A: Answer

Don't forget you can also mark each snippet as True, Partially True, or False as needed (which works well for rumors). The default is that all Snippets are marked as True, so you really only need to worry about Partially True and False, which makes it easy to forget this aspect.

In the sense of kbs666's response... this isn't stuff you'd be expecting to add during play necessarily. The model for RW is mostly for players to access it between sessions. However, if this information is already in RW and is something that the players can learn, part of the prep work (to me) is to make sure that it is all prepared to be revealed.

So, to use my favorite example, there's an adventure I was adding previously (Rise of the Runelords). In one paragraph, there are a number of facts.. some of which the PCs are supposed to be told, some they may learn, and some they should probably never learn. If I just paste that paragraph in "as is", it is not very conducive to use, and I would have to scramble to add the bits of information later as I realized what each one was, and so on.

That paragraph was broken up into about 6 individually-revealable snippets, 2 or 3 of which had GM notes attached for the information that should not be revealed.

Last edited by Silveras; April 8th, 2017 at 11:38 AM.
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Grgbobe
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Old April 9th, 2017, 12:41 PM
Thanks for the replies! You both make great points. I think you both sussed out part of what I was trying to ask...thanks for being detectives! I'll try to make it less difficult next time. I think Silveras responded with something that resonates slightly more with what some of my challenges are with campaign mgmt and how I hope RW can help me along.

Thanks for the great advice!

Grg
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kbs666
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Old April 9th, 2017, 05:21 PM
Oh.

Just add snippets and topics as needed. To the right of every snippet and at the top of every section is a menu icon, a crossed hammer and wrench, which allows you to add snippets or sections.

I guess I'm so used to doing that I just take it for granted.

my Realm Works videos
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZU...4DwXXkvmBXQ9Yw
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Acenoid
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Old April 12th, 2017, 03:18 PM
I added a "recap" snippet that contains the session summary.
And everything that needs to be persisted in the "world" is added where it belongs ... adventure areas, newly met characters etc (if they are not already in)

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Lexin
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Old April 19th, 2017, 01:27 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Acenoid View Post
I added a "recap" snippet that contains the session summary.
After every game, I spent some time updating RW with the things that the characters asked that hadn't occurred to me to put in before the game started.

And I also had a section in the Realm that listed in just a few words what happened in each gaming session so that we could spent five minutes (as opposed to half an hour or more) just getting to the same sheet on the history of the campaign.

I don't bother so much with this in games which are supposed to take only a couple of sessions, but the Call of Cthulhu campaign "Horror on the Orient Express" is looking down at me in all its eldritch glory and when I start to run that monster campaign, good notes are going to be paramount.

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Tools: Realm Works, HeroLab, Campaign Cartographer 3+
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Grgbobe
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Old April 24th, 2017, 07:43 AM
Thanks everyone! Having just run my third session using Realm Works, your comments and advice are proving very helpful!

Cheers!
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the_redbeard
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Old April 29th, 2017, 08:25 PM
There are many ways to do things in Realm Works.

I don't find the included Game Session category useful.

I made my own Game Session category that looks much the same: it has game date (in game calendar, tho that is just a # for now), real date of the game, who attended, etc.

Then I add snippets as the game continues, taking notes of locations and npcs by name.

Not too unfrequently, I'm typing (or cutting and pasting from some place) the name of a new NPC or a new location and Control -Qing for later.

Save the topic and woila! If I look at that NPC, I know when the players talked to them, anything I felt relevant, etc. It's pretty invaluable when I prep for the next session.

When web access is released, the players will be able to see the Game Session topics I've entered, but only the snippets I've revealed and not any DM comments.

I don't plan very far in advance, but the record of play that I keep is one of my favorite features in Realm Works, even though I don't think that is the way it was intended to be used.

Last edited by the_redbeard; April 29th, 2017 at 08:28 PM.
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