How long, Really?

[chaoscowboy]

Hey thanks for the city of brass suggestion I'd never even heard of it! Going to give it a trial. And for all my bluster, I am very thankful I could get a refund from Realmworks. It doesn't fit what I need it to do and that's fine. I got my money back so there's really no hard feelings.

 

[EightBitz]

Hey thanks for the city of brass suggestion I'd never even heard of it! Going to give it a trial. And for all my bluster, I am very thankful I could get a refund from Realmworks. It doesn't fit what I need it to do and that's fine. I got my money back so there's really no hard feelings.

At least you tried it and saw for yourself.

 

[gamsOnline]

As for content,

The Emerald Spire demo they were presenting at their GenCon booth this weekend was very well done. Truly showed me a lot more of the detail and possibility with the software.

Personally, I have sat on my copy of RW for the past year, intimidated and overwhelmed by those possibilities. However, with the release of the CM this Fall, seeing exactly how that content will be incorporated, structurally, into existing Realms should shove me over that mountain of hesitation.

( My OCD demands that I do something correct the first time. LoL )

Keep at it LW.

Chatting with you all at GenCon was great at putting faces to names on forum posts. A nice reminder of the humanity residing behind the internet veil.

gams

 

[EightBitz]

As for content,

The Emerald Spire demo they were presenting at their GenCon booth this weekend was very well done. Truly showed me a lot more of the detail and possibility with the software.

Personally, I have sat on my copy of RW for the past year, intimidated and overwhelmed by those possibilities. However, with the release of the CM this Fall, seeing exactly how that content will be incorporated, structurally, into existing Realms should shove me over that mountain of hesitation.

( My OCD demands that I do something correct the first time. LoL )

Keep at it LW.

Chatting with you all at GenCon was great at putting faces to names on forum posts. A nice reminder of the humanity residing behind the internet veil.

gams

You'll never do things right the first time. You can move things around (as far as containers), so just start doing things. If you don't want to work on a real game or a real setting, just start playing around. In order to do things right, you should get a feel for how things work, and what effect it will have to do things one way vs. another way.

So, just start playing with it.

 

[kbs666]

You'll never do things right the first time. You can move things around (as far as containers), so just start doing things. If you don't want to work on a real game or a real setting, just start playing around. In order to do things right, you should get a feel for how things work, and what effect it will have to do things one way vs. another way.

So, just start playing with it.

Really this is the absolute best way to learn RW.

Or even pick some module, I used Village of Hommlet simply because I had it and had it functionally memorized from the number of times I've run it for people, and put it into RW.

 

[wurzel]

You mean companies that sell software with many more zeroes after the price tag than Realm Works?

Ah, yes. Many more zeroes. Stuff like Oracle, SAP and such. Things I used to earn money with.

I tend to forget that RealmWorks is free of charge, judging from that pespective. I apologize for my criticism

 

[eponette]

Ah, yes. Many more zeroes. Stuff like Oracle, SAP and such. Things I used to earn money with.

I tend to forget that RealmWorks is free of charge, judging from that pespective. I apologize for my criticism

Indeed. I find RW very cheap (not a reason to increase the price though )

I use it since the beginning (a little after the kickstarter) on 2 different campaigns. If you take the price of on session (drinks, food, ...), RW price is close to nothing.

 

[Chemlak]

Just poking my nose in, really.

I consider RW invaluable, I think I've mentioned a few times that I don't ever want to run a campaign without it. I am very much a casual user (at least until I start running a Pathfinder game again), and my GMing style is pretty "fly by the seat of my pants", but RW has drastically improved my overall game organisation and plotting.

I know that I'm an enthusiastic supporter of LWD, and it wouldn't surprise me if some people expect me to be a shill for the company, but here's how I see it:

RW is not for everyone. It is most certainly not all things to all people. It can't be, for starters, but there are huge swathes of features that aren't available which would either make it better, are essential for it to be all it can be, or were part of the original KS sales pitch, and those features aren't here yet.

So I absolutely get why some people aren't entirely happy about some things.

Personally, I'm okay with development times - not sure how much of it is my age, and how much of it is working for a company where the IT investment is a bit... dire, but long development is AOK with me.

I want a product that I can use right now. It doesn't need all the bells and whistles, but it needs to be something I can use to record details of my campaign and write up plots. I can do those things, so I've got the product that I want. I would like to have those bells and whistles, of course, but I don't need them.

 

[ShadowChemosh]

For a $50 product, that's about as big of a safety net as can be reasonably expected. And I believe that it's a lot more than many other software products offer. That's my opinion, at least.

Software that sells as cheap as 50 bucks often come with "upgrade" costs and zero to no support. You may get a year of "fixes" for 50 bucks but the next big change like "Market Place" in example would be another 50 dollar upgrade cost.

Based on Hero Lab and what we have seen for RW this is not LW business model. Which is why I am often stressing the "free" upgrades with NEW features people get for such a small price tag. Yes I say small price tag based on the number of hours of "use" you get out of the software. The ability to leave the software alone for a year and to be able to upgrade to the latest version without cost is crazy. To be able to put in a support ticket or forum post and get help no matter how long its been sense you purchased is amazing.

 

[EightBitz]

Software that sells as cheap as 50 bucks often come with "upgrade" costs and zero to no support. You may get a year of "fixes" for 50 bucks but the next big change like "Market Place" in example would be another 50 dollar upgrade cost.

Based on Hero Lab and what we have seen for RW this is not LW business model. Which is why I am often stressing the "free" upgrades with NEW features people get for such a small price tag. Yes I say small price tag based on the number of hours of "use" you get out of the software. The ability to leave the software alone for a year and to be able to upgrade to the latest version without cost is crazy. To be able to put in a support ticket or forum post and get help no matter how long its been sense you purchased is amazing.

Also, the licensing model. I installed the Windows 10 anniversary update, and I got a notice that it appeared that there were significant changes to my computer, and my license was now invalid, but I could move the license to this computer.

So I did. Just a menu option. Didn't have to call anyone or email anyone or wait on hold for anyone ... just selected a menu option. Bam. Done.

And people can gripe about needing licenses to begin with, but I don't care about that. I care about how intrusive the licensing model is. LW's is the easiest, friendliest, least intrusive model I've come across.

 

[MNBlockHead]

You mean companies that sell software with many more zeroes after the price tag than Realm Works?

I spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on software for my own company and I've helped companies make seven-figure software purchases.

No matter how many zeros are in the price tag, I've not seen anyone advertising or marketing what they don't do, with the rare exception of a product that takes the "we don't do everything, we just do this one thing better than anyone else" approach and that approach just doesn't work well with a Swiss-army-knife product like RW.

The main difference with pricey software and inexpensive hobby software like RW is that with the pricey software, you have a lot more access to the sales team, who you meet in person. You also have RFIs, RFPs, procurement experts, and a cross-functional teams who identify requirements, create business plans, etc.

The funny thing is, I've only spent $50 or whatever I spent when I bought RW and not a dime since, but through the forums I've had a great deal of direct access to the developers. Not just middlemen sales folk, not just user volunteer "evangelists," but the owner of the company and the guys writing the code.

The amount of communication and transparency seems very inefficient in terms of cost vs reward. The market here, I suppose, is somewhat special. LWD is serving a small but very passionate market. They are providing a tool that we use to create and store our creative efforts. But it is easy to see why there are not many people making the efforts and investments to provide software to support this market.

Maybe the vertical I work in is unusual. I would like to see examples of companies spending marking dollars advertising what they are not selling.

 

[MNBlockHead]

I want a product that I can use right now. It doesn't need all the bells and whistles, but it needs to be something I can use to record details of my campaign and write up plots. I can do those things, so I've got the product that I want. I would like to have those bells and whistles, of course, but I don't need them.

I second that! Though, I do note, and appreciate, that you still have your Chief Calendar Champion title in your signature line. KEEP THE FAITH!

 

[Tharmiones]

However, with the release of the CM this Fall,

I wouldn't place a bet with a single penny on that or any other date/time frame that is posted here from anyone INCLUDING the LW staff. I've been disappointed to often now that I do only believe something will get available to us once it is actually available and not a single second earlier.

I had high hopes for the GenCon that there would be some kind of presentation of actually NEW things, like what Content would be available at the first Wave that was mentioned in the GenCon Newsletter but as it turns out: Not a single bit of new information since April just the ever repeating "We are progressing".

Yeah I read the Releasenotes of the latest RW version that claim that it does contain significant changes for the upcoming CM. I'll tell you something: I don't care, I'm a kickstarter backer and from the features that where supposed to be done from the kickstarter only a very few are actually achieved with a delay of 3 YEARS.

What We Will Do With Your Support

As we indicated above, initial Realm Works development is nearly complete, with release slated for July, 2013. This Kickstarter will allow us to accelerate our current development efforts and pack more features into the product for its public release.

The key capabilities to benefit most from this Kickstarter are the cloud server and community repository components. Critical features of these two components include:

• Full player access to revealed aspects of the world and the ability to download or review anything they’ve learned about the world. Our Fog of World technology governs the information that players can access, limiting them to only what they’ve learned through play. [DONE]
  
• GMs can share their creations through the cloud for use by others. [Later than SOON]
  
• GMs can browse the work of others and integrate it into their own worlds. Imagine being able to find a pre-made encounter, or a tavern, or an entire region with adventures and NPCs. Drop it into your own world, change a few names, hook it into locations in your world, and it’s fully integrated for use. No scribbled notes. No Post-Its. No juggling between PDFs, books, and your own files. Realm Works is built from the ground up for exactly this purpose.[SOON + Later than SOON]
  
• Secure cloud backup of all material for GMs. [DONE]
  
• Synchronization of different computers to the cloud, with automatic change detection and resolution.[Partly]

We’ll also leverage your support to further refine the overall user experience and enhance the feature set offered by Realm Works.[Ongoing]

Player Access is done and is being improved with Web Access and potential other things. It is available for a bit longer than 1 1/2 year now.

The "automatic change detection and resolution" isn't anywhere as you can't change different things on different PC's at the same time because you will lose every change you make at one PC. Yes It detects a problem and all it does let you "resolve" is that you can choose to either have the Cloud or the Local Data be the master. That's not automatic that's manual and calling it a solution is quite far-fetched.

And as for Customer Calendars: It was mentioned as an already working feature during Kickstarter. Yes it turned out to be not as flexible and useful as it was expected to be, BUT within 3 years after the supposed release it's something that should be working again(!).

Countent Market is called as SOON so often I lost track.
Sure I can use RW to enter my own content or copy/organize published content from PDF to RW, but to be honest almost everything I could do now I could already do with the special pre-release version I got before the initial release. The only benefit would be that the players could use the Player Edition to access the Revealed content, yet no one from my group does. That last part is obviously not the fault of LW, but if it is just used by me the benefit is not as high as only having to buy already made content and tailor it a bit to fit my needs and run it.

Unfortunately I don't have the time to do that in every detail that I would like because I do also have a job and something else to do. So I'm more than willing to pay for others to do that for me, but even after three years I still can't.

Unfortunately there are no GenCon Videos for this year so far, if there ever will be.
So for a person that could not understand the only source so far is this board and reading that "NOTHING NEW" was presented I think that this is a bad sign. Well, I read it that instead of Rise of the Runelords the presentation on RW on the GenCon was done with the Emerald Spire Paizo Module? That's not even getting a "Cool" from me as presenting the same functionality that has been presented with RotRL for the last two years on GenCon with a different Module is not progress.
I could be totally wrong but as said before the only source I have available is this board and the statement here was "NOTHING NEW".

 

[adzling]

the below +1000.
this is what our group needs and what, frankly, I thought RW would provide given the description of the Player Version.
Sad Face.

Honestly, what Realm Works really needs IMO is the Web Viewer with a forum board style system that interacts with the Realm Works database taking advantage of linking and all the other content we have created. That would get my players into the tool on a regular basis and make it an interactive two-way experience.

Keep at it Rob. You have created a wonderful tool. We're just all visualizing the end product and wishing we could have it right now

 

[Joe]

@Tharmiones

First of all let me say that I hear your frustration, and that I understand. Excuses are worthless, so I won't give you any. We know we've disappointed you all, and we're certainly disappointed in how long things are taking ourselves.

That said, allow me to clarify one of your points though. There's an important difference between Rise of the Runelords (as shown in years past) and Emerald Spire (which we showed this year):

Rise of the Runelords was entered in by hand. For the scale of the Content Market and the amount of content we want to make available at a decent rate, we discovered that this approach would simply not be viable. A significant portion of our recent delays have been due to us coming to this realization and changing our approach.

Emerald Spire is one of the first units of content to be coming off our new partially-automated production line. We've built a number of internal tools that have made it far faster for us to prepare content for the market. The upfront cost of this tooling has been significant, but we think it's the right call in the long term. This will allow us to keep new content flowing to the market in a steady stream, rather than a slow trickle.

 

[kbs666]

Rise of the Runelords was entered in by hand. For the scale of the Content Market and the amount of content we want to make available at a decent rate, we discovered that this approach would simply not be viable. A significant portion of our recent delays have been due to us coming to this realization and changing our approach.

Emerald Spire is one of the first units of content to be coming off our new partially-automated production line. We've built a number of internal tools that have made it far faster for us to prepare content for the market. The upfront cost of this tooling has been significant, but we think it's the right call in the long term. This will allow us to keep new content flowing to the market in a steady stream, rather than a slow trickle.

As someone who has done this on a smaller scale than a Paizo AP I can agree with that whole heartedly. Are you going to make that tool available to 3rd parties?

 

[Grey Mage]

I would happily +1000 having that tool available either as a part of RW or just as a tool that can be downloaded.

Such a tool made available might mitigate some of the ire that the past 2 years has allowed to slip in.

 

[JustinThomason]

Agreed on the desire to see the import tool released in some format to the wider community. It would really be a boon for folks who use a lot of published content.

 

[Acenoid]

Well personally I would think twice, if they made a large investment, to get content in, it would probably not be the smartest thing to hand it out to everyone else for a bargain. Also who knows what kind of tools these are and how the input data needs to be prepared.

For us end users, there should be a well thought out and nifty import / export functionality, but regarding professional preparation of content in terms of content market quality, will not be archived with this...

That said, I'm currently try to work with the tools at hand. Some things with RW I really like and some I really hate, since it takes LWD quite some time to fix those minor crash-bugs

 

[Acenoid]

Btw while you wait, I found this :
http://jhollands.co.uk/spaceplan/


GL!