Shadowrun
Shadowrun General => General Discussion => Topic started by: adzling on <04-11-16/2244:13>
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I thought I'd share a little about we use Realmworks for our Srun 5e group.
It's still incomplete but even with its current feature set it's been a god-send for us.
First up a picture showing how we use it at our table (lappie hooked to a flat-screen tv to present battle maps and information/ handouts)
The rest are all shots showing the various categories of content entered from the various sourcebooks:
Runs (down to the scene level with extra content to present to players)
Factions (culled from various sourcebooks)
Floorplans (from the various Sprawl sites books and culled from google image search)
House Rules and clarifications (I gave up on errata)
Location info for various settings (culled from many sourcebooks, a strength of Srun universe)
Major NPCs
Random Sprawl Encounters (that was from a great sourcebook from 1e)
Toys (house made stuff mostly)
Overall Realmworks utility has increased impressively the more content i've gotten in.
Players toss the run script out the window and go raid a cop-shop?
No problem i got that in my back pocket.
Legwork section of the run dragging on and getting boring?
No problem toss in a random sprawl encounter.
Characters doing some deep research on a run target?
Sure I got all the info on Saeder Krupp you could ever want.
It's been a crap ton of work getting it all in but now it's in place it comes close to conferring powers of omni-potency in the GM chair.
Fun!
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runs
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factions
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floorplans
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house rules
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locations
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npcs
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random sprawl encounters
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toys ;-)
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That looks really amazing. Especially nice that most of the content you've shown is useful in any campaign rather than a specific adventure.
I'd love to be a fly on the wall during one of your games just to see how you use the tech to aid the game. The flatscreen looks especially sweet I wanted to do that but was afraid about scratching the screen. I'm a big fan of tech that adds to the game or takes work off of the GM and doesn't itself become another task to manage. I especially love toys that emulates 6th world tech like displays for AR and hard plastic NFC tags for credsticks or data chips. I'm currently using a 40 inch LCD + chromecast named "Team AR Feed" connected to my guest WiFi which is named "Seattle Public Grid".
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that all sounds rather fun Fastern8.
If you ever make it out to the San Francisco Bay Area hit me up and you can sit in on one of our bi-monthly Saturday sessions ;-)
I chose a flatscreen that has the properties needed for this type of use.
1). edge lit LCD for slimness (newer LCDs are actually thicker as they have an LED array behind the entire screen making it thicker and giving off more heat).
2). top protective layer of acrylic already present on tv.
Stops the mini's damaging it and because it's integrated into the display (i didn't slap it on myself) the tv retains it's slimness and hence has ZERO parallax (parallax can destroy the utility of a setup like this, making it hard to place miniatures accurately).
3). that's it!
I use Realmworks not only for battlemaps but to display / share content, clues, images etc as props for the players.
Realmworks has worked out very well for storing the reams of content that is available for Srun.
It gets the books off the shelf and in a searchable, indexable database that auto-generates cross-links easily at hand.
My players have just started using the player edition to access this content which is great because I can reveal content that is relevant to their background or where a run will be set for them to read up on between sessions.
This is pretty essential as the campaign I am running them through (A heavily modified Ghost Cartels) is a globe-spanning campaign that touches down in some sprawls that are pretty richly detailed in the sourcebooks (Seattle, Hong Kong, Neo-Tokyo, LA etc).
Looking for a late night snack between legwork sessions in Neo-Tokyo in the Yokohama neighborhood?
NP I got a restaurant right here that I scraped from my Corporate Enclaves sourcebook.
Wait, you want to hold the place up and shake down the customers for nuyen?
Ok...no problem here's a floorplan for a medium sized restaurant.
Lets hope you get this finished before the NTPD shows up ;-)
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Wow! Very nice. I'd love to be the second fly on the wall lol
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har well if you're in ever in the area...
I'd post a play video but our sessions are not suitable for < 21
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Slap a warning on the front of the video? Not your fault if people keep watching afterwards.
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indeed. just post a warning saying adults using adult language, blah blah blah. Wizards of the Coast does it all the time.
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I'd have to blur the video too, it would make for pretty port watching to have the audio and video fritz out every other minute..
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I'd have to blur the video too, it would make for pretty port watching to have the audio and video fritz out every other minute..
Yikes! Now I really want to be a fly on the
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Thought I'd another cool image.
This shows the joy of good source material (the original 1e/2e London Sourcebook) and a nice feature of Realmworks (embedded hyperlinks).
The original London Sourcebook was so well thought out they included REAL addresses for their London locations 20+years ago. So as I am adding them into Realmworks I can also add in a hyperlink from google maps.
Now all we have to do in-game to get a bearing on the landscape around some impromptu action is to click the address for the location entry and boom, google map for street layout + google streetview for actual on-street details is available in an instant.
That's some pretty powerful stuff there for a GM.
It also highlights how good the old source material was compared to the stuff being churned out today (the most recent Catalyst location setting, Seattle Digital box set has NO MAP or address info at all, go figure).
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Don't suppose you'd be interested in sharing the database?
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This looks pretty cool adzling, thanks for sharing.
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It's got all the worldwide setting material going back to 1e, which unfortunately is copyrighted.
You can't give that stuff away afaik.
Don't suppose you'd be interested in sharing the database?
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Indeed. Message me sometime.