This is a set of stream of consciousness notes from my first-time experience GM-ing a Multiverse game after joining as a player a couple times. The game we played is called SniperSerpent’s Anomaly. We played on January 3, 2022.
- I go to the playmultiverse.com home page because I know I want to setup my game, but have no idea how to get signed in from here
- I check my browser history and realize I’m on the correct domain, but I’ve never created my own game, I’ve always just clicked a link to get into the game. “How do I start from a new game?” This question isn’t answered from the home page
- Eventually by starting from someone else’s verse, as found in my browser history, and clicking the logo, I get to the “/play” route on playmultiverse.com. I still can’t find the natural way to get here
- I see a plus button, which is my first guess for “start my own verse,” though “Explore My Hub” also sounds like what I might want
- I realize that the steps I’m taking in starting my verse feel like I’m retyping the scheduling step. At first, I thought that creating a new event on the schedule would automatically create a verse to go with it, but I suppose that’s backwards. What I really want is for the main verse flow, or a settings dropdown on my existing verses, to have the option to create events
- The tutorial helper in the bottom right corner of the first step of creating my verse didn’t teach me anything relevant to creating a new verse. I definitely need direction, but I don’t have context for whatever it’s talking about. I’d never heard of bundles before (I’ve only played on OMM a couple times, and I’d never heard them discussed). I can intuit that it refers to pixel art DLC
- After completing the tutorial helper, I realize it wants me to select a bundle. I don’t know if any of this applies to me. I think not, so I select nothing.
- I see there’s an onboarding video on the next verse creation screen, but it’s waaaayy too small. The video is bigger if I click my browser’s built-in picture-in-picture video feature. The “/play” route’s interface in the video looks different? Oh, tabula rasa, that’s what I would have picked if that was an option. Of course, lots of people don’t know what that means.
- The GM safety tools box is really neat. I like it. Unfortunately I have a half hour before the game and can’t think of what I want to write in time. I’ll verbally say the safety tools to my players. If I could select them from a list, that would be my preference here. I don’t ever remember seeing this box as a pop-up when I played in other verses
- After clicking Hop In World, I’m a bit frozen like a deer in headlights. What would I like this screen to look like now that I’m here? I wish the tutorial helper was here, just to give me a direction. I think I want to present players with a neutral playing area before we play our more world-building-y type game. I’m starting to feel nervous about switching between tabs for our tarot card randomizer
- I just realized OMM also owns multiverse.com, because I am switching between Discord and my browser tab and noticed a link to multiverse.com. Not sure at this point which domain is for what.
- Apparently the event scheduling system had a few problems. I’m submitting that as separate feedback, but that might be why these “stream of consciousness” notes are disjointed, as I try to setup a game and contact wishlisted players at the same time
This last paragraph is from a day after the game took place, January 4. We had an overall great experience and the game went fine. One menuing feedback that might be under your purview: It took a while for us to realize that we weren’t seeing the same in-game controls because I didn’t know they did not have Co-GM permission. If this was possible to set as a default setting, I think that’s more appropriate than the current assumed default of only one GM. Almost every game I’ve played on OMM so far came with the assumption that we were creating the space together. For me, that’s the big draw as compared with other VTT tools. The Co-GM permission was hard to find and required help from a spectator