Is the players editions worth it without cloud service?

[H2Os]

I've had Realm Works since its release. I've been a bit put off by the sheer amount extra work needed to enter everything. I finally started entering information for a Shadowrun game I'm preparing to run. I thought about buying the 5 pack player edition, if I don't subscribe to the cloud service will the player editions not function with my realm?

[Exmortis]

Originally Posted by H2Os

I've had Realm Works since its release. I've been a bit put off by the sheer amount extra work needed to enter everything. I finally started entering information for a Shadowrun game I'm preparing to run. I thought about buying the 5 pack player edition, if I don't subscribe to the cloud service will the player editions not function with my realm?

Not really sure what you expected as far as work, but things do not magically appear in databases, it must be entered. Text does not appear on pages magically it must be typed or dictated by some one. I guess it is a lot of extra work, but if you only enter it in Realm Works....Well its actually less work then any other method I have used in the past.

Player edition currently is designed to only function as a sync tool with the cloud service as far as I am aware.

[MNBlockHead]

Short Answer. Wait until the Marketplace is ready and see if it offers content you would like to use, then buy the subscription. You can all the features of RW and save a lot of time.

Long answer:
Yes, it is a lot of work...now. But this is one reason why you may want to consider a subscription. Once the marketplace is live, you will be able to buy adventures that other people put the work into, with all the cool features of RW. Exmortis's reply reads a bit harsh to me. I think there are some people like myself and, from his response it seems Exmortis, who use RW to build and manage campaigns and enjoy the process even though it *is* a *lot* of work. But there are many others who would rather buy a module, but have all the features of RW to enhance that content.

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by MNBlockHead

Short Answer. Wait until the Marketplace is ready and see if it offers content you would like to use, then buy the subscription. You can all the features of RW and save a lot of time.

Long answer:
Yes, it is a lot of work...now. But this is one reason why you may want to consider a subscription. Once the marketplace is live, you will be able to buy adventures that other people put the work into, with all the cool features of RW. Exmortis's reply reads a bit harsh to me. I think there are some people like myself and, from his response it seems Exmortis, who use RW to build and manage campaigns and enjoy the process even though it *is* a *lot* of work. But there are many others who would rather buy a module, but have all the features of RW to enhance that content.

His question was pertaining to if the Player edition will work without the cloud.

answer - it doesn't seem so.

[liz]

Hey H2Os, it sounds like you're asking, "Will my players be able to see what I enter into Realm Works with Player Edition if I don't have cloud service?" Is that true?

If so, then the answer is no, unfortunately. For players to access revealed content independently of the GM, the realm needs to exist within the Realm Works cloud, which means that Cloud Services are necessary. We have additional information on our Frequently Asked Questions page, so I would suggest you check that out. I hope that helps!

[Fuzzy]

Because two computers in the same room couldn't possibly share information without a paid for middle-man across the globe.

That's okay, Hero Lab can't share information with any other computers either - and the stated reasoning for this decision is that internet connectivity is not everywhere people play RPG's... figure that out.

[Silveras]

That's unnecessarily snarky, and makes a terribly simplistic case out of something more complex.

If you want to have the information on two PCs, you can backup on one and restore on the other. Of course, you get two duplicates of ALL your realms that way.. not a "revealed information only in one Realm only" copy for the players.

Part of what the server does is to manage who gets access to what (at the player level now, and at the individual character level in the future)... and allows THEM to decide when they want to get an update... as well as to look at it from home between game sessions, or when the game is distributed and you're never in the same room to play.

HeroLab is not a comparable case... it is designed to be a portable electronic character sheet usable on a tablet or laptop at the game table for live updating.. primarily by the player. The data is stored locally, and no network connection is needed so that if the venue for the game doesn't have WiFi for everyone, or other network connectivity, there's no issue. It is also the case the while WiFi has become relatively common in some cities, that's a) a recent thing, not true when HeroLab's core was created and b) not the same as being common everywhere.

RealmWorks is a content distribution platform. It is a new medium for publishing content. It is closer to something like Amazon's Kindle, where the point is to have the connection from Amazon to your device for delivery of your content. That you can create your own content in the same platform is difference.

HeroLab is more like a word processing application on your device.. write what you like and copy the files where you need to in order to share. And the content is mostly of interest one player and one GM (maybe a few more).. who can easily share files if they like... as opposed to RealmWorks being a shared central repository for distribution, small scale (updates in your campaign to your players) or large scale (self-publishing your own world for others to use).

[liz]

Fuzzy, I think there’s a little bit of confusion here. Regardless of whether the computers are in the same room, the GM’s content needs to get into the Player Edition. It sounds like you’re asking why you cannot transfer the data to Player Edition via a flashbdrive or cloud storage like Dropbox, Skydrive, or GoogleDrive. I would recommend taking a look at Rob’s explanation here in this thread, but I’ll pull out part of his explanation to highlight how our cloud service works with Player Edition, and how it differs from Dropbox (the same reasoning would apply to transferring stuff via a flashdrive).

Originally Posted by rob

Our assumption is that you don't want to just give your players everything and trust them not to peek at things they're not supposed to know. With Dropbox, your only option is to give your players everything - the entire database contents. Alternately, you could manually edit down the file that you give them, but then you have to manually do that every time, which doesn't work so well. What the Realm Works server does is identify exactly the information that you have revealed and send that information down to the players. If you reveal different information to different players (something that we've got designed in but haven't fully added yet), then the Realm Works server will properly determine exactly what information you've revealed to the particular player who's syncing down your realm. Only that subset of information is sent down to the player, as it should.

As you can see, it’s different from just sharing files like you would with Word Documents or even Hero Lab portfolios.

[H2Os]

Hi Liz, thanks for replying. I have another question for you. Can I customize what each player sees? For example, I'm going to be inputting a handout into realm works. This handout will have 5 parts. I'll create each with its own snippet. Call them Snippet A, B, C, D, E. Can I reveal Snippet A to player 1 only, and snippet B to player 2 so on etc..?

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by liz

Fuzzy, I think there’s a little bit of confusion here. Regardless of whether the computers are in the same room, the GM’s content needs to get into the Player Edition. It sounds like you’re asking why you cannot transfer the data to Player Edition via a flashbdrive or cloud storage like Dropbox, Skydrive, or GoogleDrive. I would recommend taking a look at Rob’s explanation here in this thread, but I’ll pull out part of his explanation to highlight how our cloud service works with Player Edition, and how it differs from Dropbox (the same reasoning would apply to transferring stuff via a flashdrive).



As you can see, it’s different from just sharing files like you would with Word Documents or even Hero Lab portfolios.

No, going to a different cloud storage has the same issue. I would much prefer the GM edition act as the 'server' itself, and a player 'client' can connect to that. The frustrating part is that when asked about network features for Hero Lab, Rob's response was that he wasn't interested in that because many people don't have internet access where they play - then Realm Works comes out, and a major key feature of it depends on internet access.