Right, but I'm guessing you're referring you using it to enter in/keep track of the information of your campaign in RW, which I think all of us are going to be using it for.

But when I'm speaking of the cloud and the vision of the cloud, I'm not talking about that per se - I'm talking about the exchange of information, formal and informal, paid and free, individuals and companies.

So I'd say yes, if you were planning on sharing the data you use for your game/campaign with other users of RW and the RW cloud, then to a degree that's what I mean.

And if other people do it as well.

But the broader, main point I was making was that you could really start to see a much bigger impact, a much richer cloud ecosystem if/when you start to see companies releasing official materials for RW - and the more diverse from Pathfinder, the better.

Not because Pathfinder is unimportant to have, not at all - but rather that because it makes so much sense to have Paizo do stuff with RW, it becomes at least as important to have the companies that aren't as obvious involved. The best way to show flexibility is to demonstrate flexibility - both in terms of what game systems are involved, but also new ways and innovations that can be used by game designers to reach their respective (and potential) audience.

It's not a matter of one or another, but both - because both are just as important, I think.

Yeah, before I played Pathfinder, I wondered many times why it seemed like all of the efforts of Lone Wolf went towards Pathfinder. "Wow, ANOTHER Pathfinder data set? When will we get something for Savage Worlds?" had come to my mind many times.

A similar and bigger frustration was that it seemed like Lone Wolf never paid much attention to the other forum sections. There were times that I wondered if I was the only person that even used the Mutants and Masterminds stuff. Things have improved in that area, though.

But I do realize why Pathfinder gets so much attention. It is not because it is a better game or anything like that. It is because it has the opportunity to release more reliable means of money-generating. Things keep get churned out, and LW has a hard time keeping up with it (it is a ton of stuff, after all).

So it is natural that it would get more attention. It is also a lot more complicated to work with as well. Savage Worlds user files are really easy, and the Mutants and Masterminds files are even easier. The only hard thing with them is knowing what to call some things to get the syntax right so it will work. Timing can be tricky at times, too.

I ALMOST contributed a Savage Worlds data set, but my computer was fried by my (now) 2-year old last fall. Do NOT turn your computer on and off again in rapid succession. My motherboard fried, along with the RAM, and it is not good for solid-state drives, either, as they also die from it. That drive died, and so did my contribution.

Exactly! I'm a Pathfinder player and my involvement is with Hero Lab using the Pathfinder data set, which is why I think it so important for other companies to be involved - Realm Works shouldn't be thought of as Paizo's pet resource, because it doesn't have to be.

I'll be sharing what I can - because regardless of what system you're using, having plot elements or descriptions of locations for an urban fantasy set in London with Fae can cut out hours of work for anyone starting up a campaign (more so if your campaign is in a similar setting). Pathfinder, Savage World, whatever - you need to have an NPC Fae king for Ireland/Scotland/England - lets have a look on the cloud... hmm here's one from this LARP over here, lets take that and give him some stats for my system-de-jour...

Need a world ending event? Hmm, Father Dragon waking up was used for this LARP, how does it fit for the mythology of my setting?

Excellent!

Another wanted feature - the ability to print/save a graphic of a sociogram (or sociograph) for a given set of individuals (or kingdoms etc).

Question(s) before EA access
 

I had been holding off for sometime expecting the EA access release to answer a question... but since that has experienced some major delays figured I might as well try and get an answer.

I have maintained my campaign (and literally tens of thousands of notes) in a personal wiki (MediaWiki on a flash drive) for several years; will Realms Works either a) allow me to import these notes into it? or b) allow me to hyperlink to the notes on the flash drive (when it is mounted and MW is running)?

Which brings up a second question: Could Realms Works be installed on a flash drive rather than having multiple installs (home desktop, laptop, desktop where I work, etc.)?

I had asked a similar question about pointing save locations to DropBox and the answer was 'no'. The reasoning was they didn't want to have any issues with synching, in case one DropBox location was less recent than another, etc.

Your question is slightly different in that it's a removable drive of some sort and you're asking about install location but given the overabundance of caution on save locations (I think it's completely fixed), I'm going to guess probably not.

The last answer I've seen to this is that you're expected to copy/paste, and use the quick-keys to break up the text into easy chunks (for purposes of sharing).

I guess there's always a chance of them doing a text import tool, but I would personally not wait on it as if I understand it there would almost need to be a custom import for a given source (such as MediaWiki and then another for some other wiki and then some other from another source). Hence, copy/paste and then quickly break up into smaller bits may be the final answer.

As for links, I don't think we've seen anything definitive that local hyperlinks will be enabled but then we haven't seen anything to suggest that they won't be enabled.

One thing to bear in mind, if you plan on using RW to share with players, you'll likely want to actually import the material into RW as that would be easier than creating the shares/web server/whatever on your computer to have the link work for anyone else.

Figured that would probably be the case
 

I thought as much from reading through several dozen posts here, but as most were conjecture I had hopes... :(

Cut and pasting it will probably have to be.

At last count I had just over 340 thousand pages on my wiki... :( (Actually they don't make a big enough frown for that one)

Oh, I wouldn't take what I or anyone not from LW say as definitive or authoritative, just (mis)informed speculation.

Also, I will never again complain about the amount of information I will need to enter into RW.

*head explodes!*

No need for that
 

Zaphod, I have been running the same campaign on and off since 1975... During my 20 years in the military often 2-3 times a week. And even when I was not running/playing, I was fairly diligent about inputting new source material as it released. As a for instance, there are just over 32 thousand 3.P (d20 and Pathfinder) spells out there (that I know of).

Monsters, feats, magic items, PCs/NPCs, classes, locations (primarily Greyhawk but over the years parties have gotten around) and lots of calendar (session logs) entries.

It all adds up but it was the play (never work) of decades. And computers make things so much easier than reams and reams of paper. Hence my keen interest in Realm Works since it was first announced.

What will the cost be of Realm Works?

I don't think that's been announced, nor the price of the cloud service (if you so desire it). That said, you could get just Realm Works (no cloud service) for $35 during the Kickstarter, so that may give you a basis for speculation.

I'm assuming that the prices will be determined by looking at the data gathered from usage during the Early Access period.

I think they said as much in one of their updates or FAQ.

The good news is that you won't have to do all that work. At least not by yourself. A lot of that information is undoubtedly going to be created by others as well. I'm sure a community-driven spell book and bestiary will crop up quickly (if they weren't already done by the alpha testers). Feats, classes, races and other game mechanics will roll in as well.

The stuff that is going to take time will be content creation. Especially copyrighted content as we'll each need to recreate the wheel for each thing. But I'm actually looking forward to cutting and pasting and tagging and metadataing everything for APs and modules and setting materials myself as it will force me to really read and think about each thing more actively.

I'm also thinking that you may want to use the time to work out what information needs to go into Realm Works, and what is not - and can be kept on your wiki.

In other words, a triage (or cull) of data. If you can get stats on how often a page is accessed, or when it was last edited - that should give you a fair indication of how relevant it is to your current campaign.

That being said, if they do develop a mass import tool (something I'm also keen on for my wikis) - I will be developing tools to convert wiki formats to RM formats (if they get them)

I use RW as a player to "build" the world from the player's perspective. It is a great way to keep track of what has happened and what we know as players. We use this for the Pathfinder Carrion Crown Adventure Path.

Import from it? Not initially, but we'd like to provide import logic from wikis down the line. We just haven't had time to work on things like that yet.

Hyperlinking to notes on the flash drive? Depending on how it's handled, probably very soon. We've got mapped out a solution for cleanly integrating web-based data that lives outside of Realm Works. We just need to get it implemented. It's high on my personal list of stuff I want to add, but we still need to reconcile the priorities of all the different features we want to add. Once we add the feature, you should be able to hook up to the wiki.

Definitely no. There are some significant technical implications in doing so that run afoul of how we've got things handled internally. I only have a few hours to finish getting ready before leaving for GenCon, so I don't have time to explain right now. I know I've explained this here on the forums previously, or you can ask me again late next week.

That hasn't been determined yet. As Zaphod indicated, we intend to profile the usage of Early Access users to gauge our projections for when we release widely. After that, we can come up with competent pricing. :)

Lucky guess! :)

*I brought this up in the second GenCon seminar and was told to post it.*

Some sort of "Next (time increment round/hour/day/week/month/year)" button.
When you "Begin Game Session" it would check to see if the in-game date had been set. If it was set, the button should show the last setting.
http://www.rathan.com/images/Time_tracker.png
Maybe the icon could be set to round, day (with hour tracking), week (with day tracking), month (with day tracking), or year (with month and day tracking).
This would link to the calendar so that if there was an event scheduled on the 14th of the month, when you clicked the button for "Next <Day>" from day 13, you would get a popup/alert that such-n-such event happens today.
If the day and year can be set as visible by the players (in a small window you could set in the corner of the player screen) it would advance the date there as well and the pop-up/alert would only show if set to visible by the players.

Time Tracking button
 

*I brought this up in the second GenCon seminar and was told to post it.*

Some sort of "Next (time increment round/hour/day/week/month/year)" button.
When you "Begin Game Session" it would check to see if the in-game date had been set. If it was set, the button should show the last setting.
http://www.rathan.com/images/Time_tracker.png
Maybe the icon could be set to round, day (with hour tracking), week (with day tracking), month (with day tracking), or year (with month and day tracking).
This would link to the calendar so that if there was an event scheduled on the 14th of the month, when you clicked the button for "Next <Day>" from day 13, you would get a popup/alert that such-n-such event happens today.
If the day and year can be set as visible by the players (in a small window you could set in the corner of the player screen) it would advance the date there as well and the pop-up/alert would only show if set to visible by the players.