I'm going to divert from Realm Works' feature list for a moment, because this is madness.
Probably. There are plenty of GMs who would find all the work some of us put into world building to be a form of madness. I read one memorable post in another forum a while back calling RealmWorks a tool for sperglords.
What I'm reading is that some of you guys want your players to be reading paragraphs/sentences of texts as they encounter NPCs, fight monsters, and explore the world. There is even a suggestion that players should be referencing this stuff as they go, interrupting the gameplay to remind their companions what the NPC or location or whatever is. A designated "lore keeper", right?
That's me brainstorming. Like I said in my post, Player View is all I use to share RW content with my players and even that was a big jump for me. Heck, using battlemaps and minis was a big jump for me. That wasn't how I remembered playing D&D in 1985. Now that I'm gaming again and running my own campaign, I've struggled with, but also enjoyed, experimenting with different styles of play and seeing what sticks. "What sticks," however, is often very game, group, campaign, and even session specific.
The designated lore keeper who reminds the players who that NPC's father was or when they learned that city was conquered or whether they know that ice demon resists fire spells is YOU. You as the GM are the one telling the story and running the game, and that means you should be giving players ALL of the information they need (and earned) to make decisions about what their characters do. And you should be doing this by describing the scene and the effect of their decisions. You allow a website or wiki to do this for you to your detriment.
For the most part, I agree with this. But when I first started playing D&D, there seemed to be more responsibility placed on the players for not only taking their own notes but even drawing their own exploration maps. When I first started playing D&D, maps were something behind the DM screen. Players were responsible for doing their best to sketch out their own maps to avoid getting lost.
Also, there were no battlemaps that I recall in any of the games my friends or I ran or at games I participated in at GenCon. It was the GM's job to describe the battlefield. Video games, VTTs, and the greater availability and affordability of tiles and minis have, however, changed player expectations.
My brainstorming on using a tablet with RealmWorks, I think, comes from an attempt to capture the flavor of older styles of play, without fully giving up the conveniences of current technology. Also, for some games, like ShadowRun, it could be a cool prop that adds to immersion.
Furthermore, your criticisms seem to challenge a big part of LWD's business strategy for RW. If tracking and providing reminders for game history, if being the party note-keeper, is a job that the GM is responsible for, then what is the purpose of the player versions? Why even have the ability to reveal anything?
I have had GMs dump statblocks on me when I did Knowledge checks on a monster, and it's ridiculous. Your players do not want a stat block. They want to know if they should be flanking the ooze or not. They want to know if they should be casting fireballs at the ice demon, or if he will resist their spell. All of this is information you could give a player in one or two sentences, even by just describing the effect of their actions, without having to STOP the game to let the players read a wiki entry.
What information to reveal and in what format to reveal it is a different issue than the mechanics of revealing that information. Personally, I would not reveal stat blocks, but I would reveal rumors about a beast and I would reveal facts uncovered through encounters with a beast. But other groups of players may take a more tactical approach. For example, I play HeroKids with my young boys and it is very important for them to see the monster cards when there is an encounter. Fine by me. It makes the game more fun for them. Different game, different group of players.
If they encounter an NPC their characters would remember, but their players do not, then you as the GM should be reminding them of what their characters would know. "You recognize the gatekeeper as your old friend from Bartertown, and remember the time you also burned off his hair with your fireball spell. He swore he would get you back for it one day." There. Done. Two sentences that would take less than 15 seconds to say, and now your players can make decisions about how to handle him and get through the gate, and no one has to stop and read anything. Not only that, rather than have your lore keeper read the guys' entire backstory, you can give them the info they need for the situation they are in at that moment - "hey this guy may hold a grudge".
Yes, in my current campaign, that is how I would handle this. But in a mystery/detective game, this approach would greatly detract from immersion for some players. In such a game, taking and poring over detailed notes to solve a mystery could be central to immersion and enjoyment of the game.
Also, as DM, there are many things I must keep track of and pay attention to during a game. Why shouldn't I outsource looking up notes from past sessions to a player? Let us also keep in mind that many players LIKE a lot of flavor and backstory. What is wrong with them reading over revealed details, some providing more detail than that spoken by the DM.
Whether accessing that information in RW during a game slows it down or speeds it up, whether it adds to or subtracts from the game, depends on the game, campaign, session, GM, and players.
The stuff you guys are asking Realm Works to do is functionality that is YOUR job as the GM. You should never be interrupting a game to have players read a snippet/wiki/whatever. And if your players are having trouble remembering content in a session that they learned DURING THAT SESSION, then you need to ask yourself some hard questions about your players' engagement.
RW is a tool to help a GM do his job. Part of that job is revealing content to players. LWD has created player versions of its software for the express purpose of players being able to access content that the GM has revealed and to take notes on it.
I agree with you. The Players version of RW has not been very useful to my group. I have one player who has a full version of RW and he has synced content and looked at it. But for the most part, none of my players have any use for the Player's edition.
Yet LWD has expended a great deal of effort to create and market the player edition, in some cases prioritizing player-edition features over DM features. And people are buying the player edition. And there are many GM's in the forums who are sharing their content with their players using the player edition and they are making feature requests for refinements to how content is shared, such as individual-player reveal and live sync.
So, while you may see the player-edition model of RW as encouraging poor game mastering, many GM and player users of the product disagree. Their requests to make sharing content with players better for their games is as legitimate as any other users' requests.
Realm Works is more than a sufficient tool for a GM to run a session,
Yes, I agree, it is a great tool to run your TTRPG sessions and you don't need any player to buy and use the player edition to run a great session with RW. Some groups, however, find that the giving players direct access to revealed content with the players edition adds to their enjoyment of the game.
because the only one who needs to be pouring through a wiki to remind themselves what the world is, is you, the GM. It is your job to describe the world to them, and any time you allow documentation to do that for you, you are missing an opportunity. Consider what you give up, and let your players focus on playing the game.
Sure, okay, that's how I use RW now. But consider what you and I, and our players, are giving up by forcing our players to have to rely on us to remind them of any previously revealed information. Maybe being the players' flesh-and-blood Evernote doesn't have to be the GM's job.
