Pathfinder Is Coming To REALMWORKS

LWDLiz · Dec 4, 2015

Nikosandros said:
Realmworks is about managing a campaign, i.e. characters, plots, places, maps. It has very little to do with game rules.

It can actually help out with rules! Imagine you're running an adventure and an NPC comes at the party with a Ride-by Attack. If you need to recall the detail of the feat, currently you have a few options - grab your Core Rulebook and flip through it to find the entry, search a PDF, or look it up on a SRD web page. All of these options require another resource of some kind. If you have the Core Rulebook (or another rulebook) in Realm Works, then those skills, feats, and abilities in the adventure can be cross-linked to the skills, feats, and abilities in the rulebook.

Here's an example of what that could look like:

View attachment 72228

By clicking "ride-by attack," you can navigate to the entry with details on the "ride-by attack" feat. Now the rule details are in the same place as your campaign, and you don't need to open and search through a web page or flip through a book.

Dire Bare · Dec 5, 2015

LWDLiz said:
We fully admit that development has taken longer than expected. Following the Kickstarter, we provided a lot of information about development progress, and our best-guess estimates. Unfortunately, that led to two issues. 1) Users would critique development decisions based on incomplete information or draw incorrect assumptions based on the information we provided. This required a lot of development resources to respond to and correct the false assumptions and misconceptions. 2) The “best-guess” estimates were interpreted as promised release dates and when we “missed” them, it led to a lot of (understandable) frustration among our users.

That experience forced us to change our approach. Instead of continuing to provide estimates and extensive information on development progress as in the past, we’ve instead focused on showing visible progress as we hit milestones – for example, the sneak peek of Realm works on the web a few months back and now the Realm Works Spotlight Series. "But Liz, you shared an estimate in the announcement." Yes, while we've been specifically avoiding estimates, we're far enough along in development to feel confident when we say "early 2016."

While I understand where your skepticism is coming from, it's important to keep one key point in mind: Paizo is very business savvy company, and they don't enter into licenses casually. If they didn't believe that we could deliver, this announcement wouldn't exist.

Liz, I totally understand why you guys had to change your approach to communication. Same reason why WotC is more closed-mouthed these days then in years past. Too many loud, cranky fans who can't read or worse, "read-between-the-lines" and come up with crazy expectations.

I've been eyeing both Hero Lab and Realms Works for a while, as I'm already a fan of your Army Builder software. Once you guys start supporting 5E one way or another, I'm likely to finally jump on board. Totally understand if your plate is full currently and any 5E support is a ways off.

LWDLiz · Dec 5, 2015

JohnLynch said:
I've run two sessions straight from obsidian portal with my iPad. Without similar functionality I don't know how useful this would be to me (then again, I don't know how useful obsidian portal will be to me longterm. I've just recovered my old wiki I had on my PC so I'm inclined to just use that and drop the player-facing campaign tools).

For anyone using wikis or wiki-like software, Realm Works has some valuable features not found in wikis. I would recommend checking out this website for more details. There also threads on our forums, which discuss this exact topic.

MNblockhead · Dec 7, 2015

I second Dire Bare's comment. Personally, I hope this Paizo deal brings Lone Wolf Development (LWD) the success and money to speed development on features that the kickstarter backers are most adamant about and enough money that LWD never has to use kickstarter again. That way I'll never (well, at least far less frequently) need to read the belly-aching of kickstarter supporters. Have funded a number of kickstarters and seeing the time wasted by owners dealing with the extremely needy backers who expect frequent, detailed updates, and lose their minds over delays or scope changes, I can't help wondering if it is worth most businesses to raise money this way.

That said, if you are going to use kickstarter, and you are looking to develop a complex product like RealmWorks, you need to really work on setting expectations. Given the scope of the product, it does seem like LWD was overly optimistic... While I've been vocal about the need for certain features, I really appreciate LWD's communication. They have been very open and responsive to the user community—more than just about any other software company I've been a customer of. But they have also learned their lesson about not stating dates until they are certain that the work is done and about ready to launch. Much better than giving an estimate and missing it.

Pathfinder Is Coming To REALMWORKS

LWDLiz

First Post

Dire Bare

Legend

LWDLiz

First Post

MNblockhead

A Title Much Cooler Than Anything on the Old Site

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