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Best practices for running games

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dcgreenwood

Member
This is a pretty broad question, but I've spent a lot of time building a campaign and soon will be faced with running it. There are so many options for navigation and organizing, I'm wondering what other users are learning as the best approach to navigating during play. Do you primarily uses the relationships panes to jump around, build complex plot webs and use that for navigation? I'm a little afraid I may find when I finally run it that I missed some tricks for entering and linking content that will hamper my using it for game play.
 
So far I have it used just for entering my data and campaign planning. Here are my results from my first session I had a few days ago:

For my first session I used it only for articles / rules reference and some tracking of enemies. The remainder I updated afterwards. Also I just use a laptop for tracking my GM's notes.

Unfortunately the handling for map / revealing them and putting them on player windows seems to be to complicated. There seems too much clicking / confirming / handling of tabs involved, so I make a quickly drawn map on paper for the players at the moment. Maybe I will add those steps at a later time as well, but currently I dont know.

I contained only "related" groups, which I also want to change. It is no problem to contain a relevant topic under a, for example, adventure area, if you will most likely need it when the group is there. So link / contain / group / tag topics that are related, so you have a multitude of ways to get to the topic.

For me I have seen that it is important for the future to build some "hubs" for the quests, where I can reach the relevant links quickly.

Also I want to track player progress in some dedicated topics (also für my reference) e.g. active spells or permanent effects or important decisions from a particular character.

I would not expect to much from the first session and overwhelm yourself. Just add it step by step so you feel comfortable.

I recommend you read the tips and tricks manual as it contains a lot of answers. Just read what youre currently interested in. They suggest for example to open needed tabs before hand and arrange the items to show in the player view also before the session.
 
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Organization

I completely forgot the tips article existed until after I posted this and yes, it answered some questions. I did my first player view trial and had the same reaction you did...lots of clicks to reveal something. I are why they suggested preparing tabs and windows ahead of time. Once they are prepped and you get the sequence down I think it will work, but I think hours if practice before the first session may be needed. The article dealt with the hub concept using storyline so I will try that. I also see how it suggested using casts and the like to organize rather than "relationships" and that makes sense.
 
My 2 cents

I've yet to run my first campaign with Realmworks, so all I did so far, was to create inside RW. But here are my thoughts.

On my first settings, I first read the full book, understanding its concepts. Then, I started to create the universe in which my players would be evolving. And when the universe was created, I started a plot. Now that my first plot is done, I feel myself totally lost. I have too much material inside RW that need work, and am completely overwhelmed. Not to mention that when I started working on the character sheets (an electronic one, using a special program in doing them since my game system is not in HL and won't be due to copyright issue with the current holder of the rights), I noticed many flaws in the game system, and even stats that are not covered in any books. So yeah, a system broken, and to much information inside my campaign, and I don't know what to do next.

In about a week or something, I will receive my books for two other settings, using the same rules. And here is what I plan on doing : first, read and type the rules inside RW as I go through the books. Like that, I'm never overwhelmed by the description of the rules. I learn one rule, I bring it to RW. Like that, by the end of the book, I will have all the rules under my hand. And I will only bring what I need for my next playthrough.

What I did good though, I will keep on doing again. And that is to create groups where groups are logical. And using a very heavy system of tags / groups / links / and anything possible. This allow me to jump wherever I need from wherever I need. Linking my plot is also mandatory to me. Just a quick sentence in the plot, and a double click later, I can access anything relating to that particular scene.

For the reveal, I play only face to face, in a club. There is no TV where I play, and no internet. So the reveal is useless to me, and I won't comment on it.
 
This doesn't answer your question directly....

I use RW primarily for campaign development, session planning and session resolution. It's a repository for all gameplay information. It remembers the links and little details for me. Map reveal, rumor tracking, treasure details.... It's a database.

I use RW for module dissection/integration. I enter the material and make changes to names, places, events to match my needs. I reorganize and reorder material from paragraphs to appropriate snippets. I create cast lists and location lists so I can quickly find things. I create links between NPC's to better understand their dynamics.

I do not use RW for any rules mechanics. I'm story heavy; rules light. In my games rules are merely guidelines and I seldom actually refer to them preferring to hear how the characters plausibly resolve situations in-game rather than relying on tables and dice and rules.

I do not use RW for any in-game player presentation. Nor do I plan to.

I use RW at the table for looking up encounter information and as a reference to NPC's, locations, groups, etc. It's really wonderful to have it all at my fingertips.

The one place RW falls miserably short is in regards to interacting nicely with programs other than HL--it can't export. I have to maintain a separate directory for images and maps outside of RW and d20pro.... This irritates the bejesus out of me. I import all of these images and maps into both programs (doublework) and can't get them out of either.... So if I must maintain a third copy that isn't tied to either program in case I need to make edits which is starting to cause version control annoyance. Sigh.

I use d20pro for gameplay at the table. Maps, dice rolls and combat tracking are all nicely handled there.

I use HeroLab for PCs, NPCs, mobs and encounters. It integrates nicely with RW and exports nicely to d20pro.
 
I agree the images are a hassle. I hope they can improve on that. Windows has so many options, embeedding objects and hopefully support for other tools is extended and embedded more nicely.
 
AEIOU said:
The one place RW falls miserably short is in regards to interacting nicely with programs other than HL--it can't export. I have to maintain a separate directory for images and maps outside of RW and d20pro.... This irritates the bejesus out of me. I import all of these images and maps into both programs (doublework) and can't get them out of either.... So if I must maintain a third copy that isn't tied to either program in case I need to make edits which is starting to cause version control annoyance. Sigh
Click to expand...

RealmWorks allows you to add a Foreign Object snippet. I use this to add a file of monsters which can get loaded into Combat Manager for actually running encounters. Clicking on the foreign object snippet immediately launches Combat Manager and loads the file.
 
@Farling: That is really cool to hear. I'm hoping that something similar happens with d20pro and RW where I can create material, store it in RW and share it to d20pro.

My point was that once you put something into RW, you can't get it out. You can't edit or make changes to it once it is embedded into RW. Linking to CC3 or PhotoShop like the Foreign Object snippet linking to Combat Manager would be great -- then we could manipulate what we have input and we can save it to other formats if we like.

RW has a lot of growth ahead and I'm very hopeful that the implementation of data sharing will include better data import and the beginnings of data export.
 
I'm on the other side of this one: I would never want to save my source projects into Realm Works because I want revision control. I keep all of my maps, handouts, and other projects in a version control system and back up the repositories. Realm Works is only going to get appropriately-sized output formats. Yes, this means I have to replace the graphics or whatever in Realm Works when I change things, but that's just part of making revisions.

Looking towards the future, this also means that by only putting browser-compatible data formats into the database it shouldn't matter what platform my players use to view things. (RW was planned to be Win/Web/Mac, after all.) It also means that I'm not taking up extra space in my server allotment storing both the source and output formats of the same item, which can be hefty for certain types of files. There's also side issues for larger projects like player handouts that use linked graphics files.

Don't get me wrong: you should be able to export graphics and other imported objects, but there are good reasons you might want to keep their sources separate from your Realm Works database.
 
I've now run three sessions with RealmWorks, and while it's great for organizing my game universe in my head, I find that it's a bit cumbersome to use in the actual session. (At least until some sort of player viewer is actually available, but I've already beat that drum in another thread.)

The only feature I really use in Player View are maps. The "Fog of War" isn't too hard to manage, and my players are usually patient enough when moving that they don't mind the delay. Also, it adds a bit of tension because they have to do Notice checks when they travel and the extra DM time always makes them wonder what they may have missed :D

Everything else is just too clumsy at this time. Data windows are small and hard to read on my screen, so I end up reading them over the air anyway. At this time, as far as my players are concerned, this is just a regular game. They have notepads they scratch notes on just like they always do, because it's easier to reference their notes than to ask me to pull up a data sheet that may or may not have been filled with that data.

Additionally, while the system is nice for planning, I've found it way too cumbersome when I need to create on the fly. I have a notepad that I scratch my on-the-fly creations on as the party navigates the dungeon/vault/city, and then after the session I smash the data into the database.
 
I've run several sessions with RW. I love it as a GM tool for organizing information and running the game. It has replaced OneNote as my GMing application. Even in its current level of development it is better than any of the other products I've used for game prep and game running. I don't use the player view options at all and don't think I will be using them for a long time if ever. As mentioned above the process for sharing the proper info is a bit cumbersome and reading the info on a normal sized monitor screen is very hard. I could see using it to show NPC pics or maps, but it's not enough of a boon to motivate me to set up an extra display every week. Maybe one day in the future if a tablet version is available it would make it worth using for the player view stuff. I think that is probably years off though. Especially since my group has multiple tablet OS (iPad, Windows, and Android all at the same table).
 
meek75 said:
I could see using it to show NPC pics or maps, but it's not enough of a boon to motivate me to set up an extra display every week. Maybe one day in the future if a tablet version is available it would make it worth using for the player view stuff.
Click to expand...

There are apps available for at least the iPad that make the iPad appear as a second display to a PC. The player view window can then be displayed on the iPad. I have done this with a free app that appears to no longer be available in the App Store and it works well, giving you a secondary display easily and wirelessly for showing the maps and pictures.
 
The one thing that's really been helpful with RW at the table is access to NPC's. Notes, personalities, known/unknown facts, relationships, stats, locations -- these are absolutely golden. And if I need crunchy info, RW links directly to HL. And everything is nicely kept in context due to the interlinkages.

Being able to quickly see these things for NPC's (and locations to a lesser degree) is really worth the price of admission. I may whine about other things I'd like to see in RW, but this is the core for me and it's solid for planning and gaming.
 
I often use it for quickly accessing past found treasures. Mostly because I can now know exactly what an item is evenif the PC isnt.
 
This past weekend, I started plugging Mouse Guard mechanics into it. As a GM, I've run GURPS 4, Dresden Files, AD&D thru D&D 3.5, Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space, and I've read through several other systems, including the original Doctor Who, Mutants and Masterminds 3, Shadowrun 5, Cortex ... and I gotta say that Mouse Guard is, surprisingly to me, the most rules heavy system I've seen so far.

Instead of having a core mechanic with a few situations in which conditional modifiers might apply, it has various and sundry conditions in which the mechanics change.

Realm Works is allowing me to organize and streamline all the mechanics so I have a decent chance at running a reasonably competent game.
 
In a few weeks/months when it becomes possible, my son would love if you could share the Mouse Guard mechanics files. :D:D:D
 
I ran my first session using Realm Works this weekend. We've been playing RotRL for a while, but I haven't gotten around to putting things in the software to give it a real try (mostly just history stuff, notes, custom rules/items, NPC info, etc...). We use HL for chargen, and I use it for tracking battles/effects/etc...

We got all the way to Thistletop before the last game. So, I thought, let's try maps and player view.

This last weekend, I borrowed one of the LCD TV's and plugged it in to the laptop, and started the game. As my previous posts show, I didn't get the player view to work EXACTLY as I wanted, we used it mostly for tracking where the party was in the dungeon, with me revealing sections as they got to them. For the most part it worked great (I had to keep concealing to recenter the map so they could see where they were, didn't know about panning in player view cause I'm a blind ID10T).

Some interesting things came up that I didn't think of before (having watched zero tutorial videos or thinking about things before hand). One example was when they fought the warchief. I was able to reveal to them a picture I had of him already in the program, never thought about showing them a "Here's the dude you're murdering" before. They loved that. The Pawns we use are neat, but the detail they can see on the screen is awesome.

They also liked the way the reveal system worked and with careful revealing techniques on my part, I was able to keep secret areas hidden when they failed perception checks to find hidden doors. They thought that was cool.

I fell in LOVE with the integration into HL. The ability to click a button and have the encounter auto load into our HL Portfolio as an enemy team was MAD useful and saved a ton of time.

I've since learned to pan around images in the player view, so that'll be amazing come next weekend's game.

Some things I'm going to start doing:
* I'll be starting the game with the story line plot points on the screen. This will show them where they've been quickly and efficiently to help them remember where we left off.
* I'll no longer be printing out handouts. Copy+Paste from my PDF will allow me to just show them the thing on the display. NICE!
* I've taken to hyper-linking new items/spells to the PRD. That way, when they find a wand of shocking grasp or what have you that they don't have experience with, I can just click the item and it'll link me to the site (I can also send that browser window to the TV for their own quick reference). This will save a TON of time.
* I hadn't thought of revealing things other than maps or images until now. Seeing some videos on what this looks like will REALLY help keep them on track when they forget details that they learned 2 weeks ago (which would be an hour ago in game).
* I won't put the room descriptions on the pins anymore. They fade too fast for some of the more lengthy descriptions. From now on, Pins will say, "D2" and maybe "Enemies/Treasure/Secret/Trap/Locked" or something like that so that I know immediately that there's something I need to know before getting to the room topic.

Loving what I experienced, and I think the next games will be even more awesome.
 
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