Kickstarter Clarification Questions

[Griffonbait]

Hi all,

While new to this forum, I have been a product user since Army Builder 2. I don't have a Kickstarter account, nor a Facebook account to ask these questions. If the devs/managers monitor these forums it would be good to hear information from people who actually know what is going on.

Months ago I was initially skeptical about the benefits of Realm Works (RW) over what I currently use (OneNote), however, I was taken aback by the Kickstarter video presentation and the features displayed that I am now a convert and looking forward to using RW.

A couple of questions that will not stop me from buying RW when it does come out.

1. Will an Alpha Wolf backer, who receives top tier cloud service for the life of the account, expect to pay any costs associated with the cloud service over the life of their account? (By costs I mean things like: subscription costs, upgrade costs to improved/additional services in the future, data storage costs associated with the amount of data stored on the cloud service's HDDs, etc.)

2. No mention has been given to costs associated with major/minor version releases in the future. Do you provide unlimited lifetime upgrades of the Realm Works product for all who purchase it or are all Kickstarter backer levels expected to pay for future software releases or are you looking at a licensing plan similar to ArmyBuilder?

Cheers,
Griffonbait

[rob]

We're here for exactly the purpose you posted.

Now on to your questions...

1. Alpha Wolf backers are essentially pre-paying for everything. So the product itself is included and top-tier cloud support is included. I guess it's theoretically possible for someone to want more storage or bandwidth than we'll include at the top tier, in which case there could be additional charges for that, but I'm sure not expecting that to occur. In addition, the Alpha Wolf backer level doesn't necessarily include everything we might think of adding in the future, which leads to your second point.

2. We don't envision charging for updates to the core Realm Works product itself, even though we'll continue evolving the product well into the future. That being said, there are some major components planned that would be separate add-ons available for purchase. For example, we have a mapping tool on the drawing board that we'd love to create. It would work in conjunction with Realm Works, but it would be a separate product that could be purchased by those who wanted it. Features that are integral to the core utilization of Realm Works will be included in free updates. Major components might be split out as separate options.

The business (i.e. revenue) model for Realm Works is vastly different from Army Builder and Hero Lab, so the licensing and sales models will be very different as well. I hope the above answers make sense. If not, please let me know where you still have questions and I'll do my best to answer them.

Hope this helps!

[Griffonbait]

Thanks for the update.

Your description of the mapping program makes perfect sense. It is comparative to say, MS Word and Excel, neither program does the same job as the other, but they do share information between them rather well.

Well, this is getting all exciting and I can't wait to see just how much Realm Works will improve my in-game organisation and response time to players needs/wants.

Cheers.

[Asandir]

Still debating pledging for this. Really interesting product from what it looks like. I wanted to follow up on an answer posted on Kickstarter.

"We've already prototyped additional capabilities including the GM's machine operating as a local web server for players to access with their tablets or what-not. This type of capability is absolutely planned for the future and is an example of some of the cool features we'll be unveiling as part of stretch goals."

Would it be possible to run this on a Windows Home Server 2011 and allow it to serve as the local web server? This presumes that the tablet and what-nots are connected to the home network, correct?

[rob]

Originally Posted by Asandir

"We've already prototyped additional capabilities including the GM's machine operating as a local web server for players to access with their tablets or what-not. This type of capability is absolutely planned for the future and is an example of some of the cool features we'll be unveiling as part of stretch goals."

Would it be possible to run this on a Windows Home Server 2011 and allow it to serve as the local web server? This presumes that the tablet and what-nots are connected to the home network, correct?

We won't be providing users with the ability to run their own server with client syncing and the like. That will be handled through the Realm Works cloud server only.

The approach we've prototyped is for the GM's computer to behave as a simple web server during play. Player devices can then retrieve material directly from the GM's computer over a local internet connection. This provides live updates to players during the game without the need to access the Realm Works cloud server, which might be unavailable due to venue limitations (e.g. horribly slow speeds at a hotel during a Con or expensive 3G/4G access being cost-prohibitive).

[Fox Lee]

Originally Posted by rob

The approach we've prototyped is for the GM's computer to behave as a simple web server during play. Player devices can then retrieve material directly from the GM's computer over a local internet connection. This provides live updates to players during the game without the need to access the Realm Works cloud server, which might be unavailable due to venue limitations (e.g. horribly slow speeds at a hotel during a Con or expensive 3G/4G access being cost-prohibitive).

Hullo, I never knew that was in the works! Since not all players have access to the network where my group games, this is an incredibly exciting feature to me Is this amongst the goals that need the Kickstarter, then, or is it part of the core plan?

[freeAgent]

Originally Posted by rob

We won't be providing users with the ability to run their own server with client syncing and the like. That will be handled through the Realm Works cloud server only.

The approach we've prototyped is for the GM's computer to behave as a simple web server during play. Player devices can then retrieve material directly from the GM's computer over a local internet connection. This provides live updates to players during the game without the need to access the Realm Works cloud server, which might be unavailable due to venue limitations (e.g. horribly slow speeds at a hotel during a Con or expensive 3G/4G access being cost-prohibitive).

This is great since it should make it possible to run on an ad-hoc network where there's no internet, period.

Regarding the mapping, that's very exciting. I've been playing around with Hexographer and Dungeonographer, and they're at about the right skill/difficulty level for me

[rob]

Originally Posted by Fox Lee

Hullo, I never knew that was in the works! Since not all players have access to the network where my group games, this is an incredibly exciting feature to me Is this amongst the goals that need the Kickstarter, then, or is it part of the core plan?

This one is actually beyond the initial Kickstarter goals. However, this would be ideally suited as a stretch goal for the Kickstarter.

[rob]

Originally Posted by freeAgent

This is great since it should make it possible to run on an ad-hoc network where there's no internet, period.

That's exactly the idea.

[Asandir]

Originally Posted by rob

We won't be providing users with the ability to run their own server with client syncing and the like. That will be handled through the Realm Works cloud server only.

The approach we've prototyped is for the GM's computer to behave as a simple web server during play. Player devices can then retrieve material directly from the GM's computer over a local internet connection. This provides live updates to players during the game without the need to access the Realm Works cloud server, which might be unavailable due to venue limitations (e.g. horribly slow speeds at a hotel during a Con or expensive 3G/4G access being cost-prohibitive).

This was what I was trying to get to with my question above and did a poor job of asking.

Part of the question still remains and that is will Realm Works run on Windows Server 2011 if I install it there rather than on my laptop, for example.