Keep the Content Market Alive!

[ruhar]

Dear Rob,

Even though LWD will no longer support RW, I believe many users will continue to use RW and would like to have access to the CM. Since the CM has been set up to link with our Paizo account for realm purchases, I propose that you allow users to post the realms they create to the CM for others to download for free. The realms that are copyright by Paizo and other companies would still require proof that the PDF was purchased, which is already in place.

There are a lot of us who will continue to use RW, and many of those users aren't interested in entering all the information of a module or sourcebook. On the other hand, there are a lot who have already done so and will continue to do so. Why not allow us to share the realms in the CM, which is already set up to ensure the PDF version was purchased?

I believe that offering the users the CM to share their realms will help encourage those who already have RW to continue using it. It may even bring in more customers to purchase RW so they too can have access to the CM.

Please consider this proposal. You and your LWD team invested a lot in RW as well as those who purchased the program. It's an excellent tool for GMs, so I would hate to see all of our investments wither away.

Thank you.
Ruhar

[Viking2054]

Sounds like a good idea to me.

[Teresa]

I am in favour too.

[Maidhc O Casain]

Dear Rob,

I've wondered often why the Content Market has been closed to third-party submissions. The stated reason is basically "quality control," but it seems to me like that could be handled with a simple statement to the effect that material not developed by LoneWolf is not guaranteed to have the same publication standards as material that is developed by LoneWolf. Nor the same formatting practices.

Given that such a statement could be posted in the CM, I think ruhar's suggestion is a fantastic one!

[daplunk]

I think the biggest problem with 3PP content is Rob had a vision of how RW would be used. The Fog of World stuff with players connecting etc. This required content to not just be input but changed in order to align with the RW content guidelines. Problem is, how many users were actually using all that?

Honestly, I just want to buy Realm Works copies of PDFs.

[ruhar]

Originally Posted by daplunk

I think the biggest problem with 3PP content is Rob had a vision of how RW would be used.

I think you're right and Rob's idea also went against what was constantly said during the testing and after the release. How many times has someone posted some sort of question about the layout and what should go where? And the answers have always been examples of what someone did then followed with "but do what works for you." This thread proves that with someone saying how they use it and what doesn't work for them then someone else saying that feature does work for them and how they use it. RW is a tool that is flexible enough to work for everyone in whatever manner they want and need it to work.

I think Maidhc O Casain has the right idea:

Originally Posted by Maidhc O Casain

I've wondered often why the Content Market has been closed to third-party submissions. The stated reason is basically "quality control," but it seems to me like that could be handled with a simple statement to the effect that material not developed by LoneWolf is not guaranteed to have the same publication standards as material that is developed by LoneWolf. Nor the same formatting practices.

Post a statement like this and use the required proof that the original PDF has been purchased and allow us to share our works with each other. You could even charge a small maintenance fee for each realm initially "purchased" to offset the cost of maintaining the CM.

At least give it a try.

[kbs666]

Fog of world comes up maybe once every 6 months for me. I'm far more likely to draw a "dungeon" out on battlemats and cover the unknown sections with paper and let the players move their minis around on that.

What I'd really want from an RW module is the plot setup for RW use so if the plot isn't linear I can just use the visual plot to navigate it, map pins as navigation, HL integrated encounters and showing the players any useful visual content from the module (pics of the NPC's for instance).

[daplunk]

By fog of world im referring the the player revealing of snippets. It was a lot more work than initially thought I'd imagine. Having to have pdfs modified so that lines of text that are OK to be revealed to the player are separated out from the original paragraph structure.

Instead of just copying content from existing pdfs, you need to stop and redesign the paragraph structures and in some cases rewrite sentences.

It was a lot of work for little benefit IMO and it assisting in topping content being prepared efficiently for sale.

[kbs666]

I use that a lot. I reveal the stuff the players know, because I've told them (I just click the button while I'm speaking, and then every time they speak to an NPC, visit a location etc. I show that topic and they see everything they know about it. It saves me a tremendous amount of time answering questions my players would know if they took notes or paid enough attention but players.

Of course I write my own content for my own world and almost always enter it into RW first. But I still frequently find myself breaking up long paragraphs into sentences that can be revealed separately.

This was always one of the reasons I had doubts about automatically converting PDF's to realms.

[Murrdox]

Originally Posted by kbs666

I use that a lot. I reveal the stuff the players know, because I've told them (I just click the button while I'm speaking, and then every time they speak to an NPC, visit a location etc. I show that topic and they see everything they know about it. It saves me a tremendous amount of time answering questions my players would know if they took notes or paid enough attention but players.

Of course I write my own content for my own world and almost always enter it into RW first. But I still frequently find myself breaking up long paragraphs into sentences that can be revealed separately.

This was always one of the reasons I had doubts about automatically converting PDF's to realms.

That's how I use player reveal as well. It was immensely helpful for me when playing Shadowrun to keep track of which clues and information the characters had learned over the course of the adventure.

In regard to what daplunk said:

By fog of world im referring the the player revealing of snippets. It was a lot more work than initially thought I'd imagine. Having to have pdfs modified so that lines of text that are OK to be revealed to the player are separated out from the original paragraph structure.

I agree very much. If this standard is keeping adventures out of the Content Market, the standard needs to be ditched.

I've been working on an Infinity adventure on and off for awhile to put into Realm Works as an example of a "best practice" adventure. It's hard. There is a lot of copy/paste from the PDF. Sometimes though, there are paragraphs of the adventure that have player information and GM information sprinkled within the same paragraph. So then I have to decide if I split out the paragraph and make some sentences GM Instructions and some sentences Player Viewable. Sometimes when you do this you might have to rephrase a sentence or two so that the whole thing makes sense grammatically.

Given that there are a million different game systems out there and a million different PDF authors, some adventures are going to lend themselves more to this style than others. I don't think it makes sense to force a Realm Works GM to do extensive re-writing on a PDF just to make sure every instance of Player / GM snippets are 100% correct. It's important, sure. But it's MORE important to have adventures in the Content Market to begin with.