Giving up on Ream Works

[Dark Lord Galen]

Originally Posted by Bidmaron

Zortek, it is always a joy to be able to speak civilly about an issue where they may be disagreement.

Thanks for keeping it that way.

@Bid & Zortek... Totally Agree
And in general to keep the thread on track, like others ...IMO it seems if you have already made the investment in RW why not weather the storm? I could see abandonment if the cost would be an annual fee or if/when the cloud services kick in and you don't see a value added there, but (as others could probably attest) I don't defend LWD lightly, but they have been supportive even in those elements.
Extending the Cloud, even saying as much as if you no longer want the cloud, thats cool, just update on occassion in case you change your mind as some later date and wish to come back... thats pretty flexible IMO.

Originally Posted by Bidmaron

I do have a little trouble understanding why folks are upset with player edition. It is missing key features currently, but at its launch there was never any attempt to disguise that it was missing those features. Now if the rage is because there was anticipation that those missing features would be available in a more timely way, I can somewhat understand that. However, no one should buy a product that clearly is missing what they consider essential features.

I can clarify, at least from the feedback of my own players....
not saying they are right or wrong just how it was received and perceived.

When first launched, the Players version stumbled right out of the block. There were several crashes and I had several players lose game logs. Most data, fortunately was transferred from other docs such as word or handwritten, but some gaming sessions were lost. But this still started the mistrust of secure info.
Part of the advertised features at release were:

• [1]It’s never been easier to find an important tidbit that your character deduced many sessions ago
  [2]Review information that has been shared in previous games,
  [3]Keep track of ideas for the evolution of your character

Just to name a few.
Now at the time, these were interpreted differently due to the vagueness of how they were portrayed. We have since come to know what the intent of the meaning was, but that was not apparent at the release.

• [1]Was interpreted that each character could know and search for info that only that character knew. Reality, not there yet. Reveals are an all or none currently.
  
  [2]Kind of a subset of the first, with a dash of missing in game calendaring (our campaign is very time line driven and without a good calendar, determining where what group was was difficult) utilizing no calendar and a extremely basic storyboard concept. Granted this is compounded due to the complexities of our campaign that may not be like others and that our campaign alternates between two different groups which also exacerbates the situation. My players had hope of being able to time line each of their groups in game time relative to the other. The failure of RW on the DM end cascaded into the Players addition here as this could not be shared or revealed because it didn't exist in the DM side to do so.
  
  [3]This is a compound problem, again due to en-mass reveal, character driven goals could not be shared (imagine if the group knew one among them was a spy?) and those thoughts, plans could not be conveyed to just the DM since this was a one way street of information. Forcing those things to be noted and discussed outside the record of RW, which is why it was purchased to begin with.

I have always been (sorry Chemlak) the biggest banner waver for the Calendar. It is integral to our campaign to have multiple calendars based on Races, moons, and geo-politicals. BUT I have also gone on record that I can continue (and have) with my access program and excel to manage that, just as I have for the 20 years in the past. Only if that is further supporting the Player versioning to what it should be. As for now, unless you simply use it as a sudoskype gaming session its DOA.

Again that is just perception of players who have purchased it and tried to use in in a campaign that has 30 years of real world back history built into the game. I assume part of the blame for their purchase, as I had championed it as a good tool to manage the elements (and others) above based on what I thought I knew about RW at the time and how that would work with the Player version. Some of those assumptions were misled on LW part others my eagerness to actually have a tool we all had hoped for...

It is what is is... My players have casted it aside and I use it as an electronic filecabinet with the waning hope that someday "soon" will come.

[Dark Lord Galen]

Originally Posted by Zortek

......... This may seem like linguistic acrobatics or pedantic frivolity; however, the distinction is well documented in business process management and continuous improvement practice (and well beyond the polite scope of social brevity).

LOL ROFL Now thats Funny!

Originally Posted by Zortek

I appreciate your feedback. And I believe we are well within the fuzzy boundaries of agreement.

Agreed I think the community as a whole for this thread is vocalizing the same basic elements .. in for a penny in for a pound....

Originally Posted by Zortek

I too desire no flame war. While I insist on projecting a tone that ranges from coaching to finger-waggling toward LWD, I pray my tone with you has been even more constructive.

AGREED and Bravo Sir

[EightBitz]

Originally Posted by Dark Lord Galen

LOL ROFL Now thats Funny!


Agreed I think the community as a whole for this thread is vocalizing the same basic elements .. in for a penny in for a pound....




AGREED and Bravo Sir

No, not even that so much. "in for a penny, in for a pound" is a metaphor for investing MORE of something. For instance: "You already bought the main program and five player licenses, why not buy three more?" Or "Why not wait for the content market and buy just one adventure path and see what an 'official' realm looks like."

But no one is suggesting that sort of thing. We're saying, "you're in for a penny ... you don't have to go in for a pound. Just don't waste penny's worth."

[ChipmunkPDX]

I am coming from a long time player to a first time GM. Most of my extra income has gone directly to Paizo and Lone Wolf. I am the kind of person who needs the physical books, PDFs just don't do it for me. I have also bought all but AP and campaigns expansions for hero lab...hundreds of dollars. I don't want anyone to think just because of my frustration with Realm Works that I'm at all disappointed in Hero Labs. I think that is amazing. (Including their support for MAC and iOS)

I guess I was expecting Realm Works to be further along from what I read. Being a MAC person, I actually went out and bought a Microsoft laptop just so I can try Realm Works. I write code for a big chunk of my job, and understand delays, but when going through their releases... just seemed like they would have been further along. So my expectations didn't match the experience. I agree after looking at other options that there isn't much out there... so I think I will pass on being a GM for awhile and continue to enjoy playing in campaigns until I get the urge to try once more.... by then hopefully Realm Works will have what I expected it to have to help me.

[adzling]

Originally Posted by ChipmunkPDX

I guess I was expecting Realm Works to be further along from what I read. Being a MAC person, I actually went out and bought a Microsoft laptop just so I can try Realm Works.

I run realmworks on my mac via parallels.

works great@!

[EightBitz]

Originally Posted by ChipmunkPDX

I am coming from a long time player to a first time GM. Most of my extra income has gone directly to Paizo and Lone Wolf. I am the kind of person who needs the physical books, PDFs just don't do it for me. I have also bought all but AP and campaigns expansions for hero lab...hundreds of dollars. I don't want anyone to think just because of my frustration with Realm Works that I'm at all disappointed in Hero Labs. I think that is amazing. (Including their support for MAC and iOS)

I guess I was expecting Realm Works to be further along from what I read. Being a MAC person, I actually went out and bought a Microsoft laptop just so I can try Realm Works. I write code for a big chunk of my job, and understand delays, but when going through their releases... just seemed like they would have been further along. So my expectations didn't match the experience. I agree after looking at other options that there isn't much out there... so I think I will pass on being a GM for awhile and continue to enjoy playing in campaigns until I get the urge to try once more.... by then hopefully Realm Works will have what I expected it to have to help me.

Keep an eye on the Humble Books Bundles. In the past ... maybe year or so? Paizo has offered two PDF bundles for quite a good deal. The first was a rule book collection (Core Rulebook, the Advanced guides, the Ultimate guides), and the second and more recent one was a bundle of adventure paths.

I got the first, but not the second, as I don't currently have disposable income. I have no idea if Paizo will offer other bundles through this site, but if they do, you can save a LOT of money.

You get the codes to unlock the PDFs on Paizo's site, so it's all perfectly official. There's nothing shifty about this. The Bundle of Holding site supports charities, and they work with content providers to offer different deals every couple of weeks or every month or however often they change.

Even if you don't find Paizo stuff there, it's a great site to watch for other deals.

https://www.humblebundle.com/books

And there's also the Bundle of Holding. It's a different site (I'm guessing a different organization), but the same concept, and it focuses specifically on RPG books. I have not yet seen any Pathfinder stuff there. They usually work with titles from DrivethruRPG. But that's not to say there never WILL be Pathfinder stuff there. Just keep an eye out.

https://bundleofholding.com

I think you can sign up for email updates on both sites.

[GamingSam]

If I may add my experience as someone new to Realm Works and Hero Lab

Originally Posted by ChipmunkPDX

I am the kind of person who needs the physical books, PDFs just don't do it for me.

Yes, me too. To actually read and learn a system, I prefer a physical book. During play, when I need to look something up quick, I use a PDF or some other method.

Back when I started gaming carrying an Amiga and 14" CRT to someones house for computer aid was not a consideration (and there wouldn't have been any useful software for it anyway!)

But then, 25 years ago I could keep most of a system and the adventure in my head. 15 years ago I could keep some of it in there and was sharp enough to wing the rest. These days I need something written down and easy to locate.

Originally Posted by ChipmunkPDX

I guess I was expecting Realm Works to be further along from what I read. Being a MAC person, I actually went out and bought a Microsoft laptop just so I can try Realm Works. I write code for a big chunk of my job, and understand delays, but when going through their releases... just seemed like they would have been further along. So my expectations didn't match the experience. I agree after looking at other options that there isn't much out there... so I think I will pass on being a GM for awhile and continue to enjoy playing in campaigns until I get the urge to try once more.... by then hopefully Realm Works will have what I expected it to have to help me.

I have also bought a Microsoft laptop just to run Realm Works and Campaign Cartographer. Actually, I have been running the latter on the Mac under VMWare Fusion, but I will be moving it across. I also have Hero Labs on the laptop now.

I have come from developing plots on Scrivener, a program I really like using. Take Scrivener, put in clickable cross referencing, make it not just handle images properly inline but also part of the cross referencing mechanic, make it less general and more specific to RPGs... this is getting on for being perfect.

It is interesting to me, as I recognize the frustration of a long term user expecting the product to be going somewhere at a reasonable speed. I have made similar remarks on completely different, unrelated, products over the years.

Coming in new to it, it feels almost complete. It could do with some more tweaks around text entry and organisation, but 'as is' is perfectly usable for me.

The ability to print out player hand outs is the other thing, I can see the usefulness of revealing information to players in real time. However, I suspect I will never use this. As for pushing data out to their devices, do people actually do this? Sitting in a room together and looking at their screens? Most of my group would probably need to learn how to use an iPad without hurting themselves first.

I'm not getting the content market either. Is this for system rules? What does it give over a clickable PDF? I can see it for house rules or cutting down long lists for settings, for example a reduced advantage/disadvantage list in GURPS that is allowed in the game, but these would be hand crafted anyway.

For actual modules? Couldn't these be done now as non-system specific with placeholders for the system specific parts, i.e. items, monsters, etc? These could be linked in from Hero Labs NPCs using your system of choice?

Oddly enough, it is Hero Lab I'm less enamored with.

Anyway, enough of my rambling.

Sam.

[EightBitz]

Realm Works isn't designed to push out live updates to people at the table. It's designed for the GM to keep his world/adventure/campaign/rules organized, and to keep track of what's been revealed to players.

After the game session, the GM can sync to the cloud, and anyone with a player version can review all the revealed data between game sessions.

Alternatively, the GM can review revealed data to easily offer a recap at the next session.

As for printing, you can do that now. When LWD introduced the import/export function, the first thing I did was write a PowerShell script that transforms the XML output into HTML. You can take that HTML output and publish it on the web, print it to PDF or print it to your printer.

When you export, you have the option of exporting everything, only certain topics, or only player-revealed content. So that gives you pretty good flexibility to print session recaps or to configure how you want to compile and manage handouts.

After refining that to make it more functional and usable, the next thing I did was add an option for Word output. So now you can easily and directly edit your output in a fully functional word processor.

Right now, I have two users with reported issues, and I will do my best to address those issues, but I know that other people are using the script with no issues at all.

[GamingSam]

Your explanation of the player update functionality makes more sense.

I did read the script thread, but not fully it seems. I had not realized i could export only certain parts and then let your script convert it, most useful.

Sam.

[kbs666]

I've used Scrivener and it's not bad. But it isn't RW. Nothing does what RW does. The RW linker puts RW in a class by itself.

Once you've used RW for a while and explored it the other features start to really become important, if some of them could use some work too. The relationship system is AFAIK unique to RW and is vital to how I run games now. The storyboard lets me model my plots visually.

And the fact is the folks at LWD are clearly trying to get the CM out so they can increase sales. This may not matter much to us but its how they keep the lights on. Which is how we get the new features that do matter to us. I say let them figure out how to sell and deliver the CM realms and then get back to improving RW before declaring the package beyond salvaging.