First game session

We just finished up our first session where I used RealmWorks to run everything. Currently I'm running Pathfinder's Serpent's Skull AP, and the party is in Tazion (end of book 2). About 6 hours total between last night and this morning for creating HeroLab profiles for encounters, stripping maps, and pasting in data. I missed a few odds and ends such as text blocks and one encounter where I used the wrong number of opponents (on the plus side, when I looked at the text I noticed it referenced 4 monsters while the HeroLab description mentioned 2, so I could fix it pretty quickly).

Overall, things felt like they ran a bit more smoothly than normal, even though I lost a monitor - used it for the Player View so they could see maps and NPC artwork. My wife felt the biggest issue was the size of the information on the Player View, but she was fairly far from the monitor and I was trying to keep multiple windows open at once for them to see. On the positive side, she felt I was working much more smoothly, as I was no longer trying to flip between location writeups and the map in the module's PDF.

Next step is for me to start figuring out the journal capabilities.

Overall a very positive experience, especially given the fact that the software's not even finished yet.

Pyremius, that's great to hear! We're glad you're enjoying it in it's current form. We're obviously working on (and excited for) changes coming up to v1.0 and beyond.

For player view, keep in mind that many content types (images, maps, plot diagrams, relationship diagrams) can be zoomed and panned in the Player Preview Window, which can help a lot for readability. I don't believe we have anything at this time for zooming or scaling topic text in player view, but it's on our radar.

I've been using RW for my weekly game (Wednesday nights, UK) ever since I got it, and it's been a godsend in terms of managing the plotline and making sure I cover the encounters I've picked out as essential. Right now there are only two problems I'm having:

1) Calendar (yes, yes, I know, I keep bringing this up, but I really can't stress enough how vital it is for me managing a fantasy world). I've currently got a OneNote file containing my campaign timeline, and it's the one thing outside RW and HeroLab that I've got on the go for tracking the campaign.

2) Sharing revealed information. Again, I know this is right up there in the priorities, but I'm currently playing exclusively via a VTT, with only one player physically present in my house (my wife). Being unable to share revealed info to my players is limiting how much I can use RW at peak efficiency. So far they've been okay with maintaining their own notes and me reading things off, but it's less useful than it might otherwise be.

Having those two gripes out of the way (and they're pretty minor issues, since I know they're already fundamental to RW, just not implemented), I have to say that the control, information management, and the ability to clearly track my plots has made my adventures so far run more smoothly. I'm naturally a very "seat of my pants" GM, throwing encounters and scenarios at my players almost at random within the framework of an overarching plot, and RW is invaluable for helping me keep track of my original intentions, as well as the information the players have learned so far.

Being able to quickly and easily flick from the Story Almanac where I'm perusing information about a corrupt noble family to the Story Board where I can see exactly which aspects of the plotline that family are involved in is truly beautiful to experience.

Just two more things to become available and I will happily consider RW a complete solution to campaign management. I can't wait.

Chemlak said:

2) Sharing revealed information. Again, I know this is right up there in the priorities, but I'm currently playing exclusively via a VTT, with only one player physically present in my house (my wife). Being unable to share revealed info to my players is limiting how much I can use RW at peak efficiency. So far they've been okay with maintaining their own notes and me reading things off, but it's less useful than it might otherwise be.

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Maybe not 100% ideal for your needs, but have you considered using something like http://join.me/ to share the player window? It lets you share a window or desktop screen with multiple people over the Internet. And it is free.

I would like to add my desire to be able to adjust the size of the text for Player View. My game alternates between two locations and one location uses a long conference like table. I sit at one end and any player on the opposite end would have a hard time reading the text.