Roadmap please

[goddelusion]

Originally Posted by Happydevil43

Sadly I am one of those.

As I generally only play published adventures (ok, I started building my own homebrew campaign, but just gave up - I dont have the time to devote to it, between playing and DMing in 4 games a fortnight) , the shiny buttons of new actively developed toolsets such World Anvil and Arkenforge are calling me.

I will still have RW for any campaign type stuff... but for individual sessons and as those systems get more and more features like RW (really its only autolinking that holds me back).. I'll find that I'll use RW less and less.

I havent given up hope yet... but what I want from a toolset is changing.

I must admit that I too have grown tired waiting for RW to be something more than a 'passion project' for Rob and the Devs. It is frustrating to have a tool that shows so much potential, but lacks internal support. You have a Ferrari but are running it on a Volkswagen budget. I will continue to keep RW installed but at this point, It will be my 'passion project' and treated with the same level of interest as is shown by Lone Wolf...minimal. I'm going to put my effort (and $$$) into World Anvil at this point. Here's hoping that RW's 'some day' becomes 'today'.

[Conandy]

Sadly, when I started this thread, my intent was honestly to give LWD the opportunity to show that they still have some love for RW and for this dedicated group of game masters who love the tool and are begging for it to evolve and to be loved by its creators. But instead of taking a day or two of time to put together any kind of road map that could be used to start these discussions in the right direction, to re-affirm support for us and from us, they have essentially put a nail in the lid of the coffin of RW.

It truly saddens me that I have invested so much time and effort in this tool on the false promise that it would continue to evolve and become something more. But alas, I think that, beyond continued use for the campaign info that I already have in the tool, I am probably soon to be done with RW. My $ and time and loyal customer-ship will likely go towards World Anvil or Yarps as I develop a new homebrew D&D campaign world.

[kbs666]

It's the day before GenCon starts. I doubt anyone at LWD will see this thread for at least a week.

[Lj Stephens]

Hi folks, my apologies for the late reply on this. Our most recent focus has been getting everything in place for the launch of Pathfinder 2nd Edition so we haven’t had a lot of time to focus on future road maps for Realm Works. Rest assured when we have more info to share we will be sure to post it on social media and share in our newsletter. Thanks for being patient!
If you do happen to be at GenCon this weekend, stop by the booth for a demo of some of the new features.

[Farling]

Originally Posted by Lj Stephens

If you do happen to be at GenCon this weekend, stop by the booth for a demo of some of the new features.

New features of Realm Works or HLO?

[Lj Stephens]

Oh, wow. I must have been super tired when I wrote that. I apologize. The demos are of Campaign Theater. I'm really sorry for the mistake.

[Conandy]

Originally Posted by Lj Stephens

Oh, wow. I must have been super tired when I wrote that. I apologize. The demos are of Campaign Theater. I'm really sorry for the mistake.

TLDR;

Respectfully, LJ, one of the biggest beefs from the community of RW users is that LWD is spending so much time and effort with HLO that it feels like RW is stagnating. Features promised many years ago have not come to fruition (for one example, the player web view teaser video was published 4.5 years ago). Your comment above kind of emphasizes that, as apparently GenCon isn't going to feature anything new for RW. It is concerning, quite frankly, that it seems like one small team is working on all of the projects at LWD rather than having a team focused on each major project. HLO and RW seem like vastly different animals where work on one should not slow down work on the other. I know that LWD is a small company, and that gets thrown out in defense of LWD every time these conversations pop up, but that excuse can't fly for much longer.

If HLO is going to be the cash cow that gets LWD the ability to start hiring enough staff to actually work on RW again, even that would be considered "some" news that we could at least digest with the hope that our product isn't going to the curb. Of course, the Content Market was presented as being that income source, but I don't think we have heard anything on that front, either, since launch. (If we have, please point me there. I don't spend that much time slogging though all of these forums.)

You have to understand that there are many of us who have invested hundreds and hundreds of hours, each, to make RW the tool we need at our game table. But a lot of that time was done on good faith that the tool would continue to evolve and get better. Frankly, RW is THE most powerful tool on the market for what it does, but it still has so many little imperfections and quirks and there are other newer shinier products out there that actually seem to have active ongoing product development and signs that the developers actually respond to their users desires.

One of the reasons I personally started this thread is that every time I sit down to use RW, I find that I am fighting those little imperfections that others seem to be doing better. Custom Calendars? competitors have those. Web view for players? Other tools are designed from the ground up with that built in. So I keep looking for something to grab hold of that will keep me using RW. I don't want to scrap the hundreds of hours I have spent inputting my campaign world into this tool, but if it isn't evolving with the times and getting better, if features that were promised are still years off, well....

Rob and company need to realize that letting us know the truth, rather than nothing at all, would still improve retention of customers by a huge factor. I personally would probably stop looking at all the shiny alternatives out there if there was any inkling that RW was being actively worked on, at all. But I see no evidence of that. A stray forum post every few months with all the reasons why nothing has happened is not good enough. There was a flurry of activity surrounding the Content Market, but now what?

Help us out here, LJ. Please provide some transparency as to what LWD is really doing with our beloved RealmWorks. Please help us by being proactive with your customer relationships, rather than reactive. The newsletters are not good enough. Take some lessons from companies like DnDBeyond or Arkenforge, who publish roadmaps and trello pages to keep their user base in the loop on what is coming, and what is further off, and what is simply not on the table.

As someone who has been actively looking at other tools, I can tell you that their forums and user groups are FULL of people who have given up on RW for the very reasons I mention above. I truly do not wish to join their ranks. I just desperately want RW to fulfill the needs it promised to fill. I want to love it again.

Rant over.

[Greebo]

Amen to that, Conandy!

[kbs666]

Let me second Conandy and add my perspective.

I posted my feature request list back in November 2018 and in the next couple of months several items, clearly low hanging fruit, were done which was gratifying as every one of those mattered to people.

But after that flurry of updates? Nothing. We got 64 bit (RW is so much better and easier to use now) and we got a small features as LWD rolled out various updates to make the CM work. The CM launched (and it wasn't very good tbh) and besides some fixes for individual users with issues we've gotten nothing since, not even new content to buy.

I use RW every week for my two campaigns and I have a ton of time and effort invested in it. That doesn't mean I'll stay forever as new campaign managers come out, with close enough feature sets and active development ongoing.

[kbs666]

Note taking is something I do at the table all the time. I just keep a text editor, I use textpad but I'm sure even notepad would be fine, open. I jot down a whole series of notes about stuff in the play session there and then the first chance I get I input all of that into RW. It works really well.

Considering all the benefits to session prep and helping me build an interconnected game world I can deal with a two step note taking process.