A word to the wise for the complainers

[AEIOU]

Imagine a world where all the Chemlak's with decades of gaming behind them put their reams of data online for everyone else to freely use, re-mix and re-share. We GM's have lived in our ivory towers staring across space at the thousands of other ivory towers for decades with no way to create bridges to one another easily. RW is that bridge. THAT is how RW becomes both evolutionary and revolutionary to roleplaying games.

[enrious]

Or imagine a world where a publisher can release content that can go into my Realm Works, and I can then customize it for my campaign. Like Tales of the Frog God's Razor Coast, for example (which would be pretty useful in about a month or so. *cough*)

Or where a couple of people can make a truly collaborative world.

Or share houserules easily.

Or easily enable players to view content from your campaign. (That ain't as easy to do without a cloud or the like).

So you may not care a whit about any of those things, but RW has to be written for *everyone* - including you, if you decide a year from now that one or all of those things do matter, and your realms would have to be able to play nicely with the cloud.

That has to be in from the start.


The main reason for the Kickstarter that rob spoke was actually to get the cloud integration finished quicker than if they weren't able to hire on the new staff, which they did thanks to the Kickstarter.

And the Cloud stuff was there at the beginning. Quoting from the KS page"

GMs can share their creations through the cloud for use by others.
GMs can browse the work of others and integrate it into their own worlds. Imagine being able to find a pre-made encounter, or a tavern, or an entire region with adventures and NPCs. Drop it into your own world, change a few names, hook it into locations in your world, and it’s fully integrated for use. No scribbled notes. No Post-Its. No juggling between PDFs, books, and your own files. Realm Works is built from the ground up for exactly this purpose.
Secure cloud backup of all material for GMs.
Synchronization of different computers to the cloud, with automatic change detection and resolution.

And:

11. Is cloud service required and what does it cost?
Cloud service is not required. If you don't want the ability to share your campaigns with your players through the cloud, there is no need for any cloud service and you'll only need to purchase the core Realm Works product. There would be no additional monthly costs associated with that usage model.

That being said, there is a critical distinction between the Realm Works "cloud" and more common cloud storage services like Dropbox and GoogleDrive. Before potentially dismissing the Realm Works cloud service as unnecessary, please carefully consider what the Realm Works cloud offers and the additional benefits you’ll receive.

There's a whole new world of possibilities available once your campaign enters the Realm Works cloud:

• It's every detail of your entire campaign individually managed and woven together for instant searching and filtering online.

• It's the ability to review your campaign via a web browser, using any device you own.

• It's making notes and jotting down new ideas for your campaign while you're at work, at school, or at a friend's house.

• It's enabling your players to have full access to everything they've learned through play, including the revealed areas of maps, at their convenience and with no additional work on your part.

• It's eliminating the need for separately created player handouts, as everything they know is readily available to them.

• It's allowing players who miss a session to get a full recap prior to the next session, instantly and automatically.

• It's sharing content you've created with others.

• It's having a wealth of pre-created NPCs, magic items, encounters, and more – fully searchable to locate and drop into your game whenever you need them.

• It's being able to find entire pre-created adventures and settings ready for use, with the ability to quickly import that content into your campaign and then seamlessly integrate it, however you deem appropriate for your game.

• It’s also a backup of your campaigns in the event of a computer failure, like simple cloud storage services.

As you can see, the Realm Works cloud will offer far broader capabilities than simple data storage and backup.

Again, you may not need any of that now. But in the future? It's not exactly something you can just bolt on later as a lark - everything needs to be written and designed to be cloud aware from the beginning.

[Dracarius]

I've been looking for software like this for years. I've run across several simple starters from Campaign manager to DM Tools, D20pro, and a host of others out there. I gave up as nothing ever seemed to meet my needs.

I finally hit on RW a few months back, and am eagerly awaiting it's release. I don't understand what all the complaining is about. I missed the KS, I didn't get an early release package, I don't get to dabble in this new software like some of the lucky few. I wait patiently for it's release. I wait, because I want a good product.

I, for one, am tired of companies putting out bugged stuff. (Windows 8 is a great example) MS is a huge company with billions of dollars on hand and yet they mass produce software so full of bugs we get patches every week. And you know what? It sucks. I hate the software as much as my customers do. Since we can't sell anything anymore but Windows 8 PCs & laptops, I bite my tongue and lie to my customers and tell them how great it is. (Thanks MS ) This is, to me, is a great example of what happens when a company puts out crap too early.

Then there's LW - A company that is taking it's time to get me a product I'm going to be happy with. Each day I log on in the hopes of seeing a "purchase now" link, but instead see it's now early release in 2014. Disappointed, sure. Complaining, no. At least LW is taking the time to put out a quality product, something that we all are going to be happy with. If I could meet personally with the LW staff, I'd give them two thumbs up for just this fact. (And buy you all a round) I don't want daily or weekly patches. I want a functional product with the occasional update to add some more content.

Keep at it LW. Keep plodding along and ignore the complainers. I realize your human. You have lives and family to take care of, and if means I wait another day, or a month, or another year, I'll still be here waiting for the finished project to arrive. No complaints, just anticipation as the days go on. I look forward to the wonderful things that RW will bring to my table.

(Did I mention, I'm still using Windows 95?)

[Chemlak]

For what it's worth, and if my quick check of the KS yielded the right result, Early Access began on 13 August (update 42). The Kickstarter ended 24 Feb (update 26). Update 32 which arrived 24 May was the first real sign that Early Access wasn't ready yet.

Those were the dark times for us EA pledgers.

Every time Rob said "almost ready, just got to squash some bugs!", we held our breath, and hoped, and prayed... and it didn't happen. It was during this time the LWD gave their money-back offer. Because they hadn't been able to deliver. We stuck with it (well, most of us did, to the tune of more money than those who backed out took with them).

It's almost there. I can see that it is, every time I load it up. It's almost good for everyone. Please let LWD polish it enough to meet their exacting standards. I can't promise bug-free (nobody can), but v1.0 will work.

Patience is a virtue. The EA pledgers were patient from May to August having already parted with our money in March.

There is no "buyer beware" on v1.0. There's only "we won't take your money if the product isn't ready".

It's close. Really close. For all we know, Rob will pop in later this week and say "right, who wants to pay?" I wouldn't bet on that. I'd bet on another week or two. But you never know, we might all get lucky.

(And then crash the RW server.)

[pjrichert]

*faceplam* Shouldn't have watched the tutorial videos. Now I just want to use the program even more. :P And they're soooooooo close too. I know they're in the home stretch, so just a little longer.

[Dracarius]

Originally Posted by Chemlak

(And then crash the RW server.)

If the server crashes the first time I try to use it, I know who I'm coming after.

[Fox Lee]

I love what RW represents in terms of publishing. I didn't even realise that was part of the plan at first, but now I can see a beautiful scenario for indie publishers. You could, say, release game system files for HeroLab, alongside a setting in RW, then use RW to publish episodic adventure paths and rules updates.

You could even maintain "living" version of your setting, where if a group tells a good enough story they get to make a permanent impact on the official game world. Ah, I love that idea! It's basically Dungeon Magazine/Dragon Magazine/Rules errata/Living setting all rolled up together. And it's not that it was impossible to do these things before, but only with a whole lot of special effort and multiple platforms/tools.

I wonder if we'll see a discounted HL/RW bundle at some point in the future? (After launch, obviously.) Might be a good way to encourage people to use them cooperatively...

Anyway, I am properly thrilled with Realm Works' potential

[Hubrice]

Originally Posted by pjrichert

*faceplam* Shouldn't have watched the tutorial videos. Now I just want to use the program even more. :P And they're soooooooo close too. I know they're in the home stretch, so just a little longer.

I just watched them too, and they do make me want the product more. But they also illustrate just how complex the software is. I am very excited about getting a hold of this, but I can understand the need to make sure everything is working correctly.


Soon...

[Jaynay27]

Originally Posted by Fox Lee

I love what RW represents in terms of publishing. I didn't even realise that was part of the plan at first, but now I can see a beautiful scenario for indie publishers. You could, say, release game system files for HeroLab, alongside a setting in RW, then use RW to publish episodic adventure paths and rules updates.

Been hanging out for the possibility of this since the start of the KS, with fingers firmly crossed.

Even integrating rule-sets for quick, digital, and OFFLINE access. Imagine having the D20PFSRD integrated in to RW. Take your laptop to your game without carting all your books, even if you wont have Internet access. Gold.
(interesting note - Rob has hinted at rule system/s being an addon for RW in this thread)

And not just for Pathfinder D20 games. I am seriously thinking about putting all my World of Darkness rules in there too (especially now that there has been a major rules revision recently)

I have said it once and will say it again:

Realm Works will be (or has the potential to be) a MAJOR game changer in the RPG industry.

If digital content/adventure paths were made available I would jump in head first. I had to cancel my Pathfinder AP subscription due to costs (international shipping and exchange rates are a killer), but this would resolve this issue for me.

*keeps fingers firmly crossed*

[enrious]

I've said before that I felt the marketplace aspect of RW had the greatest potential to impact the industry and frankly, is likely the long-term agenda of LW with respect to it.

After all, once you have the software running for someone to run their campaign, then putting yourself out as a medium through which publishers and consumers meet is a good place to be.

And yeah, the rules were something we were all going gaga over at first (I have all of the ICONS + Great Power rules in for one of my campaign), but I get the feeling we've gotten used to it and are back to our campaigns.

Still doesn't take away from how neat it is to have everything in one place. In my ICONS game, for example, I can look at a statblock and all of the powers listed will be links to the exact power plus any of the extras, so I can tell within a click what a power/extra does.