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Sharing content with myself and Cloud Service

N

Nemesis

Member
I've been using RW for about five months now and with the upcoming Content Market I've been wondering:

As I understand it, Content Market will enable sharing content with myself, like duplicating a realm etc. Do I have be a cloud services subscriber to use that functionality?

I checked the FAQ, but it only mentions this in regards to sharing content with other users.

Sorry if this question has been answered already and thanks in advance.
 
Nemesis said:
I've been using RW for about five months now and with the upcoming Content Market I've been wondering:

As I understand it, Content Market will enable sharing content with myself, like duplicating a realm etc. Do I have be a cloud services subscriber to use that functionality?

I checked the FAQ, but it only mentions this in regards to sharing content with other users.

Sorry if this question has been answered already and thanks in advance.
Click to expand...

My understanding is that you will need to be a subscriber to use this feature.
 
That would be a huge disappointment. I have no use for the other cloud service features at my game table and do not intend to subscribe once my 6-months are used up. Having to pay $ 40.00 a year just to duplicate content I already have on my computer would seem rather pricey and would be a strong argument against using RW for me.
 
I'd say that by not going for cloud subscription you will likely find you are missing out on a lot of what the software is designed for - you won't be able to share content with your players to the full extent, you won't be able to trade ideas with other GMs, and you won't be able to access any content available on the market.

It is hard to be entirely sure until the Content Market and attached items are released, but after the ideas mentioned in the survey I'm very much looking forward to it, and at about $3.33 a month, it's hardly bank breaking...
 
Well, I share content with my players the way I've always done it - by talking to them (and using handouts). ;)

I've never been a fan of having electronic devices at the table (especially not in player hands, even grown-up and otherwise totally reasonable men and women suddenly start fiddling with a laptop or iPad once they get their hands on it) and I also don't like the idea of having my players stare at a screen the whole time, waiting for the next piece of information to be revealed.

Regarding the content market: I don't see its use for me as GM. I run nWoD with homebrew content and currently also a Shadows of Esteren campaign. None of these systems have that much actual setting material (NPCs, locations etc.), so what stuff in the content market would be interesting for me then? And using stuff other GMs have created? There's tons of blogs out there that put out superb content on almost a daily basis. I can just add this content myself, no need to use a gated software for that.

I was excited about RW as a campaign management tool, something to collect my notes and work on my campaigns, not as a "display" for my players. I've been using Scrivener (on Mac) for years as my go-to software for this and... well, I can move content between projects in Scrivener without having to pay for this functionality. Looking at RW, if I plan to use it for, say, two years, the price will already be at almost $ 130.00 ($ 49.99 + 39.99 + 39.99). And to me that's just to much money just to be able to share my own content with myself.
 
Nemesis said:
Well, I share content with my players the way I've always done it - by talking to them (and using handouts). ;)

I've never been a fan of having electronic devices at the table (especially not in player hands, even grown-up and otherwise totally reasonable men and women suddenly start fiddling with a laptop or iPad once they get their hands on it) and I also don't like the idea of having my players stare at a screen the whole time, waiting for the next piece of information to be revealed.

Regarding the content market: I don't see its use for me as GM. I run nWoD with homebrew content and currently also a Shadows of Esteren campaign. None of these systems have that much actual setting material (NPCs, locations etc.), so what stuff in the content market would be interesting for me then? And using stuff other GMs have created? There's tons of blogs out there that put out superb content on almost a daily basis. I can just add this content myself, no need to use a gated software for that.

I was excited about RW as a campaign management tool, something to collect my notes and work on my campaigns, not as a "display" for my players. I've been using Scrivener (on Mac) for years as my go-to software for this and... well, I can move content between projects in Scrivener without having to pay for this functionality. Looking at RW, if I plan to use it for, say, two years, the price will already be at almost $ 130.00 ($ 49.99 + 39.99 + 39.99). And to me that's just to much money just to be able to share my own content with myself.
Click to expand...

We haven't been told what the pricing of cloud storage will look like. If there is a month-by-month option it might make sense for you to purchase a month only when you want to share some info (even if you are sharing with only yourself). I hope there is some sort of option for those who don't plan to use cloud storage very much. Perhaps even a tiered system that is cheaper if you never access the content market? We will have to wait an see. Even the prices we are throwing around are only speculation (as far as I know).
 
Parody said:
I would like to see them let you reuse your own creations without cloud service.
Click to expand...

One of the items listed in the survey was having multiple story almanacs for the same world almanac, which will be another potential way to reuse the world for those without cloud service if it gets implemented.
 
Hmm, I'd have actually thought the player sharing would be even more important for something like World of Darkness - not so much for during the game but for players considering politics and downtime work between games.

I definitely know what you mean with the electronic devices issue, though overall I've not found it a massive issue. You need to tell people when you are sharing something anyway, so they're no more watching the screen than they would be looking at their character sheet. Whilst I did have one player a while back who was quite bad for checking facebook/etc, I just blocked the site on my router for the weekend, which is fairly easy on most home routers, and the other players were as unimpressed as I was.

The flip side is that I've found that Hero Lab and Realm Works have massively increased the speed of things when run from the computer - any buffs and things just take a couple of clicks to add and you don't have to worry about trying to keep track of how everything adds together.
 
Portilis said:
One of the items listed in the survey was having multiple story almanacs for the same world almanac, which will be another potential way to reuse the world for those without cloud service if it gets implemented.
Click to expand...
Maybe, but they're not really the same thing. Sharing with yourself is a way to reuse things like game systems, worlds, and adventures where you might want to have things diverge completely or not have things "revealed to everyone" revealed to multiple groups. The unified World Almanac + multiple other Almanacs is a way to organize things within a single campaign.

I have to say that the revamp of the Almanacs is a feature near and dear to my heart. ;)
 
While it can be used at the table by players, that's not really what it's intended for. The primary use is, as you noted, for out-of-game campaign management. Secondary uses would be as an out-of-game reference for your players, and an in-game tool for you.

If the players have a question during the game, they can look it up in the notes they've taken or ask me, just as has always happened. The difference is, instead of looking through pages of notes I can use my copy to look up the information, and check the Reveal status, GM notes, and associated tidbits to provide a more useful answer more quickly.
 
The usefulness of RW for me as a GM at the table is out of question, the speed at which you can find information and hand it out to players and the overall organisation of my campaign material is highly appreciated.

I'm really torn when it comes to RW. There's a lot of things I like, but it also has its share of issues that still make me hesitant to fully commit to using it (no export, currently no sharing with myself, calenders are terrible - who thought the zooming out/in was a good way to handle this, the apparent necessity of being a cloud subscriber, no native Mac version yet).
 
pyremius said:
While it can be used at the table by players, that's not really what it's intended for. The primary use is, as you noted, for out-of-game campaign management. Secondary uses would be as an out-of-game reference for your players, and an in-game tool for you.
Click to expand...

Your example I'd put as an in-game, not out-of-game usage, and the second paragraph of information available on the website for the software (the first item which actually says what the software does beyond "campaign management") talks about using the software to reveal things to the players, so it would seem that in-game campaign management and player access are, from the developers' point-of-view at least, core items.

Player access and the cloud have been noted as major parts of the software from back when the kickstarter was up. I think that has been slightly forgotten in the time it has taken to get them working, but a huge amount of the basis of the software is the Fog of World (tm) system that is entirely about player view.

Ultimately, whilst I can see the reasoning behind being loathe to use the cloud service, it is far from expensive and they have said right from the start that a large portion of the software is going to require it. If that doesn't suit, well, that's unfortunate, but frankly if you're doing everything by paper you'll probably spend as much on printing or paper & pens! :D
 
Glad that I'm not the only GM concerned about tech at the table being a distraction. I had stopped playing D&D before cell phones and LCD displays were common. Not only did we not have computers at the game table, we didn't have miniatures and fancy tile maps. When I went in to buy the new D&D 5th Ed. (last version I played was AD&D...stopped playing just as 2nd ed. came out, never bought it) at my local game store, and saw some folks role playing at one of the tables, my first thought was "when did D&D become a miniature war game" and then I noticed that everyone was looking at laptops and tablets. It was kinda depressing.

Initially, I wasn't going to allow any tech at my table, but as a DM, having realm works on a laptop nearby will be just a huge time saver and my laptop just becomes part of my DM screen. Still not initially planning to use a player view in-game and will likely require dice and paper character sheets instead of phone apps. If you are looking at a phone for die rolls it is an almost certainty that you'll get distracted by e-mails, text messages, app alerts, tweets, and other updates—taking you out of the game.

Anyway, back on topic. I bought RW as a campaign-management tool. Whether the cloud is worth it to me depends entirely on the content. The problem for me is that I have to pay for the cloud subscription and then pay for content separately. Since I am building a world from scratch and since—despite the great amount of time I spend building the world—I only plan to get the party together once every month or two for a marathon session, I don't know a subscription will make sense. Once I have obtained whatever content I like, there isn't much value to the subscription to me.

It would be nice if their were a tier for people who simply want to buy content, but do not need to share content with players. There would have to be a lot of content being created each month that I would want to use in my custom D&D world to make it worth subscribing to RW cloud, rather than buying content from Drivethru RPG and similar sites.
 
Portilis said:
they have said right from the start that a large portion of the software is going to require it.
Click to expand...

Well, actually no, they haven't. On this page they explicitly state:

There is no requirement for users to leverage Realm Works cloud services.
Click to expand...

I read that as the cloud services being only required for those features specifically mentioned at the top of that page - and sharing content with myself is not among them.

meek75 said:
How often do you really need to share a realm with yourself?
Click to expand...

It's not just sharing a realm with myself (you're right, you don't do that very often), but sharing other content with myself. What if I for example want to use an NPC or a location from, say, my D&D 5E realm in my Shadows of Esteren realm? Do I have to upload this NPC to the content market and then download it again into the other realm? As I understand it downloading stuff from the content market will actually require you to be a cloud services subscriber.
 
Nemesis said:
Well, actually no, they haven't. On this page they explicitly state:

I read that as the cloud services being only required for those features specifically mentioned at the top of that page - and sharing content with myself is not among them.
Click to expand...


The specific of sharing content with yourself isn't, but sharing content in general is mentioned as something that will require the cloud. They also discuss the fact that some functions that might not necessarily be expected to need it will require cloud service, without going into specifics other than realm creation.
 
Not to derail the thread, but I find it odd that thier content market will require a subscription, to be able to buy stuff from it.
 
Not to derail the thread, but a year of the cloud service is 40 bucks..... To put that in perspective its 10 bucks to eat at most fast food restaurants, and what you get is barely food.

Its usually close to 20 bucks to see a movie with a popcorn and a drink, and that's what? 120ish minutes of service, and a bathroom run to boot.

We are speaking about 24/7 365 days for one year you can backup your data, and sync it down to any other computer you use in minutes, and have any player in your campaign with the player edition do the same.................

Seriously skip one movie, and too trips to some craptastic fast food, not only will you health be better for it, you will have the cloud service for essentially free for that 24/7 365 days.

Less than 4 spacebucks a month, you would think its costing more then my bi-weekly F150 payment. Trust me, 4 bucks doesn't even get me to work and back.
 
H2Os said:
Not to derail the thread, but I find it odd that thier content market will require a subscription, to be able to buy stuff from it.
Click to expand...

I've thought the same thing. If someone didn't need backup to the cloud and didn't want to use the collaboration and player-reveal features, it would be nice if they could still buy content formated for Real Works à la carte rather being forced into a subscription. Feels like the cable tv model.

I realize that it isn't a lot of money in comparison to other ways you can spend your money, but that's beside the point. Is it worth it to pay 40 bucks to have access to a store? Well, I pay for Costco membership because I save money over the long term. I begrudgingly pay for cable and HBO Go so I can legally get certain content even though I could care less about the vast majority of content delivered in my plan.

I really won't know if it is worth it until I see what content is available. Is content I can get elsewhere, but formatted for RW enough to justify the spend...probably, considering the amount of time saved on cutting, pasting, and reformatting. If enough subscribers share content for free with other subscribers, that could make it worth it if I can get enough interesting content that I can use in my campaign.

Please note that I am not in anyway griping about the price. They can charge whatever they want for it. But I would think it is helpful for them to get feedback on pricing. If I decide that an ongoing USD 40 per year is not worth it to me, but would be willing to pay for a specific item of content à la carte, they have an opportunity to make more money from me than zero if they offer the ability to purchase specific content without a subscription.
 
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