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Make RealmWorks Usable for Actual Tabletop Gaming (Another Print/Export Thread)

F

FlippySquirrel

New member
As suggested in the rules, I've searched and seen a couple of print/export threads, all of which are at least three years old and none of which appear to arrive at any actual resolution.

It is preposterous to me that a program like this, with as much sophistication as it appears to have, doesn't have a way to print or export data. Ever since I've discovered this, I've stopped using the software.

I've no interest in running a game with my players huddled over a computer monitor, so I can click around a selectively reveal content to them. That's idiotic, and completely removes the enjoyment of the game for me.

I feel that if I put something into this software, I'd better be able to get it out, and not in some proprietary format that's only usable within the same software.

Can someone from LoneWolf tell me if there's going to be a means to actually get at my data, or if I should just dump the investment I've made in RW and HeroLab and move onto something better, like Notepad.
 
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LWD are unlikely to provide a general print function, since that will be a way of bypassing the DRM for the modules which they are going to be publishing.

However, there is a community-produced tool which will allow you to print your own data after you've exported it from Realm Works. Note that Realm Works does allow you to export your own data, it will be an XML.

The "selective reveal" is not intended to provide on-the-fly updates to the players during a gaming session. It is only intended to provide information for players to look at between sessions - to keep up-to-date with the latest events, or for their own analysis of plot details which they might have missed during a gaming session.

(The direct link is in forum post http://forums.wolflair.com/showpost.php?p=260221&postcount=167, from the thread at http://forums.wolflair.com/showthread.php?t=57418&page=17)
 
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The community-produced tool also allows you to convert your exported data into other formats rather than only printing it - so you can convert to PDF or HTML or Word.
 
You can use RW as a campaign and world management and creation tool.

During play use it as your notes for people, places, plots, etc.

Whenever something is relevant for the players show it on a screen in the room (ex. the TV) for all to see.

This way the players won't need to bring any gadgets and you can still show that lovely picture of the lurker in the dark alley to the players - or a part of a map or some text.
 
Vargr said:
You can use RW as a campaign and world management and creation tool.

During play use it as your notes for people, places, plots, etc.

Whenever something is relevant for the players show it on a screen in the room (ex. the TV) for all to see.

This way the players won't need to bring any gadgets and you can still show that lovely picture of the lurker in the dark alley to the players - or a part of a map or some text.
Click to expand...
This is how I use it. It is also how it is intended to be used. Live use by players at the gaming table is not an intended use case.

That all of my players do use gadgets is due to us playing PF and them all using HL to manage their PC's.

Everyone having a tablet or laptop at the table is far less clutter and distraction than the old days when everyone had a pile of books where they had to look stuff up whenever stuff came up. RW makes my part as GM so much better I cannot imagine doing without it. You really should try it before dismissing it.
 
Agree with kbs666.

RW has revitalised my gaming as a GM and made it fun again to create worlds, cities, Houses and plots.

I can not imagine not having it.

Sure, there is room for improvement - I guess that goes for everything in this world (except for my wife - she is perfect).

I think the curse of RW is that it is so phenomenally good at what it does so everyone wants it to do even more.
 
kbs666 said:
Everyone having a tablet or laptop at the table is far less clutter and distraction than the old days when everyone had a pile of books where they had to look stuff up whenever stuff came up. RW makes my part as GM so much better I cannot imagine doing without it. You really should try it before dismissing it.
Click to expand...

I have one person that doesn't use a device at the table and between his stack of books and his character sheet he takes up more room than anyone.

I wish I could mandate tablets over laptops though for players. But I hate the apple interface and wouldn't want to push that on anyone. HLO will fix that issue though.
 
Toblakai said:
I have one person that doesn't use a device at the table and between his stack of books and his character sheet he takes up more room than anyone.

I wish I could mandate tablets over laptops though for players. But I hate the apple interface and wouldn't want to push that on anyone. HLO will fix that issue though.
Click to expand...
I had one holdout for about a year and the time it was taking him to do stuff like apply buffs and the mistakes he was making leveling up became such an issue that I finally mandated he at least use HL to print his character sheet between sessions. I think it was about 2 months after that before he started bringing a laptop to sessions.
 
Toblakai said:
I have one person that doesn't use a device at the table and between his stack of books and his character sheet he takes up more room than anyone.

I wish I could mandate tablets over laptops though for players. But I hate the apple interface and wouldn't want to push that on anyone. HLO will fix that issue though.
Click to expand...

Thanks to the success of the Surface, love it or hate it, you are going to see a lot more windows based tablets, a lot more.

One thing that will come of HLO, is giving people who love and want to use android the option to do so. This will open up a huge low cost alternative to the windows/ipad tablets, a boon for sure to the electronic gamer.

The surface was great game changer, two of us with them took less space then the guy with an 18' lappy!
 
Exmortis said:
The surface was great game changer, two of us with them took less space then the guy with an 18' lappy!
Click to expand...

I hate to say it, but the Surface wasn't really the first tablet. Tablets have been gaining in popularity before Microsoft realised they needed to get in on the act.
 
Windows tablets that aren't the surface tend to be of low to mediocre quality. I've looked at quite a lot of them over the years. None significantly less expensive than the Surface are anywhere near as capable.
 
This is all useful information, and doesn't change the fact that RW is a fantastic program for everything except what I actually want. It's a shame, and silly, that such a conceptually simple feature never materialized.
 
As we already told you, you can print by the simple measure of exporting and using a community tool to convert. There actually are reasons why printing isn't available directly which are explained if you read the other threads on the subject.
 
kbs666 said:
As we already told you, you can print by the simple measure of exporting and using a community tool to convert. There actually are reasons why printing isn't available directly which are explained if you read the other threads on the subject.
Click to expand...

As the person who wrote that tool, I would still like to see an officially supported print/readable-export feature.

I don't recall seeing good reasons why this can't be done. Do you have links to those explanations? I'm not trying to be contrary. I would like to understand.
 
EightBitz said:
As the person who wrote that tool, I would still like to see an officially supported print/readable-export feature.

I don't recall seeing good reasons why this can't be done. Do you have links to those explanations? I'm not trying to be contrary. I would like to understand.
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The short answer was it would conflict with the DRM they were providing publishers.
 
EightBitz said:
If they can solve that issue for exports, why not for printing or exporting to a readable format?
Click to expand...

They didn't solve it.
None of the DRM'ed material will be appearing in the export file.

I think they don't want to officially add printing to the core product because it will not be able to print out their published material; it will only print user-entered data.
 
Farling said:
They didn't solve it.
None of the DRM'ed material will be appearing in the export file.

I think they don't want to officially add printing to the core product because it will not be able to print out their published material; it will only print user-entered data.
Click to expand...

OK, from a PR perspective, that kind of makes sense. I can see them wanting to avoid comments like, "Hey, there's a print option in the menu, and it's unusable! Your software sucks!"

With them leaving it out, at least there's no carrot dangling on a stick. I mean, it still sucks for some of us, but at least it's consistent and not confusing or misleading.
 
EightBitz said:
OK, from a PR perspective, that kind of makes sense. I can see them wanting to avoid comments like, "Hey, there's a print option in the menu, and it's unusable! Your software sucks!"

With them leaving it out, at least there's no carrot dangling on a stick. I mean, it still sucks for some of us, but at least it's consistent and not confusing or misleading.
Click to expand...

Yeah, the PR problem would be a massive issue.
 
Sorry, just call the option "print non-copyrighted content" problem solved since option is very clear.

I would think that you can export material that is not flagged as non-copyable?

Didn't try any material that is not from myself to export though....
 
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