Thanks for the context. I came at it for completely different direction. I never heard of the company and was just searching for TTRPG world building tools and after some research I chose RealmWorks. I came into it expecting it to be a prep tool. It was great for the worldbuilding aspect of the hobby. At the time I was spending more time building and tweaking my world and adventures than actually running games. When I did run games, however, it DID help me run them smoother BECAUSE of all the content I had preentered. The hyperlinking, search and filters, ability to launch encounters in HeroLab, and the great game history timeline that would auto-build as you marked things done or encountered, revealing content to the players. Also, the "fog of world" map tools were great for in-person games played with a horizontal display and miniatures.
I think this is a good example of how Kickstarters can create expectations and lead to bad will when the scope and implementation don't meet those expectations. I've certainly had this experience and it has always happened when I've backed software projects. It is one reason I no longer back software projects on Kickstarter. That and because I find software projects are far more susceptible to delays and failures. I would only back a software project to support an effort that had some charitable goal and not something like a game I'm hoping to play in next couple of years.
The one recent exception was the Ember world for Foundry VTT. But I felt pretty confident in the developers (the Foundry VTT team) and also was doing it more to support Foundry and I was (an am in the middle of) a multi-year campaign, so was not expecting to even attempt to run Ember until well after the release date.
Thanks for the reply!
I think part of this is expectations, as you said. The functionality that was there in Realm Works, hyperlinking, connections, templates, and more were all good things. The dependence on their server was not. The lack of communication for two or three years, or sporadic during that time, didn't help. In the end, it was too slow for my needs, because I knew I wouldn't keep up with putting in notes later. Sessions being a grouping of things clicked during a time period wasn't my thing, either. I wanted a notes area for sessions as well.
I was ready to wait years to get full functionality but it didn't happen. I think what really got me was, as far as I know, the software was left dependent on the servers. We asked for that removed before he stopped, maybe even make it open, but rob wouldn't. (Last update on the forum is a lot of people unable to log into RW.) I was, maybe am, mad at rob for his arrogance on the code. I'm a developer as well and nothing he did was so confusing someone else couldn't have helped but he refused. Only he could touch the code. He refused what I thought were reasonable requests to allow us to make worlds unconnected to the server. The list goes on.
It is, but if you want anything beyond the games they supported at the time, you're on your own. I was particularly soggy about PF2e in this regard.
I don't run them in person either, but I still don't want to be dependent on a third party's servers to do so. Its the same reason I use Maptool as my VTT.
I should have clarified. Up until last year, when one of my weekly groups was using PF1, we were all using Hero Lab. I think they even got some money from most of us for HLC when we first started this pandemic group. So, yes, HLC for any of the systems on it is still viable. I am able to program it, although it's been a while, so I did put in any PF1 items I made into a file that I shared with my players, so they would have it. HLC is great! HLO is not what I wanted.
I was using maptool a long time ago but I have been won over by Foundry. I'm self hosting my two games, so I'm not dependent on anyone else's server.
@humble minion I agree. I know I at least needed HLC to figure out power costs, especially package costs. I can't imagine having run that doing it by hand. I'm impressed
@Thomas Shey can! Good for him!
Thanks for the discussion!
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