VTT RW DnD Campaign

Virtual Table Top

Realm Works – D&D Campaign

Using Realm Works for D&D

Using Real Works for a D&D campaign – There was grand ideas of using this tool with the players to map out the campaign world and make it a shared experience. With the promise of players being able to add, edit and manipulate content in a realm, ability to tie it to a setting specific calendar which can be changed to suit the campaign and multi hierarchical contents.

While none of these were every delivered in a useful way, other aspects of the tool were very useful for play, when it worked.

What setting did I use? I put the Grad Duchy of Karameikos (GAZ1) setting into Realm Works. This is from the BECMI version of Dungeons and Dragons. I was using it to organise all my notes.

What was it Good for? We used it mainly for showcasing the maps the players were travelling through, this was amazing in a lot of cases and once I got the hang of it useful from a GM point of view. This became the biggest use of the tool I used once I found using and sharing the data with players was just not working.

The core trait of the tool was the ability to link content, you could link it in many ways. So the type of link you used, help define how it interacted with the linked content.

Player vs GM content was another great feature where only some of the content can be made accessible to players, and this included a paragraph by paragraph level of reveal. The links themselves can be hidden or shown, even to the point of you can see the link going one way, but not the other if you so desired.

Mapping of hierarchies was automatic, and not always laid out as you would expect, but that in itself held useful information, such as where your missing something you expect to see, or things just worked differently than you originally imagined.

Of all the campaign assistant tools, this one holds the most promise.

Major Issues

Everything else the tool did, I was not as impressed with as they always caused issues with updated. Being an early adopter was not a pleasant experience as it required weeks of chasing to gain access to my content after the next update killed something that was used previously could not be translated to the new XML style.

On game nights it always seemed to need an update just before the game, or the server was down for maintenance and would not let me open a local copy. This was a major bug they struggled with through most of the early testing and this got to be such a problem that I had to abandoned it a useful tool.

As I am writing this I am trying to patch to the latest version of the tool with nothing happening.

Concluding Thoughts

Reading posts from the developers in 2019 stating that development was getting shelved before all the content was made available means I won’t be revisiting the tool much except to extract my content while it is still available.

If they come back and get it working as promised, I will review its usefulness as a campaign management tool. As it is, it won’t work with my game session recording setup. I am hopeful that it will become the tool it was promised to be, so I look forward to writing up about how I have used it in my various campaigns (potentially expanding this post) as I go.

Content Updates

• 2021-07-31 – Updated layout and links.
• 2020-04-26 – Structure.
• 2019-12-13 – Taken and expanded from the GAZ1 post in Dungeons and Dragons.

Game Management

GM – 2021 in Review, Choosing a New Campaign, Downtime Uses, GM’s Luck Roll, House Rules, Running Games over Skype, Sandbox vs Linear, Story RPGs, Table Rules, Tracking Experience

Annotated Stat Blocks: Dungeons and Dragons, Pathfinder, Pathfinder 2, Star Wars FFG

Creating a Campaign: D&D Mystara Design (2022), Genesys, Pathfinder, Pathfinder 2 TRAP Design (2022), Shadowrun, Star Wars (Mandalorian, 2022)

Character Creation: Dungeons and Dragons, Pathfinder 2, Star Wars Beta, Star Wars FFG

Concluding a Campaign: Star Wars

NPCs – Talking to NPCs, Working with NPCs.

Virtual Table Top (VTT) Software – d20Pro: Installation, Realm Works: Players and their Characters, Using for D&D, Realm Created

Library of Books

B5, d20 System, Pathfinder, SW

This site is constantly under revision, no blog posts are final as this is a work in progress place for me to develop my game settings and rules. Some posts might be placeholders for future content, so feel free to check back later for updated information.

General Links

Basic Links: Who Am I?, Home, Game Tools, Game Session Videos, My Campaigns, My Library, Site Map, Subscription Information

Game Systems: Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder 1 & 2, Shadowrun, Star Wars. Other Game Systems

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