How do *you* do session prep?

[MaxSupernova]

Okay, I'm getting the actual mechanics of the program down, and now I'm looking at how to implement the program in the practical sense.

To prepare for a session, I usually generate descriptions and text for a number of possible encounters, and make some general notes about what's going to be happening. These are usually 2 or 3 pages of text per session. I end up using about half of it, depending on what my players decide to do.

Here are the options I've contemplated, but I haven't decided on one yet:

1) My first thought was just to make each encounter or note a plot point on the storyboard.

The issue I find is that there isn't really a good way to use larger amounts of text on the storyboard. The only way to see the text is in the mouse-over popup, which isn't that great for 3 or 4 paragraphs of text. I could go in and edit each one to see the text, but that means using the tiny little 5-lines edit box.

2) Another thought I had would be to create an "Event" for each encounter and tie the plot point to the event. This would soon result on a very large number of events in my almanac. I'd rather not put these in the almanac because they aren't "canon" (they haven't happened), they are just my prep notes for the encounter (that may not even occur).

3) I could also use "User Notes" to generate encounters. These notes have unlimited snippets of all formats and are all cross-referenced with "content links" in the right hand pane, so they'll be useful. I really like this because it keeps my notes separate from the actual almanac of the realm, but the **HUGE** downside is that you can't link a plot point in the storyboard to a user note.

I'm thinking I'll probably just go with #2, and find some naming/tagging scheme to keep the planned/actual differences straight, and to keep encounters from a particular session together.

How does everyone else write up session prep material? Any other suggestions?

 

[H2Os]

I am interested in seeing people's responses on this as well.

 

[Erdrix]

I would also like to see how people use it during actual play. I've been messing around with it today just see try to get a handle on how to use it to run a game.

 

[Farling]

There are Story Idea snippets which you can use too. These can collect your idle ramblings until they are needed, or get fleshed out into more detail.

 

[mirtos]

My gameplay is what someone might consider more open-ended and player controlled as opposed to session prep.

I use it more during gameplay than session prep. My world has been 30 years in the making. (we wont talk about ages) so its going to take me a while to it into the DB, but much of it i know backwards/forward/sideways. what I have a hard time remembering is what NPCs people have come across, what places they've gone to. So I write quick snippets during the game.

"PCs have discovered the original university of The Red Hand", and then at home, I expand on it, so next session, or when the player accounts become handy, the players can reread what they've discovered, but more important, when they go back there, i know.

I find myself using it less for preparation, but in game notes (previously I was doing it all in google docs, which was a pain).

I will populate treasure hoards with items so that way I know what items PCs have. That is done in session planning.

I guess I do a little bit of both, now that I think of it.

 

[Viral Platypus]

The Idea is to go into the Story Almanac and create all the locations, people, items, events, and whatnot that the players will encounter during play. Then go into the storyboard, create a plotpoint and give it a basic description and link it back to the almanac. For example:

Almanac

Silverflame Mountains
   King Almond
   Princess Peanutbutter
   Sorceror Salmon
   Sacrificial Knife of Nutella
   Dreaded Valley
      Worgs
      Dungeon Door
      Dungeon Foyer
        Spiders
        Dead Adventurers
          Loot
      Northern Chamber
       ...
      Southern Chamber
      ...

Storyboard

Introduction - [King Almond] hires you to rescue [Princess Peanutbutter]
Travel to [Dreaded Valley]
Encounter the [Worgs]
Break into the Dungeon - [Dungeon Door]
Encounter the [Spiders] in the [Dungeon Foyer]
Finding the [Loot] on the [Dead Adventurers]
     [Northern Chamber]
or 
     [Southern Chamber]
etc

All the details go into the Almanac entries. The storyboard is just for quick reference. It's for extra story elements that aren't specific to just the room or person; or for elements that you want to highlight from the almanac entry so you remember to mention them or reveal them to the players. Although with the way the almanac entries work, you can easily split off snipits of information to reveal in each of them.

 

[MaxSupernova]

I have my world well fleshed out and entered, but my "encounters" are more complicated than "monster or room here".

My notes will have descriptions of various rooms they might see (which will likely never be seen again and therefore aren't worthy of almanac entries), random encounter charts for the various areas they will be in, notes of which way a certain NPC will play a conversation depending on what the PCs are doing, some text to read to players at certain times, notes on a half dozen possible ways the situation might turn out.

None of those really need to be full-blown almanac entries. They are just notes for a single adventure that will never be referenced again.

User Notes would be perfect if they could be referenced via plot points.

I think for now I will create a "Events" -> "Incidents" called "Session 5" and place Incidents under that (using Session 5 as a container) with notes and ideas that I can pin to plot points. For each session I'll just create a new high level container. Then I can remove them later if there's nothing worth keeping, and I have my notes in containers by session.

-------

I guess, larger-scale I was wondering how Realm Works is used as a planning tool rather than just an encyclopedia. It's a fantastic encyclopedia, but there are some unclear bits to me about using it for planning anything other than room-based or monster-based dungeon crawls.

 

[rob]

One of the core design philosophies is that everything is woven together. It really should NOT matter what basic approach you take to using the product. You can start out with the storyboard. You can start out with lots of empty topics to fill in later. You can start with a nucleus of topics and expand outward. It doesn't matter. Ultimately, everything will become interwoven.

There are a number of aspects of Realm Works that are intended for visualization. Visualizing things makes everything SO much easier for a large percentage of people. However, the core mechanism at the heart of Realm Works is topics. They are the engine that everything revolves around.

With that in mind, let's take a look at the approaches that were initially proposed.

Starting with the storyboard is an excellent way to see how everything flows and interconnects at a high level. However, as you quickly discerned, plot points don't provide a good way to flesh out the details. That's not their purpose. That's where topics come into play. Every plot point can be associated with a topic. Our design assumption is that, in general, the vast majority of plot points will be associated with a Scene topic. That's where you would expound upon the details.

Many scenes will be typical "encounters" in an adventure. Another example might be the Grand Ball, where the PCs have the opportunity to meet important society figures and advance the story in critical ways. Yet another might be the PCs stumbling across a sunken ship where an important clue can be found. And another might be meeting passing a beggar on the road that merely establishes important foreshadowing for the adventure ahead. A Scene topic is merely a convenient place to delve into the details of a plot point, and the snippets of the scene will often have links to various other topics (NPCs, places, events, etc.) that are involved in some way with the scene.

It's also quite possible that a plot point is more than just one scene. If so, then that plot point really represents its own small sub-plot. At that point, you should then create the sub-plot as an entirely separate plot. Once created, you can now associate the sub-plot with the plot point in the larger plot. Within the sub-plot, you can now associate individual plot points to the corresponding scenes.

You could just as easily ignore the storyboard and simply leverage a large collection of scenes. If you went with this approach, you'd probably also want to leverage Quest topics, since you mentioned having essentially mini-quests that involve the PCs going through a number of possible stages to resolve. These mini-quests would weave together the individual scenes that comprise them.

Of course, you could just as easily use quests AND the storyboard together. Both provides different benefits and can be leveraged in different ways. It really depends on what works best for YOU.

Utilizing User Notes is definitely a poor approach, as you concluded. The purpose of notes is for jotting down lots of rough ideas that you'll come back to later and weave into the story as plots and/or topics at a later point in time. The notes will link back to important NPCs and locations for easy reference later, but your story does NOT link to notes. That's intentional, since you have your notes and players will have their completely independent notes as well. In addition, notes are assumed to be transient, as you'll delete them once you've acted upon them to weave them properly into the story. So notes must tie to references in the story, but it would be inappropriate to have the story tie directly to notes.

We highly recommend leveraging tags to identify topics that are related. For example, all the various scenes/encounters/rooms within the Temple of Doom should ideally have a tag that identifies them being part of the Temple of Doom. Then you can easily use a filter to see everything from that location.

If you are setting up an entire region at one time, then you can also leverage auto-tagging. This allows you to setup a tag (or tags) and designate them for automatic assignment to all new topics you create. Instead of having to manually assign the tag to every room of the Temple of Doom, you simply setup the auto-tag and start creating all the rooms. They automatically get the tag. When you're done, turn off auto-tagging.

Hopefully, the above proves helpful. In addition to the above, I strongly recommend you watch the tutorial video entitled "Approaching Content Creation". It outlines a variety of approaches that you can leverage. Most likely, one of them will feel "right" to you as a good starting place and then you can evolve your own style from there.

 

[MaxSupernova]

Thanks, Rob. You've invested a lot of time into making me see the light on this...

 

[rob]

No problem. Hopefully, you'll be able to pass the insights on to someone else down the line.

 

[Mystic Lemur]

My group is doing a Dungeon Crawl, so when I'm doing my prep in RW I start with the last room/encounter they cleared. I try to guess where they're most likely to go from there and enter in a few rooms/encounters in that direction. Then, time permitting, I branch out to the other paths they might take. The smart image maps make it easy to add a pin, create a topic from that pin, and enter the encounter details and treasure. Then I go back to the map and start on the next room.

When I have time, I try to knock out sections of the map and link all the related encounters together. I can also go in and make allowances for the sections they've cleared and the response by the enemy (new patrols, collapsing the ceiling, factions expanding or contracting based on what they think they can defend). I haven't really come up with a good way to indicate "new" content in rooms already explored, so I've just been "un-revealing" locations that have had major changes. I don't use player view much, so it doesn't spoil it for them, but it seems like there must be a better way.

 

[rob]

@Mystic Lemur: Instead of concealing topics that have changed, you might consider tagging them with a custom tag. Then you easily identify those topics via a filter, plus you can pretty quickly spot those topics by the present of the tag. This approach would work smoothly in conjunction with Player View and with making revealed content available to your players via the upcoming Player Edition.

Hope this helps!

 

[monsterfurby]

Main issue I have is that my current campaign is more of an exercise in character interaction than a classic PnP campaign. Sure, we do have fights and missions (it's military themed), but more often than not my preparation involved figuring out how to get each individual player character motivated to undertake said mission. That said, I do have a long-term game plan in place, a metaplot if you will, and a billion NPCs will run that metaplot even if the PCs decide to be involved in other ways than those I can think of ahead of time. The world does not revolve around my PCs by default, but they are certainly in a position to make it if they want.

That said, I am currently in the process of porting 400 named NPCs (all with portraits and backstory to some degree) spread over three dozen organizations all over this fictional version of our world into RealmWorks. Let's say this is really the software I have needed for a long, long time.

 

[MaxSupernova]

Main issue I have is that my current campaign is more of an exercise in character interaction than a classic PnP campaign. Sure, we do have fights and missions (it's military themed), but more often than not my preparation involved figuring out how to get each individual player character motivated to undertake said mission. That said, I do have a long-term game plan in place, a metaplot if you will, and a billion NPCs will run that metaplot even if the PCs decide to be involved in other ways than those I can think of ahead of time. The world does not revolve around my PCs by default, but they are certainly in a position to make it if they want.

That said, I am currently in the process of porting 400 named NPCs (all with portraits and backstory to some degree) spread over three dozen organizations all over this fictional version of our world into RealmWorks. Let's say this is really the software I have needed for a long, long time.

This sounds almost exactly like where I am, and it sounds like you are having the same issues about your prep as I am (fitting more nebulous things like motivations and generic notes in to the RW structure).

Having all of the factual data in a cross-referenced database is going to a huge bonus.

 

[Venger]

Thanks for the feedback. And thanks for the info Rob!

Yesterday was the first time I had some significant hands-on with RW. I'd like to say thanks for this tool, its impressive and I for one will get a lot out of it.

After learning the gist of it and fiddling around a little I decided that putting "things" in should come first, for me anyways. Primarily because when I filled out topic by topic first, I would have to go back and edit them to link info in previous ones, which is easy to do but I might have to do it several times.

So the approach I took was to input the People, Places and Things and establish their hierarchies first.
So when I go back and started populating the snippets, RW will began establishing links. I will be quite happy with that!

We are playing The One Ring, by Cubicle7 so it is a Middle Earth setting. The upcoming adventure is taking place in the eastern part of the Iron Hills in a place I call "The Valley of the Shadow". Its a huge valley and qualified to be like a mega complex with numerous adventure sites.

I mapped the valley in Campaign Cartographer. Its a huge map similar to a maze as befitting broken lands with river canyons dividing it into 3 Areas. So for resolution and .jpg size I made 3 maps that are defined as Area 1, 2 & 3.

The denizens of Area 1 include Bands of Orc Raiders, Hill Giants, Ettin, who have their own agendas and motives and terse relationships.

A bridge connects to Area 2 where there is a Dead forest, Broken Lands with a Mountain and a Swamp, each a sort of its own maze.

Area 2 also has a "Safe" zone for the Fellowship to rest, hunt and recoup. Its the only place in the entire Valley they can do so.

Denizens of Area 2 include Restless Ones (Zombies), Swamp Troll, Marsh Dwellers and a Drake in the Mountain. They have no real interaction or relationships.

Area 3 is the domain of Gog, with his agendas, minions and economy.
Pig farms, Wild Grain Granary, Iron Mine, Coal Mine, Pitch Refinery, Tannery, Wood Mill, Orc Villages and Gog's Keep. Each site has their own levels.

Area 3 also has the MacGuffin that I call the Bell Tower with a Mystic Bell. I say MacGuffin but thats not quite accurate because thats what drew the Fellowship here, but it actually exists. It is another multi-level site.

And also there is the secret Nest of Growcrow a "wizard's tower" type of setting. Gorcrow is an Entity, he is the "Shadow", thus the title, "The Valley of the Shadow". It's been there since the first age of the world and is the real mastermind of the Valley, although the other inhabitants quite believe they are the masters of the Valley.

Gorcrow keeps them in line with terror and oppression as he has done for 10,000 years. His nest is another multi-level site.

Gorcrow's interaction with the Fellowship will not be to kill, but to turn them to the Shadows if possible through various nefarious means, including rendering aid which if accepted will invoke corruption tests. muuahh, so I have quite a number of ideas for Gorcrow's strategies and tactics, since I never know what the players will do or how they will react.

These will end up as snippets and/or plot points for later as I learn how the story boarding works.

In Word I have nearly 20 pages of info outlined with Headings so I can utilize the document map.
So when I considered bringing it all into RS I started looking my notes differently. I have paragraphs of ideas, basically if, then, else, kind of notes that I can break up into snippets and later use as plot points.

So to start building I started with Planet Arda and input down from there and established the regions and area's hierarchies via the Container links.

I input these areas into the Story Almanac but in hindsight I maybe should have put them in the World Almanac. I will fix that later.

I'm still not sure about the correlation between the Story and World almanac yet.

The Creatures I input into the World Almanac though.

I created the areas, but did not populate with much info.
Arda
->Rhovanion
-->Iron Hills
----> Azanulinbar-Dum
----> The Valley of the Shadow

-------> Area 1
----------> Secret Tunnel (Entrance)
----------> Orc Raiders Territory
----------> Ettin Territory
----------> Hill Giants Territory
----------> Bridge

-------> Area 2
---------> Dead Forest
---------> Dark Swamps
---------> Broken Lands

-------> Area 3
---------> Gog's Keep
------------> Level 1
------------> Level 2
------------> Level 3
---------------> Secret Tunnel
------> Gog's Pig Farms
------> Gog's Pitch Refinery
------> Gog's Iron Mine
------ --> Level 1
----- ---> Level 2
------> Bell Tower Adventure
--------> Level 1
--------> Level 2
--------> level 3
------> Gorcrow's Nest
--------> Level 1
--------> level 2
--------> Level 3

I am thinking I should rename the Levels or adding tags to follow the parent, because I can imagine when populating the database a hundred dungeons from now each one having "Level 1" as a name will get confusing. SO I will look into trying auto-tagging as Rob mentioned or at the very least coming up with a naming convention.

Next I input the adversaries, added a few notes for the creatures they will encounter this weekend and added statblocks.
TOR statblocks are fairly difficult to format, so for now I used windows snipping tool to capture images of the statblock tables I made in Word to pull into RW.
I added all the creatures but didn't group anything yet.

Next I started populating the Area's topics from my notes and adding tags but divided my Word descriptions into snippets to leverage fog of world. It was awesome to see RW start to link everything together once all the pieces were in place.

Since this game we will be exploring Area 1, that's the only section I will completely flesh out by Sunday.

Lastly before I went to bed last night I started playing with the story board for Sunday's game, making several story groups and placing a few plot points as I could envision the story playing out in the very beginning of the adventure. One part started looking like a flow chart of possible events invoked by the player's actions, all from just clicking them together. Genius!

I saw that story board plot points are limited in size so I started adding topics in the Story Almanac that I could just link to if I needed more info for a particular plot point.

I imagine that player's actions might even take us outside the story board's plot points but could easily be incorporated into the flow.

It will be interesting to see the connections when everything is finally wired up! And especially the revealed story line after the adventure is played out!

All this and I really don't know RW inside and out yet!

If anyone has suggestions to improve my workflow or anything please reply or PM me! Thanks!

 

[Giorgio]

Rob, you answered my question how to tie things together, I was basically using MaxSupernova's approach.

I watched all the tutorials, but its honestly a bit overwhelming. I was placing all my word documents into the "user notes" section until I figure out where they should really go, and I was using the Storyboard plot points to work on my scenes (text is WHAY to small and you cant resize windows).

Hopefully after reading your post above I can do better.

 

[davidp]

TOR statblocks are fairly difficult to format, so for now I used windows snipping tool to capture images of the statblock tables I made in Word to pull into RW.
I added all the creatures but didn't group anything yet.

Have you tried copying and pasting the tables from Word into the statblock text? Realm Works supports embedded tables similar to Word.

 

[Venger]

Have you tried copying and pasting the tables from Word into the statblock text? Realm Works supports embedded tables similar to Word.

Hey DavidP
Yes I tried that first and ended up with unusable unformatted text in the snippet panel for statblocks. I assumed it is because I used split cells when formatting the statblock in Word.

Also, since I was trying to copy only one section of a larger table could be the problem. I may have to do stat blocks as individual tables.

I got a popup message that formatting would be removed.

When I get home I will post a statblock here, maybe there is something I am missing.

 

[Viral Platypus]

I'm still trying to decide how to handle running Fate in Realm Works myself. Since it's quite a bit more free form, I'm trying to decide if I just want to set up people, places, and things; or if I want to also try and add elements into the storyboard.

Part of the problem I'm having right now is I'm not sure where the game is headed, so I'm not sure how to experiment yet. Waiting on a stroke of inspiration.

 

[Nikmal]

Main issue I have is that my current campaign is more of an exercise in character interaction than a classic PnP campaign. Sure, we do have fights and missions (it's military themed), but more often than not my preparation involved figuring out how to get each individual player character motivated to undertake said mission. That said, I do have a long-term game plan in place, a metaplot if you will, and a billion NPCs will run that metaplot even if the PCs decide to be involved in other ways than those I can think of ahead of time. The world does not revolve around my PCs by default, but they are certainly in a position to make it if they want.

That said, I am currently in the process of porting 400 named NPCs (all with portraits and backstory to some degree) spread over three dozen organizations all over this fictional version of our world into RealmWorks. Let's say this is really the software I have needed for a long, long time.

What is cool about this is that you can set up how each NPC interacts with other NPC's through the relationship panel using the story board as well. It will show smiley emoticons for the relationship with other NPC's. It is kind of cool to see and one of the more cool features of Real Works. To me this is what makes Realm Works Shine!!