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- The Lone Wolf Development Team
Realm Works Player Edition Update
- Thread starter liz
- Start date
I agree with EightBitz. I'm not a rules scholar or have a photographic memory and I don't want to take game time to look something up. As I'm entering information if I encounter a scenario that I'm not sure what the rules would be or know the players would ask I'll put the rule in Mechanics. I then add a GM note to the entry that references the rule and links to it.
RW is a tool to use however you want to use it to accomplish whatever you want. If that means you want to reference a rule or even lots of rules go for it.
It's our expectation that rules will be an integral part of purchased material through the Content Market, so our licensing efforts focus on securing the rights for both story AND mechanics material from publishers. Look at how important sites like d20pfsrd.com have become in recent years. Now imagine having all the capabilities of Realm Works to draw upon with that material, and to have it all linked together. There are lots of users who are drooling at the prospects. Obviously, not everyone will need or even want the rules available that way, but many will. Everyone can use Realm Works the way that works best for them!
Player Version is important to me, and while I was hoping for my players to be able to use the free web-based client, the package deal is a good enough value that I am motivated to buy it for my players in order to let them have a few extra months with it and to support the developers.
I am disappointed that it has taken so long, and particularly that Lone Wolf was not more conservative with the timeline estimates going into the project. But that's part of what I signed up for when I bought an under-development software. To use a previous poster's metaphor, I knew that the house was missing curtains, cabinets, and even plumbing, but I bought it anyway because it was a darn fine house. My disappointment in the construction process doesn't change the fact that gifting my players the player version still buys me more enjoyment than anything else I can do with $30 at the moment.
If you're on the kind of budget where $5-10 per player is a significant expense then you are already used to making do without things like pizza on game night, extra sourcebooks, or minis, and doing without player access for a few months is not a serious hardship.
I am disappointed that it has taken so long, and particularly that Lone Wolf was not more conservative with the timeline estimates going into the project. But that's part of what I signed up for when I bought an under-development software. To use a previous poster's metaphor, I knew that the house was missing curtains, cabinets, and even plumbing, but I bought it anyway because it was a darn fine house. My disappointment in the construction process doesn't change the fact that gifting my players the player version still buys me more enjoyment than anything else I can do with $30 at the moment.
If you're on the kind of budget where $5-10 per player is a significant expense then you are already used to making do without things like pizza on game night, extra sourcebooks, or minis, and doing without player access for a few months is not a serious hardship.
I am a huge fan of this philosophy, and I think you've done a pretty good job of implementing it. I personally play PF with access to internet, so I'll probably continue to use the d20pfsrd as a reference, but if rules are cheap enough on the Content Market I might buy the core PF material and add in extended stuff myself as-needed. I use a lot of homebrew so the mechanics reference is definitely useful for that.
This is great news.
Anyway you could have some sort of cost reduction if you own HeroLab with all the rules books and RW? I am not trying to be cheap, HL with every paizo possible release is getting up there in cost, and then to turn around buy RW and all those rules again adds up as well. I know you have royalties to pay, but if you could negotiate a little reduction for those who buy both? That would go along way to assisting my payment of bills and funding my piza share n game night!
Ladyofdragons
Well-known member
Oh that would be a wonderful thing, to purchase a HL+RW combo package for new books at a discount. I won't hold my breath for getting a break on past books I already own for HL, but that would be nice too.
This would be a nice option not only for Pathfinder but other games. But I've been going to the Pathfinder Reference Document site and the d20PFSRD site to copy and paste the specific rules I need for an encounter. I couldn't release/sell my realm without deleting them, but for myself it works for me.
I was told at Gen Con that you're shooting for the end of the month for the Player Edition. Since that is just days away is the target close or does it need to be adjusted a little? I promise not to grouse if it needs adjusted, I'm just curious.
Sorry I missed this question when you posted it. Actually, it's a good thing I did, since the answer would have changed.
Based on the results of Beta testing, our plan as of Monday morning was to put out a final Beta release today. Late Monday, we discovered a nasty gotcha with the way Player Edition was handling certain things. It's a subtle but critical thing that a single Beta team member uncovered by having just the right combination of data. We've since figured out how we're going to solve the issue, but it's not something we'll be able to get fixed for a Beta release this week. So....
The active plan is to put out another Beta release this week, but it won't resolve this new issue. After that, we'll need to fix the nasty issue, and I'm guessing we'll end up putting out another Beta release next week to ensure that we've fixed it properly before releasing it to everyone. The actual fix itself involves fixing up the data in everyone's realms, so it's a complicated fix.
Bottom line: We're very close, and we're shaking out (and fixing) the final issues.
We've put into place a completely new sales portal for Realm Works. So all sales of Realm Works are currently handled through a completely different server. The plan is to migrate everything from the Hero Lab side over to the new sales portal, but that's not going to happen right away, especially since it will entail a significant chunk of additional work. Something like this won't even be possible until everything for the two products has been merged onto the same server and goes through the same mechanisms. Once we get there, this might be doable, and it's something we can definitely investigate as a possibility at that point in time. But it's not something we can even think about until some other major pieces are into place.
Bottom line: It's something we can definitely explore in the future, but it's not going to even be possible on a technical level when we first launch the Content Market for Realm Works.
Your ears must have been burning when you posted this. David and I were discussing your issue right around the time you posted.
Your issue is special. There is exactly one other instance of this problem that we've identified thus far. It's a database that I created. We've identified what's wrong with the two databases, but we have not yet been able to figure out why they got into that condition in the first place. And fixing them is a complicated undertaking due to the nature of the problem. We've spent many hours on the problem and determined that it's not something we're going to be able to fully research and properly solve until after we get Player Edition finished.
This is an unfortunate reality of being a member of the Beta team. You and I have both managed to get ourselves into a weird state. And we're both stuck with using sneaker-net to move our databases between computers until this can be properly sorted out. I wholly understand the annoyance factor, since I'm living with it as well. My database includes all the work I've done on Rise of the Runelords, which is rather substantial.
I wish I had better news for you. You're definitely not being ignored, even if it may feel like it right now. We're just in the classic quandary of "needs of the many" trumping "needs of the few" right now. I know it's not much consolation, but I'm feeling your pain myself.
It's still in beta! We're hoping to get another (it's looking like last) beta update out in the next few days. The Realm Works team has been making steady progress thanks to the fantastic feedback from our beta users. THANKS BETA USERS!
jkthomsen9
Well-known member
I am curious if there is a good business reason to not release the beta in mass? This could give people the option to try it, being fully aware it is a beta version and give you guys a larger pool of people for feedback for possible bugs.
I know it's frustrating, jacook, but they are busting their backs to get everything done and ensure the product isn't buggy when it's released. I'd rather wait than get a buggy program like Micro$oft. They could work on a better launch plan, but they also had unexpected staff changes and problems. I bet their next program will have a better launch plan. :-D
If you think the whining about not having access to the player version is bad.... I can't even imagine how many people would ignore the bold HUGE flashing notice while purchasing, while installing and while loading stating:
WARNING THIS IS A BETA PRODUCT AND IS NOT REPRESENTATIVE OF THE FINAL PRODUCT
and who would immediately come to these forums demanding in no uncertain terms that they are entitled to a full refund for their entire gaming collection because LW should never have knowingly released buggy software and no, they didn't see the warning....
Seriously, why do you hate Liz so much?