Interested buyer with questions

[Skorps]

Hello everyone.

I'm a long time GM for my highschool till 30's gaming group. As we've all gotten out of college and moved away, we've moved to virtual tabletop gaming so we can all still meet every Saturday and get our DnD on!

As such, I've suffered through a lot of bad virtual tables, especially when it came to campaign management. Some are good for one shots with simple dungeon maps, but our group plays long, elaborate, multiyear campaigns and my players have never had a good way to interact with the "world" outside of the map.

I was pretty excited when I found Realmworks because it seems to allow me to offer my players the back-end of the game world they don't usually have access to, like "who was that priest from 2 years ago again?".

However, I've done some digging around and now I'm not exactly sure if Realmworks is what I think it is. I realize it is still in development some, but I've seen some posts here and there that have prompted me to ask about its functionality before I spend money on it.

Basically it comes down to what exactly the interface for the game is. It seems to be a standalone program (i.e. download to your desktop). I read the posts that the online version was coming soon(ish), but what is it's functionality now?

If I'm the GM, I assume I can open the program and log-in and access everything. But I'm confused about player licences. Do they also have a program that they open and log into to see the player side of the house? Is that why you need the cloud service to sync what's being changed on the GM side to be shown on the player side? If so, what the online version for then? To run on an iphone or something?

Also, I have questions about the tabletop itself. I haven't actually seen anything in the videos that show a traditional tabletop with an area for maps (or to use tiles), some kind of database for tokens, or a dice roller. Now, I realize there are a lot of virtual tables that have all kinds of crazy stuff like real time lighting, spell effects, and programmable macros, but honestly my group doesn't need any of that stuff. Just a map and tokens to move around. We can roleplay the rest.

However, if it came down to it, no one in the party wants to use a separate table from the campaign manager if realmworks doesn't have any table capability. We'd end up going to something like Roll20, which honestly from a DM standpoint I don't like as much.

If anyone could help me understand what's up, that'd be great. If Realmworks is what I think it is, we wouldn't have any problem getting it and 5 licenses.

Thanks for the help and sorry for the long post!

 

[Parody]

Basically it comes down to what exactly the interface for the game is. It seems to be a standalone program (i.e. download to your desktop). I read the posts that the online version was coming soon(ish), but what is it's functionality now?

At present, it is a Windows application only. There are only "GM/Full" licenses available. This lets you display chosen information in a Player View window, which is intended to be shown full-screen on a second monitor.

Soon (likely in the next few weeks) there will be a Player version of the Windows application. A player using this app can view the things the GM has chosen to reveal to the players. To do this, the GM must pay for cloud services and sync the realm (campaign) to LWD's servers. Then the players can sync their application and view the data. As it isn't real-time (both sides must sync first), it's intended more for viewing data between sessions and what happened before this session than up-to-the-minute updates.

In the even farther future (probably next year at this point is my guess), there will be a web version of the player client, so players can view things about the campaign if they are online.

Also, I have questions about the tabletop itself. I haven't actually seen anything in the videos that show a traditional tabletop with an area for maps (or to use tiles)....

Realm Works has no virtual tabletop capability. Instead, LWD is reaching out to VTT developers for better interoperability. The RW team refers to d20Pro quite a bit.

Hope this helps.

 

[Viking2054]

Hi Skorps,

First, as Parody said, Realm Works isn't a Virtual Table Top for running a game session.

What it is, in my opinion, is a Campaign Management Program.

A GM takes their creation of maps, NPC's, story plots, treasure, and everything they need to run a campaign and enter it into Realm Works. I think the best way to think of it would be a digital series of modules that comprise a campaign world. Now, as your players, play through your game world, you reveal the information they've gained through the course of play. Now this can be maps of your world from dungeons to cities to countries or even the whole world. It can also be NPC's the players have met, and the interactions they've had with those NPC's such as conversations, details on fights they've had with them, or how they helped the NPC out. It can also include notes on things the players have found in their adventures.

Anything the players encounter in their VTT game sessions can later be revealed by you in Realm Works. Then the players, whenever they want but usually between game sessions, can review everything you've revealed to them and hopefully it will help them follow the plot.

Someone used an example, I think it was Rob, of a group of players talking to a noble and the GM describes a ring the noble is wearing. One of the players thinks the ring sounds familiar and starts digging through the information in Realm Works that has been revealed to him in past games. Sure enough he finds a similar ring with a picture of it from some NPC that lead a death cult the players killed a few months or years ago. It's then up to the player to keep his mouth shut and try to find out more, or accuse him of being in league with the death cult.

I hope that helped.