My Players Reaction To Player Edition

[pickin_grinnin]

Originally Posted by Chemlak

I guess my question is what other software are you using that you want to manipulate your Realm data in that you want to be able to export to?

At the very least, I want to be able to dump to PDF, so that I can maintain paper backups.

I would very much like to be able to export to .csv files, at the very least, or have some sort of SQL access to my database so that I can pull data out myself.

I don't really have a need to do any data manipulation outside of Realm Works right now. I want those capabilities so that I can maintain running data backups and still access my content if and when Lone Wolf drops support for Realm Works and/or goes out of business (it happens eventually to almost all proprietary software). Since I still occasionally reuse content I created in the late 70s for D&D, I know that I will want to be able to continue to access content I create today.

I create a LOT of content, and have been doing so for more than 35 years. I have about 3/4 of it printed out and put in binders, and it takes up five bookshelves, each with five individual shelves. It takes a lot of work to get stuff into Realm Works, and I have a truly massive world I would like to put into it. Given that, I have to know for absolute sure that I can get that content back out if I need to.

I have a friend who just dropped Realm Works and has moved his stuff to Scrivener, so I may check that out and see what I think about it. I would much rather use a product designed specifically for rpg stuff, though.

As an IT guy / librarian I spend a lot of my professional time working with data. I have helped 15 libraries extract their data from proprietary systems when those systems were no longer supported (or when they found better products). In the past, when I solely did IT, I did the same thing for at least a hundred businesses of various sizes. It's always a nightmare when the proprietary products don't give you a specific way to get the data out, whether with SQL queries, .csv dumps, or something else.

Other people have different needs, but judging from the comments here and elsewhere on Internet, a pretty significant number of customers (and potential ones) see PDF export as essential, and don't like having to potentially wait another year to get it.

[Acenoid]

+1 nice post. Would be good to see the survey soon.

To be safe that no one exports published material access to db could be limited to entries w/o an specific no export flag?export in various formats would also be very nice.

And the more I enter into the realm the more concerned I have become. I will start now to save in word and rw I think.

Also to be safe against the situation that the export will be too basic; )

[Dark Lord Galen]

First sorry for the late response to your post Liz... Holidays and all has me in catch-up mode both professionally and personally...
@ All, this may be a LENGTHY response to convey in detail what was provided to me via my players....

Originally Posted by liz

I'm curious how much you told your players about what to expect with Player Edition (actually, this goes for everyone).

Since the inception of RW and my first day purchase (Was out of country and missed the kickstarter) I have utilized the "in can" demo version (ie the Mcguffin) to first convey what the software would/could do for our table. The overall initial response was ... eh.... if it helps u (ie the DM)

As we generally meet face to face, the "player view" is seldom a tool I needed. (have other superior methods)

As time has progressed from that March release, they could see the usefulness of the linked features and the time it saved. Thus they looked forward to the players version release. They began to read the newsletters, the updates on the LWD site, and were often telling me the snipits of updated information. Here is where 2 issues were born..... These issues became exasperated on the release of the PE version...

To clarify, (consolidated from the two emails from my beta players)

Originally Posted by DLGs Player Comments

Date of Release>

Didn't Happen

Didn't happen either.

Still nope

Still NO

Still Still No

Nope still Nope

FINALLY, and not all the features promised

So, to consolidate, One frustration from my players was a 22May+4weeks deliverable sliding to 19Nov. They could understand it better if two things were done differently.
1> wasn't "2-3 weeks" slide at a time. This led to continual false hope. As one of my players is a project manager for a concrete company, she is painfully familiar with meeting promised schedule dates (can you tell? hehe)
2> they got what they thought they were promised once they endured the delay.

They didn't get either. They were under the premise that the delays were to provide all the features as listed, not some. Which leads me to your second question.

Originally Posted by liz

In other words, did they know not to expect journals and were nonetheless disappointed that they weren't there. Or did they hear "Player Edition", assume some sort of journal feature would be present, and end up disappointed when there wasn't one.

Neither

Originally Posted by DLG's Players

&

From the Features listing of RWPE. It doesn't let YOU visualize what YOU think is important, and create a linked note or comment to it. It only displays what the DMs has marked for display

Translation> MY players expected the same features (as the GM Edition) promised, that they could link comments, notes, Journal entries because it was supposed to have those SAME features. They didn't expect to be able to create a realm, but did expect they could interact with the data with in the one they had access to.
Reality> they see only the links that I have greenlighted. They have no means to mark or pin maps add notes to them, track the passing of time (a cascade problem because of it not existing in RW).

Originally Posted by DLG's Players

and

And

Again from another perspective of the other player, They expected to be able to apply whatever notes / comments they have into the map, the lists of people, places, etc. Not just read the comments I flag for view. They feel that the "note feature" as it stands is little more than a watered down Wordpad with minimal link (one direction) feature.

And

They expected those features because of the schedule slipping that these elements were what was being worked on based on the length of slippage and the comment from LWD on what would be supplied. So, sorry liz, there (to my knowledge) is nothing suggesting that the journal (nor the web-access for that matter) was NOT included when finally released. Since it was certainly said in May that the "next few months" those specific items would be of focus.

Oh, and for any that were curious, the top end limit for a post is 10,000 characters...

[Dark Lord Galen]

Originally Posted by DLG

Originally Posted by Liz

That's definitely an interesting idea, but I'm unsure what limitations we have from a technical standpoint. "Content creation" was supposed to fall squarely under the GM Edition. This would be a great idea to throw into the Feature Request forum.

I agree unsure of the technical application, and agree that Realm creation should be GM only... but a campaign is a cooperative. seems there is a need for some means of collection of data from that sourcing.

[meek75]

I wonder if the "Fog of World" catch phrase has also contributed to what people were expecting from PE. I know that it has been repeatedly stated that RW is not a VTT, but "Fog of World" immediately (in my mind) trigger "Fog of War" popular in VTTs. The hole idea of Fog of World, I think, is to reveal information incrementally to players. I think it implies I certain amount of interaction and cause some to expect a "live" reveal like VTT do with Fog of war.

[evildmguy]

DLG - what do you use for a player view? I have found it quite better than most other options, including some VTTs, and I also have player's at the table. The scaling really makes it tough for them to figure out if they have more to go or not, so I have liked that, at least when I used it to reveal maps. The fact that it can also hold NPC pictures and it's better than the one vtt I got okay with. (maptools)

I think I'm also in the same camp as DLG with regards to expectations, even if I didn't articulate them as well as he did. I have been following the updates, so expected players to be able to add their own notes, why be constrained to the GMs notes for a map or NPC, and put them into the Realm. As was said, they can't create Realms, only add to Realms they have invites to was what I was thinking.

Without that, from what I have seen and read recently, this has no value for my group, as they don't tend to use things after the fifth or sixth session. Having said that, I will still get a lot of use out of RW but not as much as I thought.

Again, I probably interpreted things differently but for some reason, I was thinking a collaborative tool for both sides, players and DM.

meek72 - Good point. That's exactly what I'm thinking. Fog of World means real time updates, just as fog of war does.

Thanks!

edg

[spacemarinejunkie]

I really think that Lone Wolf needs to do a YouTube tutorial showing how Realm Works interacts with player edition. Do a mock game session and show how the two programs currently interact. Don't use any features that are currently in development, just use the features that we can use now. Pay special attention to the concerns on this forum since this is direct feedback from users. I personally have always learned how to use software most efficiently through the review of these types of tutorials.

[Dark Lord Galen]

Originally Posted by evildmguy

DLG - what do you use for a player view? I have found it quite better than most other options, including some VTTs, and I also have player's at the table. The scaling really makes it tough for them to figure out if they have more to go or not, so I have liked that, at least when I used it to reveal maps. The fact that it can also hold NPC pictures and it's better than the one vtt I got okay with. (maptools)

Well, lets see, it depends. To fully answer you would have to understand our table first.
We typically have 3 types of games around our table.
1> A scheduled game. We create a gaming calendar for a year based on the likely game availability of players. I culminate the usual work schedules, holidays, birthday avoidances, etc and we use that as a plan revisiting it about 3 times a year as various things come up. I publish it on our server (that the players have access).

From the scheduled game windows we set which PC group plays on what weekend that the players are available.
2>Is what we call a "One Off" a non-scheduled game usually involving only one or two characters (players)
3>Midsummer's Eve & Years End Game-A-Thon- Are 2 day events where we start play on Friday evening and stop Sunday evening. I generally have a bit "extra" set for these, a large scale battle or a culminating event in the storyline.

Sorry for the level of detail, but it helps to understand the differences in our game sessions.

For fullblown game sessions, I generally utilize slideshows to show what the players have seen or dealt with from last session ie pictures of monsters, NPCs, recap events, etc. I use a multitude of software for this. Word, Excel, PDFs, culminate in Powerpoint.
I utilize mapping software to display the maps we use on 2 embedded TVs in a table (see Liz's what does your table look like thread). I originally used Battlegrounds Games for maps. I found it too limiting, so I progressed to D20pro because it allows me to create maps, Fog of war, add tokens, all digitally. A perk is I can create Tokens with attached pictures and descriptions. I really don't care about the VTT parts (some do) Since I have over 3k of minis and can create as many tokens as I like. The ability to assign it an IP address also allows for my out of country players to sit in via Skype.

For smaller sessions I still utilize the mapping table, but the session is geared to a more personal level, complete a quest, do some research for an item, etc. These sessions get incorporated into the overall game storyline.

For the Game-A-Thon sessions we break out all the bells and whistles of course. Background sounds, theme foods, etc.

The versatility that RW brings in incorporating a multitude of my different note cashes accumulated through 25+ years of game play will help me further consolidate all that data in one locale in a usable fashion. The ability (if fulfilled) the Players edition could bring flanging up to all this data for my players is certainly hopeful.

Originally Posted by evildmguy

Without that, from what I have seen and read recently, this has no value for my group, as they don't tend to use things after the fifth or sixth session. Having said that, I will still get a lot of use out of RW but not as much as I thought.

Again, I probably interpreted things differently but for some reason, I was thinking a collaborative tool for both sides, players and DM.

Well put, I too thought it would be a collaborative as well... though the jury is still out, I am less than hopeful of the prognosis. Like you I can see this aiding me in my endeavors (with the RW fulfilled promises) but the Players Edition as it sits was $30 waiting on the hope of something.

Originally Posted by evildmguy

meek72 - Good point. That's exactly what I'm thinking. Fog of World means real time updates, just as fog of war does.

I agree, I think that became the general interpretation. Though I personally didn't see it as interchangeable.

[monsterfurby]

Originally Posted by meek75

I wonder if the "Fog of World" catch phrase has also contributed to what people were expecting from PE. I know that it has been repeatedly stated that RW is not a VTT, but "Fog of World" immediately (in my mind) trigger "Fog of War" popular in VTTs. The hole idea of Fog of World, I think, is to reveal information incrementally to players. I think it implies I certain amount of interaction and cause some to expect a "live" reveal like VTT do with Fog of war.

I'm beginning to sound far too negative for my liking, considering I still like RW a lot and see a lot of potential here, but the Fog of World thing has always been silly. It's a "our cigarettes are toasted"-type empty marketing thing, considering hiding and revealing parts of information to players is something that at least two other systems I am aware of (Roll20 and OpenRPG) have been able to do for ages.

Come to think of it, OpenRPG even had a fairly way of handling data overall (in a modular fashion).

[liz]

Originally Posted by Dark Lord Galen

Snip - excellent feedback

Thank you Dark Lord Galen. This sort of feedback is incredibly constructive.

As I said earlier in this thread, everyone's feedback and players reactions have been thought-provoking. In fact, its prompted a number of conversations among us internally. As all of you gave your thoughts right before and over the holidays, our conversations have been pretty surface-level so far, but they'll definitely continue now that we're all back in the virtual office.

Thank you to everyone for your candid reactions and observations. Through reading comments like this and the survey, it looks like we're going to be getting a lot of good data (both qualitative and quantitative) this month on what GMs and Players want to see in Realm Works.