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ShadowChemosh
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Old August 26th, 2014, 05:06 PM
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Originally Posted by hollowheel View Post
It's a little frustrating to be talked down to.
I think you are reading WAY too much into his written words. Nothing in his post comes across to me that way. Honestly what I get is just someone who is just "mentally" tired and wrote without checking his wording a dozen times.

I know my written words often comes across way harsher then I have any intent for it to when i am rushed or tired.

Also not every one here is a tech person and it would be just as bad if he was only speaking to part of the users of RW.

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mirtos
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Old August 26th, 2014, 05:23 PM
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Originally Posted by ShadowChemosh View Post
I think you are reading WAY too much into his written words. Nothing in his post comes across to me that way. Honestly what I get is just someone who is just "mentally" tired and wrote without checking his wording a dozen times.

I know my written words often comes across way harsher then I have any intent for it to when i am rushed or tired.

Also not every one here is a tech person and it would be just as bad if he was only speaking to part of the users of RW.
I have to agree with Shadow on this. And even if 99.9% of his users are tech-savvy, as a business owner, Rob has to speak to everyone.

Thats the number one problem with buletin board sites, its easy to take offense. Ive seen it a lot in the last few days on different threads. (from many different people) I find it better to assume that people arent saying something to be rude, just that it might come across that way to yourself. If you read posts in that light, conversations happen much better.


Just my two cents.
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EightBitz
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Old August 26th, 2014, 05:50 PM
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Originally Posted by rob View Post
A brief bit of history...

The subject of export was always something we figured would be wanted at some point, but we honestly didn't think it would be all that important. The subject of printing, however, was never even considered, since our vision for Realm Works has always been digital delivery of content to players.

Prior to the Kickstarter, we'd spent well over a year with 100+ users on our Beta team, and printing was not something that I recall ever being mentioned, let alone a priority for anyone. During the Kickstarter, enough people asked for it that we put it on the roadmap for after we got all the core functionality into place.

We also realized that we needed to boost the priority of exporting, but it still remained something that was planned for after the core functionality. First, you need to get the content INTO the product. Then you need to get it to the players digitally, as we originally intended. Once that's done, getting it out via other means would make sense. It's a stepwise evolution. At least, that's been our thinking on the subject.
Rob,

I hope you realize you can also target writers with Realm Works. Short story writers, playwrights, novelists, screen writers. Realm Works has a lot Potential (with a capital P) beyond your original vision.

Imagine someone has a long running series, like Star Trek, or a story arc series like Babylon 5. A product like Realm Works could track every character across every episode and facilitate continuity checking.

With a story arc series, the head writer could share limited content with an episode writer or with certain actors so they know only as much as they need to at the moment.

I'm sure there are other tools out there that are used for these things, but I doubt that they all have all the features of Realm Works, let alone all the planned features.

There may be a whole suite of feature requests that comes along with such a thing, including "we'd like our own, private cloud server", but those requests could also come with "here's my checkbook, tell me your price."

So, just wanted to tell you, I think you're selling your product short.
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hollowheel
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Old August 26th, 2014, 06:35 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by mirtos View Post
I have to agree with Shadow on this. And even if 99.9% of his users are tech-savvy, as a business owner, Rob has to speak to everyone.

Thats the number one problem with buletin board sites, its easy to take offense. Ive seen it a lot in the last few days on different threads. (from many different people) I find it better to assume that people arent saying something to be rude, just that it might come across that way to yourself. If you read posts in that light, conversations happen much better.


Just my two cents.
Actually, I didn't mean to suggest that what he was describing required tech savvy. I meant that his choice of words "I'm certain none of you have considered" was condescending.

But it goes to your point. Forum communication is often rife with misunderstandings, and I'll admit I was getting a little irritated and maybe misjudged Rob.
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Exmortis
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Old August 27th, 2014, 05:18 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by hollowheel View Post
Actually, I didn't mean to suggest that what he was describing required tech savvy. I meant that his choice of words "I'm certain none of you have considered" was condescending.

But it goes to your point. Forum communication is often rife with misunderstandings, and I'll admit I was getting a little irritated and maybe misjudged Rob.
To play the other side, I had not considered what Rob said. And it has nothing to do with me being a geek on celestial proportions (both my geekness and my rotundness ok I have not eaten that many donuts, but could stand to lose a few). RW for me is a place to put my personal creation, my campaign world, and yes I take inspiration from many sources, but in the end it is all for my groups play and enjoyment. I do not even consider it for anything other use.

So in my context, I had not even considered the idea that if RW contained licensed material that could be exported and misused, because my intent is personal use only. I guess being a straight shooter and one buys everything, I despise thieves, and if I cannot afford it, I go with out until my piggy bank allows me otherwise, put me in Rob's labelled group.

And I took no offense.
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EightBitz
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Old August 27th, 2014, 07:45 AM
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Originally Posted by Viking2054 View Post
Personally, I can be patient, but I would like Printing eventually. I'm not as worried about exporting though. Personally, I don't throw up web pages and with the Player Edition coming soon (hopefully) I shouldn't have to. Player Edition will allow my players to peruse the content I have put into Realm Works and revealed to them at their leisure.

However I like to print my notes, characters, monsters and other items I need to tell the story at the table. I may eventually use my laptop at the gaming table, but it can also get in the way, in my opinion.

Just a question though... How hard would it be to prevent printing to file or PDF printer? If you could ensure printing to paper printers only then that would solve some of our needs and might mollify Digital Rights Management requirements.
Many of us want the print/export feature to manage our own content in digital format. We want to avoid double entry of characters, plots and concepts that we create. Paper-only printing would not meet that need. There was another comment somewhere on these forums where someone mentioned that without this ability, Realm Works is just another product that locks in your data. The poster used different words, but to the same effect.

As far as other people's content, paper-only printing would prevent people from being able to print to a PDF that they could transfer to their tablet to study and annotate offline.

We take tablets for granted today, but it wasn't too long ago that they were an amazing technology. I find it sad that we have all this amazing technology that the industry keeps trying to prevent us from using.
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Ladyofdragons
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Old August 27th, 2014, 10:16 AM
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Originally Posted by EightBitz View Post
As far as other people's content, paper-only printing would prevent people from being able to print to a PDF that they could transfer to their tablet to study and annotate offline.
There is no such thing as paper-only printing anymore. I have the full version of Acrobat on my computer, so I can print to Acrobat as though it were a printer (it's listed as a printer in any program I use), which creates a PDF that looks the same as it would if I had done "export to PDF". There are other methods of doing the same thing. It's all just pixels and ASCII.

I understand Rob's point of view, they're stuck in the middle of the publishers wanting to get paid for their work and the consumers wanting to do exactly what they want with what's supposedly already theirs. I think both sides are a tad unrealistic.

What I would like to see:
* Export to XML of content owned by my account. I know XML isn't everyone's cup of tea, but I can use it to pull into Microsoft Word or something else to print up the content exactly how I want to see it. If it's out there to use then those of us who can do things with it will provide the functionality for those who want it. This would require the additional functionality of providing an OWNED ACCOUNT piece of metadata for each snippet, which may not exist. Not my content? I can't export it. Can't get any more secure than that, as anyone can choose to sit there and spend hours and hours entering book data and attempting to share it on the marketplace. And then the TOS and admins should come down on them and remove the content.

* Phase 1: SIMPLEST PRINTING EVER. You get to print the currently viewed topic (or image) like it looks on the page. Sure, it's not outputting your whole campaign into book format, but it'll get you that monster/encounter/ransom letter you need to pass out to your players. later on do more phases? possibly. But this would definitely be something.

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AEIOU
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Old August 27th, 2014, 11:15 AM
Stuck in the middle is most certainly the right phrase....

I see Realm Works as the Napster of the gaming industry. It is undoubtedly being challenged by the gaming industry which is being forced to rethink media production and distribution. I'm hoping that the lessons learned from the last 20 years of change in the other media industries will help Lone Wolf negotiate an amiable solution that makes publishers happy while providing us gamers with an amazing tool for more effectively visualizing and managing the people, places and things that have always lived in our heads.
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AEIOU
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Old August 27th, 2014, 11:19 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ladyofdragons View Post
* Phase 1: SIMPLEST PRINTING EVER. You get to print the currently viewed topic (or image) like it looks on the page. Sure, it's not outputting your whole campaign into book format, but it'll get you that monster/encounter/ransom letter you need to pass out to your players. later on do more phases? possibly. But this would definitely be something.
I agree. We can screen print or use the snipping tool, so this would be simplifying a process that is already possible without stepping on toes.

What may be workable for publishers and Lone Wolf is a compromise for an authoring add-on that would provide royalties to publishers whose work is referenced. An extra $$$ per month to access formatting and templating.
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rob
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Old August 28th, 2014, 04:17 AM
@hollowwheel, etal: Sorry for my choice of wording. I was mostly reacting to the assertion that "it's easy because it's in a database" (paraphrased). Since nobody had even alluded to the complexities and comments were being made about how it should be easy, I let the emotions take over and (wrongly) declared that nobody had considered the complexities involved. I'm sure many hadn't but it was a gross generalization on my part. Apologies to all.

Please understand that my involvement here on the forums is time I'm not spending on a myriad other tasks that also need to get done. The most fundamental of those is coding, as I'm an integral part of implementing core functionality within Realm Works. Heck, I'm often the critical path. So I'm trying to be as helpful as I can here on the forums in as little time investment as possible. And every minute I spend here equals a further delay in getting Player Edition and all the other features everyone is clamoring for into place. That means I don't spend copious time reviewing and editing every word I write. If it gets to a point where I have to do that, I'll have no choice but to curtail my posting to a bare minimum, and that doesn't really help anyone either.

Please cut me a little slack and I'll endeavor to take a deep breath before posting so that I avoid knee-jerk, gross generalizations like occurred above. Is that reasonable?
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