Realm Works Users' Vent in the HLO Forum

daplunk · Sep 4, 2020

Opening from Rob:

NOTE! Due to our antiquated forums not allowing me to move posts from one thread to another AND keep my initial post in this thread at the top, I'm stuck having to edit the first migrated post. That certainly is not my desire, but it's the only option I appear to have.

I have created this thread as a separate and more suitable thread for Realm Works users who are choosing to vent in the HLO forum. Except for the "segue" in daplunk's initial post below and one additional comment, the rest are simply RW users venting, so all the posts have been moved here. For context, this thread kicks in after post #44 in the thread here: http://forums.wolflair.com/showthread.php?t=64521

Based on daplunk's initial post, he rightly wants me to engage in this forum, and I read his post as a plea for me to do that. So mission accomplished, you've got my attention. However, some of the subsequent comments struck a bad chord with me, and I won't be responding immediately to ensure that I don't let emotions cloud my words. I will get back to this thread sometime over the 3-day weekend here in the States. In the meantime, you can share further thoughts here if you choose.

And now for @daplunk's original post...

Sounds like a familiar story. I can see a familiar community forming behind you again in hope.

We all know how it already ended for the Realm Works corner though. We stood behind you for years through the copious issues LWD and you have personally endured. You got to a point where you were finally ready to launch the ability to make some money and the next minute you pull the rug out from below our feet and drop support altogether.

I honestly wouldn't be that mad if you hadn't patched in a tool breaking bug. Sure you promised to fix it back what a year ago? Whats the status of that fix?

I can't understand how a company who I saw in such a positive light is just so comfortable with releasing the store and selling customers content that relies on the RW/HLC functionality and then breaking it and then just leaving us to rot in the corner. You sold us import packs and then left the ability to import broken.

Where are you Rob? Because the Rob I know, cared so much about his products and his community that he would have dedicated the time to fix the issue he introduced.

At this point you have solely put LWD on the red list for me. Not to be trusted until they can prove they have the management and team ready to support the promises they make. And this post is writing on the wall for me. A story we have seen before and an outcome that will in this case leave people angry. You can't continue to run a server only solution on your pc after-all.

You will probably get angry over this post. But lets be honest. I communicated this to you via the private channels and the crickets gave a resounding answer of lack of care.

The RW community want to know what you are going to resolve the bugs you implemented Rob. Why don't you pop on over and let us know when that may occur.

I wish i could have moved on from LWD altogether. But the old Rob made great tools and the competition hasn't quite caught up to you yet.

Jaynay27 · Sep 4, 2020

I could not agree more with this post.

I love Herolab Classic and bought a ton of content for it.
I loved the idea of RW and was a kickstarter backer with lifetime access.

I even kinda like HLO, but after my subscription lapsed I wasn't too quick to renew it. we had a game last night and I levelled up, thinking I better renew my subscription now, but the more I thought about it, the more I just realised I am going to look for other solutions. I discussed it with the other players and they all pretty much agreed with me regarding their feelings towards LWD.

I was a champion for LWD. I spread the word and generated sales. so sad to see how the mighty have fallen. My only wish now was there was a site like DnD Beyond but for pathfinder. Its not perfect, but I like the business model more and can just buy what I want. And I bought everything from them. Those $$$ could have gone to LWD, but sadly I too have lost faith in the company.

Madmaxneo · Sep 4, 2020

I agree so much, but it hurts. RW is such a great program still and leagues better than any competition out there right now. Maybe one day they will catch up.
I missed the Kickstarter but was quick to purchase it when I discovered how awesome it was. Then with all the awesome things you had planned I thought this was the program that would be everything I ever needed for my games. Now things have changed and it seems many of the promises will never be delivered. Now I dread the day that RW stops working for me and I hope someone comes out with something that is more comparable possibly with the ability to port my data from RW into a different tool.

On the flip side I do hope this not getting updates for RW is not an indication that Rob's health is deteriorating and may end badly. I hope and pray that is not the case.

Ualaa · Sep 4, 2020

Kind of torn too.

Hero Lab classic, for Pathfinder 1e.
Absolutely love that product, and use it massively and constantly.
Especially with the Spheres of Power, Spheres of Might and Path of War stuff, so love the 3pp support that is possible with the system.

I'd subscribe to Hero Lab Online, if it had the Pathfinder 1e system with similar 3pp support.
A few bucks a month isn't massive on the user's end, but a lot of us doing that would put reliable revenue into Lone Wolf's hands each month.

I bought Realm Works on what it could it do, not on what was promised during the Kickstarter.
I knew the product and based largely on Joshua Plunkett's videos bought the program.
I'm mostly happy with it, and use it extensively.
That bug, where a saved RW portfolio (my adventure) cannot be integrated into a running 64-bit Hero Lab... well that is massively annoying.
The fix is to not store the encounters in Realm Works, but rather just on my DropBox so they're easy to add to the portfolio with the characters in it.
It would have been nice to be able to use that RW interaction; I bought all the Bestiary's for RW, having already owned them for HLC, specifically for that functionality.

I like RW enough, that if our group runs an adventure path that has RW stuff, I'll buy it without hesitation.
But that bug is annoying and it would be great if it was squashed at some point.

Ambush · Sep 4, 2020

Amen.

I think the most frustrating part for me is how long I held onto the hope that LW would support the people that supported them. The people that promoted the products, encouraged other people to support the kickstarter, devoted countless hours to helping LW's customers, because LW was busy doing other things. And then *poof*, what little support we had was gone, announced in another product's forum.

Sadly, I hadn't even thought about LW all that much lately, given that I find RW to be so painfully slow that it's all but unusable for me. That is, right up until they had the audacity to try and hit me up for more money for a product that they never finished after they already took my money on and then abandoned.

Nah. I'm good for now.

Greebo · Sep 4, 2020

Absolutely. Same here.

As the things currently are, I am only lingering on until one of the quite actively developing competitors closes in enough and provides me with an import tool for my data.

Valyar · Sep 5, 2020

I can't say it better. Amen!

Realm Works is the tool that transformed by hobby life forever and helped me tremendously to improve my trade as game master. It sparked back the love for running a game by providing this single-source of reference and rules that I can use, removing the painful necessity to have many PDFs/books opened during session.

Today, Realm Works is the best campaign manager and I am heavily using it until its very end. I will not move to something else until it exists and is technically possible to run it.

I understand the business problems and how they can impact the product, but there is no excuse for the deadly and painful silence from LWD, that definitely stopped me to further advertise the product as I did before.

Nothing is lost completely, you can make this tool great again. None of your competition is there yet, but the moment someone decides to provide offline and no subscription based product, it is over. Please, don't allow that. There are many ways to get revenue and I own many programs that require paid upgrades between major versions and this is completely fine!

PS: I still pay the yearly cloud subscription with single machine. I am that supportive.

lancealittle · Sep 5, 2020

Sad to say we have been left out in the cold.
Rob needs to either put a few hours a week into RW, or sell it to someone who would...
Keeping thousands of users in limbo just isnt right - we want RW to be actively supported again.
Quit screwing us Rob, we aren't going away !

ruhar · Sep 5, 2020

I completely agree. I stood behind LWD and Rob even when people were starting to complain. I talked to Rob at GenCon, he was very helpful in explaining how to do things in RW. I was so impressed that I often held my tongue and even gave my support during disagreements. Then out of the blue Rob kills everything. Dead.

RW is still a great program and I still use it. But my loyalty to LWD and to Rob is dead. We all believed and supported the dream. As GMs, we do a lot of work to create the sessions we run. We deserve some help with the process and RW did that. But Rob killed it. We still use RW because it's still good. But in time, something better with better support will come along. When that day comes RW will fade away.

nightpanda2810 · Sep 5, 2020

Adding my 2 cents. Pretty much agree with everyone's post. I still use RW and will until I can't anymore, or something else comes out that actually works similarly. The automatic linking IMO is the most useful part. I've found nothing that even comes close.

Please, bring back some support!

Lexin · Sep 6, 2020

Totally agree. Nothing comes close to RW, and I wish it was still supported rather than waiting in limbo until some M$ update breaks it completely.

Valyar · Sep 6, 2020

Virtual machines!

medwards89 · Sep 6, 2020

Hard to post on here as I really do not want to add to the pile. Yes, I am pissed I spent $50 on a product and it's key (to me) component is broke with no fix in sight (HLC integration). The content market is a disappointment. I hate pay for HLO, waiting for the other shoe to drop. I miss the days when I could end an argument about a character at the table with a mere mention of your products name. I used to preach to other players on how the just HAD to get your products. I miss those days. I do hope it gets better, I really do.

the_redbeard · Sep 6, 2020

Still haven't moved on from RW.
My campaign is currently on hiatus. Last I checked, none of the competition had the features that I need to run an evolving sandbox, at least not at the same price (World Anvil could possibly at the $100/year mark.)

Because I have 70+ sessions of player history in the campaign world, it would take a lot to get me away from RW. I don't use HL or HLO, and don't have much use for the content market. I bought some anyway, a little to try it but mostly to support RW. Too bad it wasn't enough.

But at the same time, RW doesn't have what I would really want - web view and per player reveal. And while I have a lot of data, it's also a mess as my first big effort - there'd be some value in restarting. So I am relatively aware of the competition.

Wish I'd have a reason to restart within RW.

Happydevil43 · Sep 7, 2020

I'd like to use RW - but every time I run a session with it, it crashes. I will admit that I was using a content market AP, but still - lock ups 90 minutes in causing full system reboots.... curiously ONLY during game sessions - where I am flicking between tabs....and I have a grunty laptop only running RW and either Maptools, Foundry or Arkenforge...and either windows chromium or chrome itself - unfortunately at the moment its a nope.....

I tried:
World Anvil - too expensive, no content linking
Chronica - have to pay per campaign to unlock higher features..bleh.
Yarps - Just Nope

I may try RW again as we are about to move to PF2, so maybe its a content market thing... but at the moment I have moved on to Onenote until the competition catches up..

Laurens · Sep 7, 2020

I still support RW

I don't use it much as my campaign is pretty much just improvisation, but it is just so bloody great when I use it. Yes it's slow, but if just I give it enough computer power it works just fine. I'm really missing the integration with HL as well, but i work around it.

I recommend reading Robs comments on the HLO thread. Man that company have had bad luck.
To be honest I might have made the same prioritations, if I were in their place.
They got to make some money, RW's just doesn't given the same amounts, as the other programs.
So yeah I still hope for this program, and even pay the cloud subscription because it is: outdated, nonsupported and have a major bug. It is still bloody great!

The_Traveller · Sep 7, 2020

Laurens,

I use RW when running D&D adventurers league and I use HL to manage all my encounters. There is a simple work around. I have both the 64 and 32 bit version of HLC on my computer. I start the 32 bit version of HLC and load up my table portfolio (its just a set of 7 generic players to represent my table). Then I start up RW. From there the integration works just fine. I'm able to load my encounters with no issue.

RW might be outdated, non-supported and have bugs (like a cheap motel/hostel) which now that I say it makes it sound pretty bad except when you compare it to all the other products it competes with....

daplunk · Sep 7, 2020

I agree with this completely... except for... leave the tool functioning the way it was. I think the community would be relatively acceptable of the situation if the following was resolved:

Ability to import. There was a patch that broke the versioning. There was a patch that tried to fix it but that introduced further crashing.
Fix the issues with RW to HLC integration.

I think it was bad form to release the Content Market. Take people's money and then leave these very key features broken for such a long period of time.

I respect Rob's need to get his boat headed in the right direction. HLO is an intelligent move. And RW was not scratching the itch for enough people.

Just address the functionality that we need to continue to use the tool.

rob · Sep 8, 2020

There are a diverse array of posts in this thread that I'm going to try to cover here, so this reply will be a bit lengthy. Grab a cup of your favorite beverage and strap on your safety harness. This could get a little bumpy...

Before I respond to anything else, I first need to address a recurring comment made in the posts above. Multiple people seem to think this is worthy of declaring "you're dead to me". Seriously? Over a $50 piece of software? Over a $50 piece of software that remains an excellent tool and is still demonstrably better than the competition? Boy, I'd hate to see how you react to someone who truly wrongs you.

More importantly, when you make a comment like "you're dead to me", take a moment to consider your audience. I literally came a hair's breadth from dying as a direct result of "working myself to death" on Realm Works. So that comment really strikes a nerve. Imagine having to explain to your young son that you almost died and it was because you worked so much that the stress almost killed you. Believe me, that's NOT a fun conversation. Nor is the haunting memory of that reality every day thereafter.

Please take a moment to actually ponder that before continuing here, as it will give you a better sense of where I'm coming from with all of this.
__________

I might as well continue with some important context that shapes the rest of this post and also answers (perhaps indirectly) a few of the questions posed above...

Prior to suspending work on Realm Works last fall, it was a money pit. Revenues from Hero Lab sales financed its development from the beginning, supplemented by funds invested by myself through loans and savings. The Kickstarter brought in a small chunk in the early going, but those funds were consumed by staff working on the product long before it first launched. We had up to 5 developers working on Realm Works for many years, plus additional staff focused on content. Lots of folks here on the forums can readily tell you how much that costs. The money I personally poured into Realm Works, over and above the funds leveraged from Hero Lab, dwarfed the amount brought in by the Kickstarter.

After my near-death experience, it took me about 3.5 years of horrific meds and rehabilitation to get back to some semblance of normalcy. During that time, I continued pouring resources into evolving Realm Works and getting the Content Market live, while I left Hero Lab to others. I was met with utter incompetence from certain companies that repeatedly undermined our efforts, and I was in no shape to solve all of our own challenges myself. Since I wasn't able to do all the work that was originally planned, lots of compromises were made in how the Content Market would operate, and most of that work was entrusted to others. As the Content Market took shape, I had misgivings about launching it, but there were numerous users screaming loudly that we had promised the Content Market, so we went through with it. When it finally launched, the Content Market was a shadow of the original vision and (perhaps unsurprisingly) experienced lackluster sales.

Meanwhile, Hero Lab had gotten into trouble due to my focus on Realm Works. Since Hero Lab paid the bills, that was obviously bad news. I clearly needed to invest the time and energy into Hero Lab to get that back into solid shape, so I refocused after the Content Market launched last spring. A few months later, I discovered the complete failure of the code underlying the Hero Lab server (described at length elsewhere), which meant we weren't going to be releasing what was planned and our revenue projections were garbage. At that point, there was simply no choice in the matter. We had to cut staff, and my complete attention was needed on Hero Lab. Thankfully, I was on my way back towards normalcy from the rehab at that point, so I was able to rewrite the server code and oversee numerous other changes/improvements such that Hero Lab is now humming along nicely. More importantly to this thread, the need to cut staff meant there were simply no resources left to work on Realm Works.
__________

Which brings us to today, so I'll now respond to some of the above comments and concerns...

*** Multiple posts have made this personal by blatantly questioning my passion and dedication to the products we've created.

My response to you on this subject is "Bulls**t!" Do NOT question my commitment to our products. I've poured heart and soul into the products we've created. I've poured my personal savings into trying to achieve the vision behind Realm Works. Heck, I almost killed myself for Realm Works!

Where I failed is in coming up with a way to adequately monetize Realm Works and make it fiscally sound. I went all-in on Realm Works, both personally and professionally. And I failed to solve the financial angle. As many of the above posts convey, Realm Works remains technically superior to other options. But, in the end, it wasn't financially viable, and that's the bottom line.

If you feel compelled to cast aspersions, question the choices I've made all you want. But do NOT question my passion or dedication.

I have a bunch of employees who rely on me to make the choices necessary to keep them in that state - employed. At the end of the day, this is a business. I have to make tough choices and balance the fiscal reality of the business against achieving my vision of "gamer nerdvana". I made the call with Realm Works a year ago, and it was the right call.

If, at some point in the future, I come up with a different approach that could make Realm Works financially viable, I'd love to return to it in some form. But that won't happen until I figure out a viable financial model.
__________

*** Regarding the interaction issue between Realm Works and Hero Lab Classic...

We investigated this and it's NOT something we've broken within Realm Works. In fact, integration with the 32-bit version of Hero Lab continues to work fine. The problem is limited to the 64-bit version that we released last fall - at the exact same time all the upheaval occurred with Realm Works.

Due to the fundamental differences in Windows between the way 32-bit and 64-bit applications are orchestrated, coupled with the way external application integration is handled internally, Realm Works is currently not aware of the 64-bit version of Hero Lab. At present, there is no mechanism within Realm Works to simultaneously support both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the same external tool, and that's further complicated by the fact that Realm Works itself is only a 32-bit application. Adding this capability would entail a non-trivial amount of work.

If you want Hero Lab integration with Realm Works, the 32-bit version of Hero Lab works great. The primary benefit of the 64-bit version of Hero Lab is for people actively writing data files for large, complex game systems. If you're just using already-created data files, such as would be the case with Realm Works integration, the 32-bit version should be more than adequate.

I've previously shared this info with the person whom I assume is the "private channel" @daplunk referred to above, and I thought it had been relayed to folks. If it hasn't, withholding the info was certainly not my intention, and you now have it.
__________

*** Regarding the import bug within Realm Works build 254...

I chased down the developer who was on point with all this stuff (during a 3-day holiday weekend for him, by the way) to make sure I've got all the details on this. To the best of his knowledge, the import bug was fixed and made available as a Beta in December of last year, but it turns out we never made the fix official. There is a sticky post near the top of the Realm Works forums here with build 255 as a Beta. The build addresses the import problem, although the installer reports a signing certificate error that can be safely ignored. The developer that was supposed to address the certificate error got derailed to deal with an emergency (our hosting provider went out of business, so we had to urgently migrate everything to a new provider), after which it was never circled back to. Since I assumed it had been handled, I lost track of this issue.

After speaking with the developer, we can circle back to sort out the certificate issue and incorporate the import fix into an official build of Realm Works. In the meantime, that Beta from last year should address the import problem. Simply ignore the certificate error during installation.
__________

*** A few posters seem to believe that Hero Lab will suffer the same fate as Realm Works...

While I can see why someone might jump to that conclusion, it's a leap that's not founded on facts. Any attempt to ascribe what happened with Realm Works to Hero Lab is laughable, as the two aren't even remotely similar. Since the beginning, Hero Lab has been the primary source of funding for Realm Works. In other words, Hero Lab is financially sound, especially now that we've got Campaign Theater solidly in place and evolving.

We got into trouble with Hero Lab because I focused so acutely on Realm Works that I allowed Hero Lab to suffer. I've spent the past year rectifying that across all layers of the product, so we're now in an excellent position with Hero Lab. We're behind on game system content, but that has been a cyclic problem with Hero Lab for more than a decade, where we've gotten behind and then caught up again many times. More importantly, a key reason we've gotten behind on content this time has been due to investing the effort to address many of the long-standing issues within the data files (i.e. tech debt) that have led to recurring delays and setbacks over recent years. So Hero Lab is in solid shape and poised to become vastly more powerful over the next year.
__________

I hope this clarifies things and dispels some flawed assumptions that have been voiced in this thread. We'll get the import bug fix rolled into an official release so that nobody needs to chase down the Beta on the forums. Believe me when I say that I share the pain of seeing Realm Works sidelined, but also understand that it was a necessary decision.

Farling · Sep 8, 2020

Thanks for the update.

I think the comments about the future of HL were really related to the future of HLC and the ability of any HL product to support user-generated game systems.

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