Rob Bowes's page

For the past few years, we've been creating and refining a new digital tool for RPGs on a scale that has never been done before. Early this year, we did a highly successful Kickstarter to help fuel our efforts, raising nearly $200K. We're proud to say the wait is nearly over. Realm Works debuts in a matter of weeks!

In a nutshell, Realm Works is the campaign management tool that every GM has dreamt about. That sounds like marketing hype, doesn't it? So we'll instead show off what Realm Works can actually do and let you draw your own conclusions. We've put together a new website specifically for this purpose, with an array of resources to whet your appetite.

* For an immediate look at the product in action, check out the Realm Works Virtual Tour. This short video demonstrates some of the amazing things Realm Works can do.

* Extensive details about the product, including numerous screenshots, will be found within the Realm Works product website.

* A more in-depth look at exactly how things work is provided in our initial set of Realm Works Tutorial Videos. These tutorial videos are primarily intended to introduce new users to how the product operates, but they're also a great resource for anyone who wants a closer look.

Many of you will be familiar with us as the creators of Hero Lab. Realm Works integrates smoothly with Hero Lab, yielding an incredibly powerful one-two punch for Pathfinder GMs. However, Realm Works is game system neutral. In other words, it's not specifically tied to any game system, so you can use it with any and all RPGs you run.

Over the next few weeks, we'll be expanding the information provided on the website as we approach the official V1.0 launch. Answers to important details like pricing will similarly be announced soon. So keep an eye on our discussion forums, Facebook page, and Twitter feed for further details.

Get ready to transform the way you run your games!

The Hero Lab logo incorporates a central triangle, and the triangular element is also used on its own in various contexts. You'll find it throughout our website at www.wolflair.com.

Basically, it comes down to if there's something wrong about HL, LW won't change it until there's an official clarification. And that really doesn't work given the way the design team gives clarifications. It's always extremely annoying whenever someone says 'I won't budge from my stance until the design team personally answers my question', and this philosophy seems to have a major amount of support in the LW developers who develop these options.

It's not even that the program is wrong, so much as the attitude that's taken to bug reports about the application being wrong.

Thanks for flagging the attitude issue! I was completely unaware of this, having been up to my eyeballs on everything for Realm Works. As the guy at the top, this is ultimately my fault, so please accept my apologies. I'm going to pursue this issue internally and make sure that we put in the necessary corrections on attitude.

Please note, however, that we're in a difficult spot with regards to determining what's "right" in many cases. The rules continue to become more and more complicated. As you point out, the way the design team provides clarifications is often less than ideal. We do our best to reason through what the "right" interpretation is, and we get it right the vast majority of times. But there are cases where the rules are simply unclear, or we inadvertently overlook an important detail, or Paizo even chooses not to follow its own published rules. In that middle case, it sounds like we need to be more responsive and/or less attached to our interpretation. In the other cases, though, we're left in a bind with no good solution. So we don't really have a choice in those cases other than to wait for an official ruling and implement the rules based on the best interpretation we can come up with.

Please give us the chance to institute some corrections on our end and then let me know if you don't see an improvement in the upcoming weeks.

Thanks!

Quick request regarding Hero Lab errors: Please REPORT bugs when you encounter them. That's the only way we'll know what we missed during our own testing. We strive to fix bugs quickly when they're reported, but we can't fix bugs we don't know about. :)

Pathfinder is an incredibly complex system and continues get more complicated with each new book. We're bound to miss things, despite pretty extensive testing.

Please use the link below to report bugs directly to the development team:
Pathfinder Bug Reports for Hero Lab

Thanks in advance for your help in enabling us to make Hero Lab as bullet proof as possible by reporting the bugs we miss!!

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 can easily see this as a new channel for publishers to release material - can you imagine spending a few $$ on an AP and getting the background material and adventure detail in pre-packaged Realm Works format? How about the entire Golarion setting?

That's exactly the vision. :)

We'll be releasing Realm Works with a number of large examples of this. We commissioned the Isle of Kandril from Super Genius Games, which will be provided to all users for free. A few more will be available for free to backers of our Kickstarter and then available for sale to new users when the product launches. There are a few pretty big names on board already, and we're hoping to add one or two more before the KS completes. So stay tuned for their unveiling...

Help me understand the use case for this, it seems to be that the real point of this software is to be used at a real game table where the GM has a laptop in front of him?

I assume this is meant for 100% digital play, since there is no mention for printing support and no print button on the menus.

It also seems to be purely PC / MAC aimed, and not web based so... aren't you worried about the shifting sands here towards tablets to fill this role?

Or is this mostly meant for online-only games?

There are both short-term and long-term goals for Realm Works. In the short-term, there are many games being played where high-speed internet access is not reliably and inexpensively available. Cons are a prime example of this, as are venues like many schools, clubs, and libraries. But consider game preparation as well. How many people have constant internet access on the train, on the bus, at lunch during work? If you come up with an idea, you want to run with it then - not hours later.

Now consider the reliability factor. How often do people experience internet drops or slow-downs? What about server outages? What happens when you've only got a slow connection or the server goes down for even 5 minutes? It renders the game unplayable if you're 100% reliant on a high-speed connection to a server somewhere.

What if you're a GM who normally run games at home with full internet access but also wants to run games at GenCon or PaizoCon, where internet access is costly and slow? Do you want to have all these tools available at home and then have nothing at the Con? That's far from an ideal scenario.

The only way to address these issues is to provide a non-web-based solution that runs on a disconnected client. Always available. Guaranteed performance.

That's the short-term reality. So let's look at the long-term now.

As you point out, the sands are shifting. In the upcoming years, internet access will continue to become faster, cheaper, more widely accessible, and more reliable. At some point, it will become truly ubiquitous. When that day occurs, the client application will be of no value to anyone. But we're not there yet. We're living in a transitional period, so we need something that will work today and shift along with the sands.

Enter the cloud. The Realm Works cloud is NOT just storage. It's not Dropbox or GoogleDrive. It's the entire campaign fully operational on a server. Players can access it via a web-based interface from their tablets if they want. It's fully accessible between games. But nobody is reliant on the server in order to actually PLAY their game.

Over time, we'll be replicating all the functionality of the client application onto the server. The net result will be duplicate functionality with both a purely online interface and the client application, catering appropriately to anyone in any environment. At some point, the sands will have shifted enough that we leave the client application behind.

That's the evolution plan for Realm Works.

Now couple that with the ability to find pre-made content like settings, adventures, and NPCs in the community repository. Instead of having different books/PDFs with Post-Its and scribbled notes to cobble them together, everything is integrated into one unified environment. You can rename locations and NPCs to place them into your world. You can establish links to put the Dungeon of Doom from PublisherX into a setting from PublisherY that you've already woven into your own campaign. No more flipping between different resources during games. And it's all available to the players as well - the pieces you've revealed, at least.

That's the overall vision, and I hope that explanation addresses your concerns regarding where we're focusing with Realm Works. It's not just for either online or offline play. It's a solution that will be equally suited to both purposes while further immersing players and GMs into the game.

Oh, and to address your question about printing. Yes, printing support will be included, since some GMs will use Realm Works solely for their own preparation and not at the actual table during play. It's not in any of the screenshots or video because its location is within the "application" menu, just like where you'll find it in products like Microsoft Word and Excel. :)

Hope this helps!

Actually, Hero Lab runs beautifully on my Samsung Ativ Windows 8 tablet. This is a full Windows 8 tablet, not an RT, and it runs desktop software.

First of all, thanks for the endorsement!

I think the important distinction here is that you're running the desktop version of Hero Lab on a desktop-caliber tablet computer. Those machines are comparatively very uncommon these days and not what most people think of when someone says "tablet". Most are thinking of iPads and Android tablets (and now Windows Surfaces). But the lines are blurring with devices like yours readily available, and that's only going to foster more confusion among users who haven't yet learned the sometimes subtle yet critical distinctions between the different platforms.

We're getting ready to wrap up the in-play character sheet version of Hero Lab, and we're striving to get it submitted to the AppStore in the next few weeks. After that, we'll continue to get full Hero Lab functionality implemented on the iPad.

And before anyone starts asking, we'll provide an update in our monthly newsletter at the end of December. So stay tuned for that. :)

My understanding is that you're supposed to have access to the actual rulebook (PDF version is fine, per Mike above). If a question arises and you don't have the rulebook for whatever mechanism is under scrutiny, then the GM is fully within his rights to declare the mechanism as non-applicable to the situation. Essentially, if you don't have the rulebook, you don't get to use the feat, ability, item, whatever.

Hero Lab is not perfect, although we're continuously working towards that goal. And Hero Lab is definitely not the final arbiter on any rules question. That's what the rulebook is for - along with the FAQ.

And, yes, this is coming from the guys who create Hero Lab. :)

In addition to LazarX's insightful points, there is another key factor to consider. This industry is tiny, so there's not much money to be made in it. Consequently, lots of the software is written by part-timers and/or volunteers. Heck, many of the full-fledged companies writing software for this industry are staffed by predominantly part-timers. For the "big boys", they might have full-time staff, but you can count the size of their development teams for a given product on one hand - and still have fingers left over.

Think about what you're asking for here. Coming up with a standard takes lots of time. You end up with lots of different stakeholders, and each has different objectives for their particular products. Due to these differing objectives, they have different priorities and requirements. All of these issues need to be reconciled, typically resulting in either a standard that tries to do everything or the lowest common denominator. The former is unwieldy and the latter is useless to everyone. So yet more work is needed to find a balance, which means lots more time.

Let's say the folks behind each major product/tool allocates someone to participate on this standards team. Working on a standard can easily consume more than half of each team member's time (trust me on this, as I've worked on international standards committees before). If the average product has a staff of effectively 2-3 full-time people working on it, then working on a standard slows down their overall progress by roughly 20-25%. That slowdown directly impacts the tasks that lead to the revenue that pays their bills. I think it's safe to assume that a 25% drop in revenue will put most companies out of business. Now consider the products that have even fewer staff working on them normally. The impact to them reaches 50% or more.

You may argue that it's an investment in the future. You'll get no argument from me on that point. However, investing requires there to be excess that can be invested. In the case of our industry, there's not a lot of excess, which means there's not much investment that's even possible.

So what can we do? In my opinion, and by extension Lone Wolf's view, the best approach is for the industry leaders to work with each other and interatively evolve standards through partnerships. That's what we've been striving towards with Hero Lab. In a few weeks, we'll be releasing a major change to our saved portfolio format that represents an important step forward towards an open standard. We've made these changes based on conversations with multiple other tools developers, and that includes Paizo [Hi Gary!] so we can work well in conjunction with their new gaming space. Is this going to be the ideal solution? Heck no. But it's a step forward, and certainly won't be the last.

We have another leap planned for next year with Hero Lab, and it's a major one. Could we do it sooner? Yep. But our first priority is to get tablet support out the door, so the next installment in our effort towards an open standard has to wait a bit longer.

Quick show of hands here. How many of you reading this would rather we focus on a Hero Lab tablet version first or evolve an open standard? Now, ask yourselves how the vast majority of GMs and players out there would answer that question. Now consider it from our business reality. If we get a tablet version into place, we bring in more revenue, which means we can maybe afford another hire, which means we can accomplish more and do it faster. And one of the many things we can accomplish is a better open standard format. So it may not be the fastest way towards the goal you're seeking, but it's definitely the most prudent from our perspective.

Lone Wolf also has a completely new product coming out in a few months - Realm Works. Based on the feedback we received at GenCon, this product could have a hugely positive impact on tabletop gaming in many different ways. [When Gary Teter escalates from calling you "crazy" to "Insane!", you take it as a serious complement. :)] Realm Works is a product I've been wanting to create for 30 years. Yes, you read that right. I've had this vision of a tool for RPGs since I started writing PC software. And I think this product will have vastly more impact than just creating an open standard for what's already been done before. If we succeed with this, the Realm Works framework will become a piece of the standard moving into the future.

Alright, now I'm just rambling. The bottom line is that, given the nature of this industry, a standard is not going to be successfully developed by dozens of participants dedicating time towards the effort. Any standard will need to be driven by the major players and fueled by their own enlightened self-interest to work together. Everyone else will then benefit by having something they can also leverage. Is this the ideal way of accomplishing the goal? Nope. But it's the only way I see as viable given the realities of this industry we all love.

Jiggy wrote:

Hey, my natural midwestern accent-less-ness takes exception to that!

Excuse me, but as an American you have an accent. I, on the other hand, speak English like a native and therefore without an accent.

Henry Higgins may beg to differ with you. :)

<crossing fingers that *someone* here is old enough to get the reference>

harmor wrote:

Not every GM allows HeroLab at their table, so best to bring a printed copy or else they won't let you play.

Perhaps this is not the place to mention this. However, I feel that utilizing the technology at the table has been distracting for me. I'm sure this has been a huge debate and will continue to be, but I would like to clarify the statement above from a GM perspective.

I think the single biggest negative of laptops is the physical barrier it creates. That's why we're focusing heavily on tablet development right now for Hero Lab. Tablets grant all the benefits of the small form factor and instant calculations, but without the physical barrier.

However, even tablets won't solve the person who simply can't focus on the game when there's a device in front of him/her. I honestly think those people need to be spoken to and ultimately either learn to stay focused on the game or go do something else that they're more interested in. If the game isn't captivating enough for someone, it's a matter of figuring out with the GM what changes *would* captivate them or simply concluding that the game isn't a fit for them.

One thing is for certain, though. Technology is going to continue to play an ever-greater role in RPGs in the coming years. And it's going to occur at an ever-accelerating pace, which means an ever-increasing chance that schisms will arise within established gaming groups regarding the role technology plays in their games. So it's going to become very important to find a balance, and I think the days of "zero technology" gaming (heck, even "low technology") will very soon just be stories we tell our kids.

I think the only thing that will defy technology is dice. :) There is just something incredibly tactile about dice that is impossible to resist. Rolling the dice makes it feel like you are somehow controlling your character's fate, while computer-based dice rollers are just callous and impersonal. So dice will continue to thrive for eons to come, but that's really about it. Everything else will give way to technology-based aids that facilitate/streamline the game and augment the entire experience.

At least, that's my vision of the future. Time will tell whether I'm right... :)

Yikes! I stop paying attention for a couple days and there's a zillion questions and comments! In the interest of compactness, I'll try to answer all of them at once here....

1. First of all, thanks for all the kind words!! Can I ask some of you to please take the time to write up a brief review of Hero Lab on the product page here on paizo.com? :)

2. Yes, there are definitely bugs in Hero Lab. However, we do our best to get them fixed when they are reported directly to us. So please report any bugs you uncover on the bug thread of our support forums. With the deluge of material that Paizo releases, the over-caffeinated squirrels are running as fast as they can in their little wheels, but it's a constant juggle between getting new material added and fixing bugs that are uncovered in the existing stuff. :)

3. To provide a little perspective, entering everything from the Advanced Race Guide required approximately *six months* worth of total work, spread across multiple squirrels. Yes, we pay our squirrels. How else can they afford all the caffeine they need to drink to keep the wheels turning? :)

4. We do get material early from Paizo, but how early tends to vary. For example, we got a great head start on the ARG (more than two months), but we only got a few weeks on Ultimate Equipment. That's why the squirrels are still churning on UE and it's not out yet.

5. For those of you who want to see things done differently and/or new features added, please post those on our support forums as well. We do our best to add features that are frequently requested, and they get juggled into the mix with new content and bug fixes.

6. The philosophy behind Hero Lab is that the GM always is the final arbiter of everything, and virtually every GM has his/her personal set of house rules. So Hero Lab flags errors but it does not prohibit them from being made. Some GMs may allow it as a house rule, and we want Hero Lab to be useful for everyone.

7. Is Hero Lab legal for PFS? Paizo set up tables for us immediately adjacent to the official PFS areas at both PaizoCon and GenCon the past two years. The Character Creation Stations were specifically for players to use to create their characters for play in the PFS games being run by Paizo. And they were heavily used, with waiting lines at many times.

8. Is Hero Lab the "official" tool for Pathfinder? In keeping with Paizo's philosophy of openness, the Hero Lab license is not exclusive. However, SKR has already leaked that Paizo is in the process of officially standardizing on Hero Lab for in-house use. Once that process is completed, Hero Lab will be utilized for creating the officially published material from Paizo. To me, that makes it as close to official as you can get without actually being official. :)

If I missed anyone's questions, please point them out and I'll do my best to answer them. Thanks!!!

Jonathan Cary wrote:

I'm very excited about the iPad version that is in beta right now, as it will perform in-game adjustments for you.

is this available somewhere? my google-fu is failing me. I have full/up to date hero lab so I'm super excited for the ability to track adjustments on the iPad

The iPad version of Hero Lab is currently in development. However, it is not yet in Beta. We showed off an early preview at GenCon, but that's it. Please stay tuned to our monthly newsletter and/or forums/twitter/facebook for announcements about Beta testing and actual release. :)

And that there were more than rumors and silence about a tablet-compatible version of Hero Labs.

Most of us with a tablet who want a versiopn of HL for it really just ant the ability to pull up our PC and use the In-Play and similar tabs at a game, not the full character builder. ;)

Prior to GenCon, you'll have more than rumors and silence from us. :)

Deanoth wrote:

Lonewolf-Rob,

If you are doing that for Paizo as far as Hero Labs goes are you going to release that as an update to the users as well then as a custom type of output for those that own Hero Labs?

Thanks! :)

+1

Or, better yet, the Paizo output becomes the standard output.

Unless Paizo specifically asks us to keep certain formatting changes private, I can't see any reason why we wouldn't make it available. And I don't expect that to occur.

Once we're generating the exact same format used in official Pathfinder products, we're already planning to make it the default standard format that Hero Lab outputs. Consistency is always a good thing. :)

xidoraven wrote:

PS: HeroLab is not a Paizo product, and I think calling it Paizo's "official" character creation software is a bit of a misnomer. I think it is more likely that they hold a great respect for the product and help to support it because it is more of an "industry-leading standard."

I respectfully disagree. IIRC, SKR said something about working with Lone Wolf to get Hero Lab to where it can do the same as his (in)famous spreadsheet for generating statblocks. (Oh, here it is.) That's pretty darn official.

At this point in time, Hero Lab is the only officially licensed tool for Pathfinder character creation. Whether that makes Hero Lab *the* official tool is probably a question of semantics that Paizo would need to weigh in on.

As Sean was quoted as saying in the link above, Paizo and Lone Wolf have been working together in an ever-closer fashion. Based on conversations we had this past weekend at PaizoCon, this process is expected to continue. If all goes as everyone hopes, you'll see a number of official announcements in the months to come in a variety of different areas. But nothing is cast in stone at this point, so stay tuned for updates as things evolve.

I haven'r ead through all the posts that have been posted will the VTT support HeroLab? It would be really great if it did.

We just learned of the VTT at PaizoCon as well. :) Based on conversations we had with Paizo over the weekend, this is definitely a mutual objective. That being said, there are still some hurdles that need to crossed. Stay tuned for more details regarding this topic in the relatively near future....

If you have questions on writing Hero Lab data files, head over to our support forums and post the questions there. Our in-house data file experts are available to help out, plus there are lots of other users who are happy to lend their expertise to those who are just getting started. :)

The tutorials included with Hero Lab ought to get you started adding most material you can think of. The forums are a great place to learn various tricks and get help with specific tasks that you are trying to accomplish.

Sean K Reynolds wrote:

But I've started to give the folks at Lone Wolf Development some feedback about Hero Lab so their software does exactly what we need it to do (much of which is matching our style for how things are phrased and capitalized in stat blocks), so you wouldn't be needing the spreadesheet anyway.

(emphasis mine)

This. Oh, sweet fancy dancing gods, this. If the Hero Lab output matched the Paizo statblock style and formatting, it would be a real time-saver for those of us designing 3PP material.

We literally just got the first round of feedback from Sean late last week. So our first task is to work with Sean to flesh out the list and prioritize the changes that are needed. We also already have a huge pile of work to finish between now and GenCon (ARG, UE, RotL, etc.). On top of it all, Colen (the Hero Lab guru himself) is finally taking his honeymoon over the next few weeks.

Once we get a good handle on everything and have a viable plan in place, we'll let everyone know. So please stay tuned for more info, but please also be patient. :)

Does this notion seem worthy?

It's an absolutely worthy objective. Be aware that it's also a ridiculous amount of work. The breadth and scope of Pathfinder is *huge*, and it's continually growing every day with all the new material that gets released.

Before you launch into this pursuit, consider two important examples...

The gang at PCGen developed a solid tool that has been adapted for Pathfinder. They are a volunteer effort and the sheer volume of material for Pathfinder has proven to be a daunting effort for them, with large portions of many of the major tomes still not yet added to the tool, despite the efforts and commitment of some really good folks.

The gang who do Hero Lab (of which I'm a part) have spent many years developing that product. We also have an additional 1.5 to 2.5 full-time employees (it can vary) plus a cadre of contractors working continuously on adding Pathfinder content. And that's just to keep up with the content that is being steadily released. It was a much bigger crunch to get caught up in the first place.

So that ought to give you an idea of what you're in for with this project. It's a mammoth task, but I'm certain there will be a lot of players who would appreciate it when you complete it. :)

I also clarified how things work in the thread Cosmo linked above, so please check there for my post as well.

One option is to require all characters at the table be built using a software tool of your choice. The Character Creation Stations we did for Hero Lab at PaizoCon and GenCon have been very well received as a means of allowing players to quickly enter their characters before games and have them vetted by the software. There are quite a few stores and Cons that have begun adopting this approach as well, with some now even requiring characters to be built with Hero Lab (although you could instead use PCGen or your favorite spreadsheet).

For those of you considering this option, Lone Wolf Development often provides free product licenses for the computers that will be used at these stations. If anyone is interested in pursuing this idea further, please drop us an email and we can figure out how best to support your efforts.

Ideas:

Copy of HeroLab to reward getting first star?

...or if GM already owns HeroLab, additional addins

I'm not sure of any of the details here, since I'm not a PFS GM, but I know we'd definitely support something along these lines. We've already given free Hero Lab licenses (or add-ons) to GMs at the past two PaizoCons. If Paizo likes this idea, we'd be very open to figuring out something that will work.

And once we finally get Realms Works out, ooooh, that's something many of you PFS GMs will be *very* interested in. Sorry I can't go into more details at this point, but there are some teasers you can peek at on our website and we're just starting early Beta testing of the product. I'm sure we'll have lots more info at PaizoCon this year, and hopefully before that.

Hero Lab for the Pathfinder Beginner Box is being finished up now, so unless there are any major last-minute surprises, it will be out before the weekend.

The Mac version is slated to be released next month when we officially release the Mac version of the full product. For more details on the Mac status of Hero Lab, see our November newsletter (available on our website) and/or watch for more info next week.

Rob, will content purchased under a PC license of Herolab transition to a Mac license?

Yes, but with one caveat. Our goal is to have there be no meaningful difference to users between Windows and Mac licenses, which would allow a license to be migrated across platforms if the user wants. However, we ran into a snag making this happen, and we're still trying to sort that out. If we don't manage to achieve that goal, then the licenses may end up having to be distinct between Mac and Windows. If that happens, we'll setup some sort of conversion process so users can migrate their licenses across when we officially release the Mac version. In either case, you definitely won't have to re-purchase any of the content again.

ruemere wrote:

There is no need to wait for Mac version. Just run Parallels or any other virtualization solution.

Regards,
Ruemere

Running things in virtual machines often pales to running it natively. I'll wait. :)

Lilith, is there any chance you'd be willing to teach courses on politeness? I can think of a few thousand people I've seen posting online over the years that could really use the lessons. And you always seem to do it with such ease and grace. :-)

Seriously, if you DO decide teach the courses, I'll be happy to sign up! Heck, there might even be cookies. :-)