D&D Next

[dafrca]

Originally Posted by ChrisRevocateur

As Realm Works is completely system agnostic, why?

The simple answer? Because unless the others at the table use the product there is not real reason for me to buy it. Agnostic does not make it useful or give it value in and of itself. Others electing to use it at our table would.

[RavenX]

dafrca, the player license is cheap, only the DM needs a fully functional copy of Realm Works to add data to the cloud servers for the campaign. Player licenses can be purchased in bulk as well. It's really not much of an added expense for players. And overall it is worth it in the time it saves a DM in managing campaign materials.

Also, the 5e system is simple enough to use a basic handwritten sheet on. None of the math in 5e is incredibly complex where you have to sum up seven modifiers at once to calculate a to-hit roll. They kept the system really basic, which is what drove my group back to 3.5 again.

[dafrca]

While I respect your effort to show me how I am wrong in my feelings, it does not change the fact that the other DM/Players are walking away from Hero Lab and thus not interested in even trying Realm Works. So for me to buy it just to have a copy on my machine seems useless.

As someone who really tried to sell new folks on the Hero Lab program, I can say without a doubt I will continue to get updates and maybe, someday, either the group will shift rule sets again or Lone Wolf will obtain a licence for 5th ed and I will continue my missionary work. But for now, I have been given a setback. :-(

[Farling]

RealmWorks is primarily a DM tool for maintaining your campaign information.

Access for the players is a secondary benefit, for if/when they want to catch up on everything they've come across during the campaign.

[Paragon]

Honestly, if you don't care about the cloud-sharing element of RealmWorks, I'm not even sure its that attractive to many GMs. I'm a big user and proponent of HL, but RW could not interest me less.

[MNBlockHead]

Funny I'm the opposite. As someone running a campaign in my own world, RealmWorks has been a huge help and I use it more than any other game aid. It is a great way to capture ideas and build out advantures and keep everything organized and linked together. I love not having to flip through papers at the game table.

Hero Lab, on the other hand, I don't see much use for. If it ever supports 5th edition, I might check it out for encounter building as I've read good things about its integration with RealmWorks and the Tactical Console feature could be helpful, but I'm fine with my Paizo battle board for now.

As for character creation, I guess I don't find it that attractive. Perhaps if I used it, I would have an aha moment and not know how I ever lived without it, but since I only play D&D 5e, I'll have to live without it for the time being.

[MagicSN]

Originally Posted by Farling

Use github or some other CM to maintain your additions on a branch from the original. The CM tool would then manage merging the XML files.

Yes, obviously this would be the way to do it, the issue still is it would be a LOT of work for something only for "licence issues" without a single "real feature" out of it. I dont say I will never do it, but right now I am waiting what happens before working on this (of course, if I would get the permission to give my files to someone else who would be willing to do the stripdown... but I guess such a permission is unlikely).

What I did recently was adding the new races from the Elemental Evil stuff.
Not finished with the spells yet, though.

[Frodie]

IDK if this will apply to here, but check it out - http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/fan-site-kit


Never mind I just saw the date as Jan 2014, before 5E.

[MagicSN]

Originally Posted by Frodie

IDK if this will apply to here, but check it out - http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/fan-site-kit


Never mind I just saw the date as Jan 2014, before 5E.

Yeah, the fan site kit I saw some times ago already, it is for making a web site which uses art from existing products. It does not at all cover the problem of a software having "cites" from rule books (like for example the implementation of Feats or Spells).

MagicSN

[RavenX]

Originally Posted by dafrca

While I respect your effort to show me how I am wrong in my feelings, it does not change the fact that the other DM/Players are walking away from Hero Lab and thus not interested in even trying Realm Works. So for me to buy it just to have a copy on my machine seems useless.

As someone who really tried to sell new folks on the Hero Lab program, I can say without a doubt I will continue to get updates and maybe, someday, either the group will shift rule sets again or Lone Wolf will obtain a licence for 5th ed and I will continue my missionary work. But for now, I have been given a setback. :-(

5e isn't complicated enough that a character builder is really necessary though. Even with Pathfinder games I ran I did find Hero Lab taking more time to deal with than it's worth. My players were also not willing to drop a lot of money on the software (Pathfinder's licensing for Hero Lab is rather cost prohibitive for people) when the OGL content is available for free online. The only reason any of my players had hero lab was because I paid for the software licenses for them, a practice that has been halted.

Realm Works is much less cost prohibitive and allows me to organize game data in one place. Players can see the maps as they are being explored and data their characters have actual knowledge of. Realm Works is a one time purchase, players don't have to drop more money into it after that.