There's enough packed into this program that it will require a bit of explanation. Although I've tried to make the program as user-friendly as possible, I'm sure this page will help you get started and show you the basics of it. It will consist of a sample first look at what RMGMC can do.
If you haven't updated your Flash Player recently, you can get the latest version at http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/. If you're not at least on version 10.1 I recommend updating, and I don't think it will run at all under version 10.0.
Once you have it, you can log in here.
When it is done loading and you're on the home screen, you can take a glimpse at the three main pages: Attacks, Spells & RR, and Maneuvers. Notice that some of the labels are green and some are purple. The green items will require input by you depending on the game state. The purple items, assuming you're utilizing everything the program has to offer, will be automatically populated when you visit that page or select a new character. Over the course of developing the program I've tried to make as many of those labels purple as possible.
Now, lets take a look at the first Admin screen: Characters. First, a quick note about the Admin menu pages. In each of them, you can create objects of that type, and you must do so before you can assign properties to them. So on this page for example, enter a name where it says "Create Hero (of Villain)", then click "Create Char.". It may seem like common sense, but I didn't want you to put in a name, and fill out the whole form, only to find out you needed to create the character before you go about the rest of the process. This is the same process on all the Admin screens. First, create the item. Then, select it from the list and edit it, then click the "Update Whatever" button to save the changes.
After you create your character, and assign his max health, power and exhaustion, be sure to click the "Status" button to heal him up! He is created with zero health, and won't do anyone any good going into combat like that.
As of now, there are three different types of characters: heroes, villains, and creatures. Heroes and villains have no structural difference. Heroes are your potential party members. Villains are special enemies who deserve to be separated from Creatures. Creatures are generic, and easily created by the handful. Go ahead and create some creatures. Under the label "Create from Creature Template", choose a creature from the list, choose a quantity, and press the button to create them. Once created, you can access them individually by clicking on the "creatures" radio button under the "Edit Character" label.
So you can fill out any details for your characters before moving on if you wish. I'd suggest at least equipping your characters with a couple weapons. Be sure to press the "Update Char" button after filling out their details. Another note about the Admin pages: note the purple and green labels here. Green labels signify that the program does not yet make use of that information, so it's not important right now. Purple labels signify that the game uses that information in its automation.
Ok, once you have a few heroes and creatures created, click on the Encounters button in the Admin menu. First thing here, why not create your party. Select any heroes you have created and add them to the party list, and hit save. Your party will be involved in any encounters you use, and can be modified at any time. After you have your party, go ahead and create an encounter. "Vampire Bunnies Attack!" or perhaps "Slimed!", whatever you want, perhaps a label pertinent to the creatures you created earlier. As you can see, they're listed below and can be added to the encounter you create. Do that now: select the creatures you want to add to the encounter, hit the "Add" button, then go ahead and save the encounter. Then, hit the "Load" button, and notice the new menu item appear. Click on it.
Assuming everything went as planned, you're now looking at the beginning of a new encounter about to unfold. First things first, put in the initiatives of your party (initiatives for creatures and villains are rolled automatically, and take into account creature speed and villains quickness stat - including racial bonuses and special items they may have). Then, hit the "Start Round 1" button. The encounter screen will go through each phase of each round, and order everyone by their initiatives. To clear someone from this phase of this round, click the "X" in the upper right corner of the nameplate. Or, to clear all characters of a particular type, click the buttons above the nameplates - "No Heroes", etc. Once everyone is cleared from the phase, the next one will begin. You can use the little red, blue and green buttons on the nameplates to quickly go to one of the three main pages and load the character whose nameplate you clicked (red -> Attacks, blue -> Spells & RR, green -> Maneuvers). The attacker (or caster, or maneuverer) will show up in the list on the top left of your screen. The top right is always the defender (or resister, or w/e).
So if you clicked on the red button, e.g., it'll bring you to the attacks page and load all the details of the attacker into the form. At this point, your responsibilities on this page are to select the defender, and adjust the green-labeled items accordingly. Be sure to choose the right weapon from the list. Then press the Calculate button. You should now see the results of the attack appear as Events in the Event Log.
A couple notes about events: They must be handled seqentially. This is for internal functions to save information in the right order. In order to APPLY an event (like damage to a creature), you click the large circular button for it. If you do not want that event to happen, click the little X circular button on the event. The event system was created so that you could handle other actions before applying the events, in particular so my Magent could wait to see if he got a crit before going to the maneuvers page and checking if his ambush skill was successful, and only then resolving the crit. This wasn't possible before.
1) I've built in some error handling which will alert you when it happens. This system won't catch all of them, but hopefully there are very few of them left. You can help me in this effort if you use a special version of Flash Player called Flash Player debugger. It will capture more detailed information about any errors that occur that will be sent automatically. It's not a big deal but if you want to you can download it here.
2) I'm not a big fan of computer generated rolling during an actual session, but I built some into the program to help me test it out. On just about every page, when you are asked to input a roll as rolled by a player, you can just click the roll text to automatically roll for you.
3) You can view the full weapon chart that is referenced during an attack by clicking on the Weapon Chart button next to the weapon list. Use this if you get a result from the program that doesn't seem right. Also, just about every weapon in the system currently (except for a lot of the "natural" animal attacks) is set up to use the optional system from Arms Law, where you get to choose your crit. You may get an attack result of 22 D Slash, and find on the chart it says 22DK. This is because "slash" is selected on the screen. If you don't want to use this, you'll have to make a new weapon, select the base weapon's crit chart you want to use for it, and just don't assign any specific critical types on the Admin Weapons page.
4) On the Attacks page, you can easily change the OB and DB sliders by scrolling the mousewheel over the input textbox or over the slider itself. It will scroll in 5% increments and automatically calculate the new OB or DB.
5) When you assign new weapons to a character, the "Label" field is what appears in the weapon list on the Attacks page. So, e.g. if your dual wielding warrior had two different OB's with his long sword depending on if he was dual wielding or single wielding at the time, you can write this in the label field. Select long sword as two of his weapons, and for one, just change the label from "Long Sword" to "Long Sword - 2W" or something. That way it's easy to know which one to select on the Attacks page.
6) Putting in an alertness value for characters will allow you to do alertness checks for players without them knowing. Put in their alertness skill value here, and on the Encounter Window you can just click a button and it will roll alertness for everyone adding in their bonuses. If you choose to roll for sense ambush, it will choose the higher of the two skills (alertness or sense ambush) that were input on the character screen.
7) On the character screen, enter the actual stats of the characters, not just the stat bonuses.
8) A lot of objects in the program (races, weapons, skills, etc) may not be set up the way you want it. You cannot change the default stuff that comes with the program, although you can let me know of any errors that are in there and I'll fix them. You can however always create you own new objects and give them any values you want. For many of these things I've allowed you to see the details of them (just click "all items" instead of "user items"). You can't change them but you can see their values and can see how the inputting has been done so you can do it for objects of your own creation.
9) You can access the status window of a character at any time by clicking on the little "Edit" icon next to his name in the menus in the top corners of the screen, or clicking on the same button on the Encounter Window nameplate. Use this to heal your characters' health, power and exhaustion. You can also view, edit or add wounds, modifiers or statuses here.
10) If your roleplaying session is needing to be wrapped up in the middle of an encounter, it's ok the game will save everything. But, it will only do so at the very beginning of a combat round before you put in the new initiatives for the round. So be sure every last character is closed out of the deliberate phase of the round, and notice it say "Encounter Saved.". You're good to go, just load the encounter when you get back together and everything should pick up where it left off.
11) You can see the details of any attack or maneuver by opening up the Info Window. Just click on the button on the left edge of the screen near the top.
12) Exhaustion is not currently automated in the program. If you wish to keep track of exhaustion with the program, use the little numeric stepper to the far right of the character nameplates. Before you click the X to close that nameplate, increment the exhaustion counter to what they just lost, and it will deduct it from their total when you close the nameplate.
13) I could probably go on and on, but just play around with it. The program doesn't do everything but it does a lot. The following are some of my ideas for the future, for you to get an idea of what I think about and so that our ideas don't overlap. If any of them strike your fancy, let me know. Also any additions or modifications to the list is also welcome.