Be the Master of Your Realm!
Check out this Kickstarter from Lone Wolf Development!
Take charge of your overflowing campaign notebook with this Kickstarter from Lone Wolf Development, makers of the Hero Lab character creation software!
I love that moment when a fresh campaign starts—everything is pretty straightforward, the list of NPCs is short, the locations minimal. But when you play for any length of time, the NPCs grow from a handful to a crowd, the list of places visited becomes longer than your arm, and loose plot threads can quickly become an entire ball of yarn. It's enough to make any sort of obsessive, notes-keeping, three-ring binder slingin', yes-I-will-install-my-own-wiki-on-my-laptop game master a little crazy trying to come up with the best method to keep track of all the bits and baubles that make up your campaign. But when faced with the long list of NPCs in "The Wormwood Mutiny," no amount of notes would help me keep track of all of them and how they related to each other—along with the player character's motivations, or the fact that one of them needed to make a Fortitude save in a few days to try and rid themselves of filth fever. Fortunately, Lone Wolf Development aims to make every game master's job a lot easier with their Realm Works software, and you can make it even better by backing their Kickstarter!
All that juicy campaign information in your head doesn't do your game any good if you can't reveal it—but you don't want to play your hand all at once. Realm Works allows you to selectively release information to your players (such as Captain Harrigan's motivations in the Skull & Shackles Adventure Path) as well as slowly reveal maps through exploration. Maps can also have markers added to them in Realm Works, with the same player/GM visibility controls, allowing you to plan your game out in advance so you don't get the case of the uhms when your players ask you where the ancient ruins lie! Lists of topics allow you to sort out your game information into convenient categories, and saving your topics will relink and tag everything, allowing you to see how one topic links to others. To further aid your game, you can sort out relationships, plots, quests, and side quests visually (which I used to sort out the command hierarchy of the Wormood's crew), and there's a whole separate player "whiteboard" window that you can drop content on for viewing through a second monitor (or projector).
But this information isn't going to exist solely on your computer—the Realm Works Kickstarter aims to add cloud syncing to Realm Works, allowing both you and your players access to the campaign information no matter where you are—or with whatever internet-enabled device you have! Backer levels allow you to get t-shirts, avatar icons for Lone Wolf's forums, copies of the game for friends, or even Pathfinder data sets for Hero Lab!
Head on over to Lone Wolf's Realm Works Kickstarter page and check out all of the screenshots and podcast interviews, and make a pledge to add even more amazing options to make your game (no matter the system or genre) even better!
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Is this an indication that Paizo is not nearly ready with a VTT? Maybe doing away with that plan altogether?
Negative. I don't think so.
If you check out the kickstarter, this is NOT a VTT. It would work well in conjunction with a VTT as a way to provide handouts and show players what parts of a map or maps they have explored, but it isn't made to have a playable grid with tokens on it.
-Aaron
while I normally love reading about the things that are highlighted on this page, I am not sure what to think about the tone that there is no way I can keep a level 1 to 3 AP chapter running and clearly presented to my players without using this product
and do not get me wrong I love me some hero lab
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Sounds great, but I'm not giving another cent to LoneWolf until they stop requiring online activation--let alone nickel and diming customers through activating licenses for both each system and each system book individually in Hero Lab. When I look at Realm Works, all I can wonder is how much they'll charge for piecemeal assets.
I know they have their reasons for doing things the way they do, but it is not a business model I agree with and thus will not support it.
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Lamontius wrote:
while I normally love reading about the things that are highlighted on this page, I am not sure what to think about the tone that there is no way I can keep a level 1 to 3 AP chapter running and clearly presented to my players without using this product
and do not get me wrong I love me some hero lab
It's certainly not *required*, but I am a fan of anything that makes it easier—especially with a full time job and school. (Also, my memory is not what it used to be, so aids like Realm Works really help keep it all together.)
DeathQuaker wrote: Sounds great, but I'm not giving another cent to LoneWolf until they stop requiring online activation--let alone nickel and diming customers through activating licenses for both each system and each system book individually in Hero Lab. When I look at Realm Works, all I can wonder is how much they'll charge for piecemeal assets.
I know they have their reasons for doing things the way they do, but it is not a business model I agree with and thus will not support it.
And that is absolutely your choice. I'm not fond of DRM in the computer games I buy, especially when it makes it tough for me as a legal owner of the game harder to play said game.
But, a few things here.
First, Savage Worlds and a few big PF books are the only singles sold and there are package options that make most of those options cheaper. A lot of the PF content is sold for three to five books at a time. (Same for Shadowrun and M&M.)
Second, without the online checking, it would VERY EASY for their data to be shared with others. I think their hard work at entering and making the data work within HL to be valuable and think they have priced them right but that's just my opinion.
I am curious as to why you won't support this model?
Again, don't misunderstand. I lost my favorite weather generation program (Weathermaster by Milieu Sim) when they went out of business and I forgot to unlock the software before I reinstalled windows. So, I can understand that.
Jon
Disclaimer: I own Hero Lab and recently started contracting with LWD to enter data into Hero Lab. I also backed Realms Works.
I can't speak for DeathQuaker, but I share a similar morality issue with the system as she described it.
I already paid for the rules, I don't mind paying the company for their work on the product, but the license system DQ described almost makes it seem like I'm paying for them again to a company that didn't even make them.
I find this especially egregious in Pathfinder's case, where 99.99% of the rules are already free and legally available on the internet.
Then again, I'm not really the kind of player/DM Herolabs was made for. I'm prone to making 'character sheets' out of simple text files with all my data arranged in a single, simple organized column.
Regardless, Realmworks seems like an interesting product, and I hope it succeeds. I might even give it a try some day.
On topic, I'm very excited about Realm Works!
I have used a laptop for my tabletop games for over a decade now. After using MS Word, MS Excel, TreePad, NotePad++, Weathermaster, PCGen, Combat Manager, EBoN, JHNameGen, The Keep, DMs Familiar, Genie, and OneNote, I can say that OneNote was probably the best and it still lacked a lot of integrated features. My computer could handle running five things at once but it was painful to switch between them, take notes about what happened and what was revealed.
What I like about Realm Works is that it is built from the ground up with a role playing game in mind, unlike OneNote or TreePad. The videos show that if I want fine control about what is shown to the PCs, I can do that. Or I can lump it all together. It's my choice and it tracks when the PCs got that information. I'm all for that!
It also appears that besides what the KS is going to do, and yay it was funded!, they have plans to add more functionality. Heck, maybe they will open it up as Hero Lab is and let us make things for it!
Further, if someone wants to use this offline, they can! There is no need to have the cloud storage. I do think it's going to add value, though. But that's me.
Jon
Disclaimer: The above one still applies.
kyrt-ryder wrote: I can't speak for DeathQuaker, but I share a similar morality issue with the system as she described it.
I already paid for the rules, I don't mind paying the company for their work on the product, but the license system DQ described almost makes it seem like I'm paying for them again to a company that didn't even make them.
I find this especially egregious in Pathfinder's case, where 99.99% of the rules are already free and legally available on the internet.
Then again, I'm not really the kind of player/DM Herolabs was made for. I'm prone to making 'character sheets' out of simple text files with all my data arranged in a single, simple organized column.
Regardless, Realmworks seems like an interesting product, and I hope it succeeds. I might even give it a try some day.
I think there is some faulty logic here.
The whole of Pathfinder is out there for free on d20pfsrd. You don't even need to pay for it if you don't want to.
I can't speak for anyone but myself. I wouldn't want to use the site, or the previous OGL or d20 site, for the rules. I like having the rule books. I like having the art. I like the presentation. That has value to me.
It is the same thing with Hero Lab. If you don't want it because you won't use it, okay. That's fine. It's your choice and I respect that. If you want to use Hero Lab for Pathfinder, you can just buy the main program, get the PF rule set and use the editor to enter everything else. You don't need to pay them anymore than that. All you will be out is your time to do that.
Again, speaking for myself, them entering that data instead of me doing it had value to me.
Jon
Oh, that's cool. I never heard of the option to set it up yourself. Still probably not the presentation method I favor, but I may look into it some time.
Thanks for the clarification Jon.
Liz Courts wrote: Lamontius wrote:
while I normally love reading about the things that are highlighted on this page, I am not sure what to think about the tone that there is no way I can keep a level 1 to 3 AP chapter running and clearly presented to my players without using this product
and do not get me wrong I love me some hero lab
It's certainly not *required*, but I am a fan of anything that makes it easier—especially with a full time job and school. (Also, my memory is not what it used to be, so aids like Realm Works really help keep it all together.) no no I understand that Liz Courts but the post takes a tone for me that GM'ing without it is just going to be virtually impossible
as someone who is just getting their feet wet with GM'ing in general (and who is about to run Skull & Shackles as my first AP) I read that description and it is pretty intimidating
maybe I am just projecting insecurities about GM'ing and navel-gazing a bit but I cannot help but be a bit turned off by the tone of it, regardless
Apologies Lamontius, that certainly wasn't my intent—my intent was more of "this is a thing that will help you keep sense of everything in your game if you've got a busy life." There are a lot of things to keep track of when GMing, and a huge cast of characters is one of those things that is a hallmark of that particular adventure. If you're a beginning GM, you're going to make mistakes (goodness knows I certainly made more than my fair share of them), but you shouldn't let them cripple you or make you indecisive. Nobody is going to know if you forget that Rosie Cusswell is a halfling, and as long as you keep it consistent afterwards, you'll be fine.
Don't worry about getting the adventure exactly right—as long as you and your players are having fun, it's all good. No published adventure (or even rough game outline in your head) survives encounter with the players. :D
It's marketing, get over it. This is how marketing is worded. If you read a good many entries for products you'd think the world was going to end if you didn't buy it. Thats what you're suppose to think.
Personally this product is pretty amazing. It will help you set up a live wiki for your game that's built towards dnd.
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More kick starters? To tell you the truth i am kickstarted out.
Well, I'm in.
As far as VTT use is concerned, they have said that they are exploring integration with d20Pro. I'd guess that would allow you to activate the current map in Realm Works into d20Pro when you enter combat and transport monsters across - asset sharing essentially. Given the work that Paizo did in surveying the current state of the art when they started designing Game Space, I'd be stunned if similar integration was passed over.
DeathQuaker, I'd be interested in hearing your views on how you think the licensing scheme should work, in a way that still allows you to contract-out the effort of entering all of the data personally via the inbuilt editor.
Adventure Path Charter Subscriber; Pathfinder Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber
Will Paizo release APs and modules for Realm Works?
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Nikosandros wrote: Will Paizo release APs and modules for Realm Works? That's our hope, but no license has yet been signed, so there's nothing to report at this time. At this point, we've announced licenses with Frog God Games, Open Design, and Pinnacle. We also have licenses in place with a couple more prominent companies that we'll be unveiling as our stretch goals are revealed.
I'll throw in another vote for Paizo to partner with you to release their Adventures in Realm Works. :)
I, too, would like to see Pathfinder materials available for this.
Also: Bumping this in hopes of garnering more attention as the Kickstarter gets close to ending. 8^)
It funded! Woot! Woot! Woot!
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