Realm Works Progress Update

[kbs666]

Rob, worry less about writing code and more about getting healthy. Let the other developers spend some time learning the codebase. The sooner they are familiar with it the sooner they can lighten your load.

I'm sure you feel like, and it may be literally true, you have to keep LWD open all by yourself but you won't accomplish anything by relapsing or killing yourself. Follow your doctors orders, get some exercise (assuming that's allowed). You'll be amazed what a difference walking a couple of miles every day makes.

[medwards89]

Rob, I hope you get to feeling better. I really do.

[rob]

Originally Posted by AEIOU

@Rob: If you really are interested in honoring your KS commitments, Zach over at Frog God Games assured me he'd be happy to provide the files for The Blight to you. All you need to do is ask.

Nothing much has changed with The Blight as far as content or size from before the KS happened. There are 10 chapters on the city covering 13 areas (12 were advertised in the KS) and the adventure path is 9 episodes (12 were originally intended). It was always going to be a huge adventure setting as it was always advertised as having the city AND the adventures which LWD was aware of as that info is posted on the KS. And of course FGG has a well-earned reputation of creating bookshelf breaking books.

The Realm Works KS was in early 2013, which ended up being more than two years prior to the Blight KS launch. At the time we agreed to put Razor Coast and Blight into RW, our understanding was that both products would be of a similar size to a standard Paizo AP – roughly 400 pages. That was true for Razor Coast, but Blight is somewhere approaching 1,000 pages of material. That’s quite a difference from what we were expecting.

The above is really a secondary concern, though, and it’s rendered moot by another factor. The crux of the decision with Blight really centers on the behavior of the person who helms Frog God. Allow me to present a hypothetical…

Let’s say that you have a sibling or friend who goes to a work event where they have responsibilities to perform. That sibling is then pursued and subjected to unwanted advances by someone. That sibling politely declines the advances and leaves the area to avoid the individual who’s out of line, but the event itself cannot be left because of the work responsibilities. This process then repeats multiple times, all in front of various independent witnesses. It reaches a point where the independent witnesses are so offended by what they’re seeing that they seek permission from your sibling to call the police and press charges. Your sibling declines to press charges, not wanting to cause a scene, and the stalker is merely banned from the event. How would you feel towards the person that stalked your sibling or friend?

This is the situation that I found myself in regarding Frog God, and I’m sure those of you who’ve met me can guess what my inclinations were at the time. Suffice to say that my views of this individual are extremely negative, and I have no desire to ever interact with that individual. That view extends to the company I own and the company he runs.

A few out there may view this as “taking sides in the feminist movement”, since these events occurred to a female employee. That would be way off base, though, as this is much more fundamental. In fact, the employee wanted to sweep it under the rug and try operating as if nothing had happened. I said no, because the stalker crossed a line with me. For me, this is about simple human decency and respect for others, and even more so in a work environment (where the events took place). I’ve always striven to treat everyone I encounter with respect. While I’m certainly not perfect at it and have my share of other failings, I think those who have met and interacted with me will attest to that behavior. So I seek the same basic decency from others I choose to deal with. As Bill and Ted famously put it: “Be excellent to one another!” If someone can’t manage that at a very basic level – and the actions that took place go way past that threshold for me – then I choose not to do business with them.

So what are the implications? What this means is that all new work on anything to do with Frog God products has ceased from our end. That decision went into effect in mid-2017 (right after the events outlined above). New work would entail interacting with the company and likely the person at the helm. All we do at this point is send a quarterly report on past products, which requires zero interaction.

This begs the question of why we don’t stop selling all past Frog God products. Doing that would require work to take down support for previously sold Frog God add-ons while still making them available to those who’ve already purchased them. That work would need to be done by me, since I’m the one that set that stuff up many years ago, and that would further delay forward work on RW. So it’s not something we’re taking the time to do right now. Making it retroactive would also mean not delivering Razor Coast to KS backers, which would further complicate the KS situation when that product was already essentially done when the events occurred last year (its completion is waiting on one of the bugs to be fixed).

For KS backers, Blight is unfortunately caught up in this decision, as it came out after the events took place and the decision was made. We are therefore not beginning any work on it. What we’re doing instead is letting KS backers choose what they want in place of Blight from the assorted content that we’ll have available. I’m not aware of a more fair way of handling this.

To sum up: Someone close to me was stalked and subjected to repeated unwanted advances at a work event for my company. From a simple place of human decency, that’s not a behavior I can respect, let alone abide by. I’ve therefore chosen not to have any further dealings with the stalker or the company he runs. It’s as simple as that.

Thanks, Rob

[Chemlak]

FGG are on my “never buy from” list for exactly this reason, and I applaud you for your position, Rob.

[EightBitz]

Originally Posted by rob

@Eightbitz: I'm really sorry to hear about what happened with your mother. My heartfelt sympathies for what you must have gone through.

No apologies are necessary. I was really edgy due to the meds. So the fault lies with me for not properly recognizing what was going on within myself. Fortunately, BJ took away my keys before I crashed the family car.

She took away both our keys, which was probably for the best. Thank you for your sympathies, and ... you know ... get better.

[Valyar]

Rob, I wish you fast and complete recovery. Please ensure your health is your top priority and don't stretch yourself. Health can't be put aside and "deal with it later, in the next sprint".

First and foremost we must be normal human beings and the consumer urges should wait.

[Nikmal]

Be safe and be well Rob. Thanks for the updates.

[Nikmal]

I know this is really silly to ask and such a trivial thing too.. but for those of us that were the original beta testers and the KS backers were told that we would get forum badges, is this still going to happen?

I more just curious then concerned. I figured it would be easy to do and go a long way to the moral of the people that did back the KS and the Beta testers too. Plus maybe something you wouldn't have to do personally Rob?

[Philderbeast]

What we deserve right now is simply communication. Don't be a workaholic. I know that's easier said than done, but still. Get better.

This

I know I have made some pointed remarks about the state of realm works in the past, and as a professional programmer I do understand some of the difficulties you have been working through on a technical level.

finally getting some reasoning behind the delays defiantly helps and its much appreciated that you have decided to share the story with us.

However that said, again as a programmer, perhaps its time to learn from these delays and get at least one other dev in the company up to speed on this code, yes it will take time, but something like this should never have the knowledge fully invested in just one person so without them the whole product stops.

[rob]

Originally Posted by Philderbeast

However that said, again as a programmer, perhaps its time to learn from these delays and get at least one other dev in the company up to speed on this code, yes it will take time, but something like this should never have the knowledge fully invested in just one person so without them the whole product stops.

In an ideal world, you're absolutely correct. The gotcha is that, when the entire development team is only a handful in size, that's much easier said than done. And when there are this many projects being worked on, that's not easy to accomplish while still making the forward progress that we want - and that users are clamoring for. When we grew the team by two additional people earlier this year, knowledge overlap was definitely a priority and is something that we're progressing on. But there's a TON of stuff to get caught up on, so it's going to be a lengthy process to get there.