Senior Member
Join Date: Dec 2014
Location: Twin Cities Area, MN, USA
Posts: 1,325
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Ruhar, I think you are correct in that GM preferences need to be weighted more heavily than player preferences, but I think that what I'm learning from these discussions is that GMs using pre-created material far outnumber those of us who create our own worlds.
I bought RW because it was the best option for creating and managing content on my world. Apparently, most GM users would prefer to enter in pre-created content and, therefore, it appears custom calendars just isn't as high up their list of feature-requests as it is mine. That said, so many pre-created campaigns and modules use custom calendars that I would think it would be more of a hassle for those GMs to not have the ability to create custom calendars. After all, as I am building my own world, I can just say to hell with it and use Gregorian if my custom calendars become too much of a hassle. In any event, at this time they've made their choice and the best thing is for them to execute on it. At this point I've accepted that custom calendars are not on the table. For some that may be a deal-breaker, but LWD has determined that it is a relatively small number and accepted that risk. For me, calendars are the only additional feature I care about, BUT RW w/o calendars is still much better for me than not using RW at all. What was difficult was knowing that calendars were tantalizingly close. They they were a real possibility and that was exciting. It would have greatly improved my experience with the product. It is actually easier now that I know that it is just not a feature and not even a soon-to-be released feature. The argument is over. Can you make custom calendars? No. Will you be able to? No. Time to focus on other things. This horse is dead. |
#121 |
Junior Member
Join Date: Nov 2010
Posts: 29
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#122 |
Senior Member
Join Date: Nov 2011
Location: Oak Harbor, WA, USA
Posts: 616
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#123 |
Senior Member
Join Date: Nov 2011
Location: Oak Harbor, WA, USA
Posts: 616
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One more thing, MNBlockHead, regarding pre-created campaigns. It doesn't matter if a module has its own calendar or not (which most don't unless its a world like "Forgotten Realms"), there are some things that a module doesn't take into account. I'm currently running one that has werewolves so the PCs could get bitten during a battle and I would need to keep track of the moon cycle to know when the PC will change if she missed her saving throw. Also, some GMs and players like to know what day of the week it is, is there a religious holiday coming up, what's the season.
The current "calendar" is only a database of what has happened. It's not going to tell me when the first moon is, or what is the next religious holiday, or the season. And that information is typically not going to be in a module unless it's part of the story line. |
#124 |
Member
Join Date: Aug 2013
Posts: 56
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Let's take a theoretical game session involving pre-created content. --> PLAYER: "So how long do we have to get the droids to Coruscant?" DM: "You have until Centaxday." PLAYER: "Ah, right. And we got them on last Tuesday - I mean Primeday?" DM: "Primeday is Monday." PLAYER: "Right. So we have till Wednesday?" DM: "Well, sort of. I mean, there are only five days in a week in the Galactic Standard Calendar, so it could be Wednesday one week then another day the next." PLAYER: "Oh. So which is it?" DM: "I don't know. With 368 days in the year, and seven weeks in a month and ....well, it just got too hard to calculate. Don't worry, it doesn't really matter." And you know what? That might be true. It might not really matter that much to a lot of DM's or players. You can play a game calling Primeday Monday or Ches March or whatever whatever. I'm just pointing out that custom world or not, 99% of the content we're putting through it ain't gonna be the Gregorian calendar. And being pre-created doesn't change that. |
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#125 |
Senior Member
Join Date: Nov 2011
Location: Oak Harbor, WA, USA
Posts: 616
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#126 |
Senior Member
Join Date: Sep 2009
Posts: 175
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I don't disagree with that, but how often does saying the right day really come up?
Player: When do we have to be there? DM: 3 days. Player: When should we arrive at the Cliffs of Insanity? DM: A week or so. Not trivializing it by any stretch of the imagination, but for a published adventure, how important are specific, named dates anyway? I get it for journals and whatnot, but I don't see it in terms of published adventures. After all, for me calendars is in my top-3, given that my custom world has roughly 14 or 15 in play. But let's not conflate things. |
#127 |
Junior Member
Join Date: Aug 2007
Posts: 22
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Okay, I do want to put in my .02 and say that yes, I am greatly disappointed that calendars and print/export (especially export... some form of PDF export, for instance, would totally kill a need for printing, as I could do it through my PDF viewer of choice, or tweak it in LibreOffice. I digress.) were not higher on the list after the surveys were complete, and that the next two items on the to-do list after the surveys are items that really won't help me whatsoever.
I don't generally use RW at the table, except for the way the players will when they eventually use the Player Editions: more as a database/sourcebook for my homebrew world, rather than anything handled as a virtual game, so single-character leveraged information is something I prefer to handle manually as a GM. While Journals may be of interest to me, I agree with others that say they really don't offer as much to me until I can use customized calendars and integrate them that way. And while it might be awesome to download content from others and from 3rd party distributors, that was never a big selling point to get me to buy RW at Gen-Con... being able to set up, and better manage and create for my world from top-down or bottom-up was. All of that said, I am still a far cry from being disappointed with Realm Works. It's been one of the best utilities I've ever had outside of One Note for keeping tabs on everything in my game world, from towns and cities to specific magical items. I used nbos's The Keep for a long while, and liked it despite its clunkiness, and RW simply put blows it away for a campaign database. Now, will I still be as high on RW if I'm paying for cloud service for a couple years and still can't add in any notable items from my world's history because I can't make a calendar other than the Gregorian? Time will tell on that. |
#128 |
Senior Member
Join Date: Jan 2012
Posts: 1,147
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For the sarcasm impaired, this is sarcasm: I'm really curious how many of us could have possibly gamed for all these years without calendars being integrated into RW. It's mind-boggling when you think about it. Nay, it's nigh impossible! I mean, it's the focus of every campaign and every adventure. Time is a critical component of the roleplaying experience. Dare I say, time IS the roleplaying experience? Without time, there is nothing else. And without calendars, well, what's the point? I mean, we just can't do it. Lone Wolf has destroyed gaming through their survey. And if they had implemented calendars, they could have foreseen this inevitability but given these dire circumstances now we can't even have timetravellers correct this grave error.
What's funny is that once calendars are implemented, they won't be good enough. And the forums will explode again. Death, taxes and forum unrest are the three certainties in life. |
#129 |
Junior Member
Join Date: Aug 2007
Posts: 22
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Unsarcastically: I can't speak for anyone else, but as a history major, I have had some means of timekeeping in every game I've run, for my own sake, even if I just have given players an ephemeral "a long time ago", I like to know exactly how long.
Not having the ability to make custom calendars in RW hasn't made me avoid using the software, it's only meant that I've avoided working on much of the historical and timeline bases of my world and focused on geography. And sarcastically: My game has utterly dried up and died without single-character information sharing. So there. Quote:
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#130 |
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