Will player's Web access require cloud sync?

[weogarth]

Completely remote, distributed play is still very uncommon these days (albeit slowly growing). As such, our initial focus is primarily on the majority of RPG groups that play together in one physical location.

Just as a '+1' type of thing, I do my game via Fantasy Grounds II (I think my closest player is 1500 miles away). I totally understand and agree with your prioritization but when you get around to looking at things for something like 'Player View - Remote' capabilities, I'd be willing to provide some input/feedback.

As you pointed out, when doing things with the client, you'd have to tell the players where to look. FG II is pretty solid and I love it but the more I could keep things in RW and not have to duplicate/prep in FG II (or insert VTT of choice here), the better.

 

[gloranphile]

If it helps, I'm running a campaign using the Beta of RealmWorks, and two of my three players are remote. Here's what I'm doing while I wait patiently for them to have cloud access:

1. I use Google Hangouts to video chat with my two remote players, with my laptop and a monitor attached. Meanwhile, my wife is at the physical table and can see the monitor.

2. If I have items I need to share with the group via RW, I use the Screenshare option in Hangouts, which I then set to the "shared" item in RealmWorks, which is of course, the Player View, already up on the monitor.

I'm envisioning the cloud access being utilized by players to look up rules, find out what their characters know about a city or person, etc. either during the game itself or on their own.

 

[Avi]

Some questions about player view -
Do you view it only as an ad hoc display for players? Something the GM prepares on the fly and then "throws" away. Or is the display "permanent" something the GM can create before the games session and save.
If its a "savable" item can there be more than one? i.e the GM prepares hand out sheets before the session.
If its an one-off display shifting to a more "permanent' savable version can also help the remote display crowd - like you have a World/Story Almanac the players will have a Handout almanac with the saved version of all the player views.

 

[lifer4700]

I hate to answer this one, since I could be 100% incorrect, but in the videos it appears as though the Player View is an ad hoc mechanism.

I like the idea of saving snapshots of them as sort of a journal, since that would play directly into my needs of putting together a nice, organized set of "here, check this out" stuff to show to my players. This would give me my screenshot, PDF, email, poke capability.

+1 !

 

[Ladyofdragons]

you shouldn't need to save the stuff on the player view, because you can just mark the content from that information as visible by the players. They would use the web interface to look at all of it at any time. I'm hoping that in Journals I'd just have links to the various bits of content.

 

[lifer4700]

At first, that is a viable option, but after you've been playing for a while I would imagine that the list of things a player knows gets pretty long. Yes, they're organized by type of snippet, but having certain pieces organized in a certain way has value.

Consider the following scenarios.

Scenario 1
Me: Samsung has a new 4k TV, info is on the web. Go check it out!





Scenario 2
Me: Samsung's new 4k TV!

Samsung's Website
Available through Best Buy
Here's a review


See the difference? In one case, I've done the work of 'finding' the content and presenting it to you, in the other case, I leave all the work to you.

 

[lifer4700]

The more I think about it, perhaps a saved Player View layout could be thought of as a Handout.

 

[rob]

As @Ladyofdragons indicated, you could create a content entry of some sort (e.g. topic, journal entry, whatever) that contained links to the pertinent sections you wanted the players to view. Heck, it would work very similarly to how you just presented things in your post above!

If you wanted to pre-create different "snapshots" in advance, you could put each of them in a separate snippet within the same topic or separate passages within the same journal entry. Then you'd just reveal each snippet or passage as the game progressed, with the users having links to exactly what you want them to look at.

[Note: Journals aren't exposed in the product yet, although they're fully implemented under the covers. We just need to revamp and enhance the UI for them before making them available.]

 

[rob]

The more I think about it, perhaps a saved Player View layout could be thought of as a Handout.

We could also potentially allow you to save various Player View layouts as named views. I'm not sure if that's the best way to handle things or not, since it could become very annoying to manage a potentially large list of named views. We'll need to spend some time actually assessing things better before officially deciding how best to add that sort of functionality.

 

[lifer4700]

you could create a content entry of some sort... that contained links to the pertinent sections you wanted the players to view. Heck, it would work very similarly to how you just presented things in your post above!

This is good!

If you wanted to pre-create different "snapshots" in advance, you could put each of them in a separate snippet within the same topic or separate passages within the same journal entry. Then you'd just reveal each snippet or passage as the game progressed, with the users having links to exactly what you want them to look at.

[Note: Journals aren't exposed in the product yet, although they're fully implemented under the covers. We just need to revamp and enhance the UI for them before making them available.]

Excellent also.


Thanks again!

 

[rob]

Some questions about player view -
Do you view it only as an ad hoc display for players? Something the GM prepares on the fly and then "throws" away. Or is the display "permanent" something the GM can create before the games session and save.
If its a "savable" item can there be more than one? i.e the GM prepares hand out sheets before the session.
If its an one-off display shifting to a more "permanent' savable version can also help the remote display crowd - like you have a World/Story Almanac the players will have a Handout almanac with the saved version of all the player views.

Sorry for missing your questions earlier. The way Player View works is that you can prepare lots of different things to show in it in advance. Then you can toggle those things on and off over the course of the game. So if the PCs will be exploring an abandoned mine and the crypts beneath a template, you can setup both those maps prior to the game for showing within Player View. Same for any pictures, audio clips, etc that you'll want to use. All of these can be sized and positioned where you'll want them during the game, but their marked as hidden from the players. Once the game starts, you can selectively show these various pieces to the players with a single click, then hide them again once their no longer needed. It's actually extremely fast and easy to do.

Once we get the initial release out, we can look to refine and enhance features like this with improvements based on feedback from users.