I'd expect that when Pathfinder material makes it onto the Realm Works content market, it will be data entry done by LWD under license, rather than anything Paizo will do themselves.
Having said that: I want this. Realm Works is a really useful tool, and having APs available in it would be fantastic, as well as an additional revenue stream for Paizo.
About the only thing I'm actually worried about is price, since to be usable in full, pretty much every single piece of info in each AP volume would need to be included, which would mean that the price would need to be at least in the same ballpark as the pdf price for an AP volume, to avoid undercutting pdf sales.
But that's between LWD and Paizo.
I really want to be able to purchase Pathfinder material in Realm Works. Please make it happen, Paizo!
Now that Wolf Lair has released the Player Edition of Realm Works, they're getting ready to move on to the content marketplace which will allow GMs to buy content for integration into their campaign.
I wouldn't hold your breath. If and when they get it launched, it's not likely to be anytime soon. They're still struggling to get some very basic functionality added to the base product, like printing and data export.
PG, your definition of "struggling" and mine are very different.
Your version seems to include "not even attempted to implement".
Realm Works has been at least three years in development, is custom software, and was launched with functionality to serve its purpose: campaign management. Print and export are QoL features. Even if development on RW stopped today, it would still function as campaign management software capable of being used at the table.
I know you seem to consider RW to still be Beta software, but I've yet to see you explain why it doesn't serve purpose (yet) as a campaign management application.
Unless by "Beta" you mean "doesn't have all of the features I want, yet".
I never said it didn't work as campaign management software. It can be used for that right now. It isn't fleshed out enough to be a even close to what it was promised to be, though, and the learning curve is much steeper than they indicate (unnecessarily so).
Judging from the various comments on their forums and elsewhere, print and export are considered vital to a very large percentage of their customers and potential customers. I see that in my local community, too. There are a few gung-ho evangelists for it in this area, and even they tell me that most people they pitch the product to - even Hero Lab owners - lose interest when they find out that they can't print out their own content.
Even moving beyond that, though, many key features (beyond printing and data exporting) that have been promised all along are still "in development" or "coming sometime in the future." I think they have simply bitten off more than they can chew for a company their size. They do a good job with Hero Lab, and I recommend that to everyone I meet.
Ultimately, though, the product is only partway developed, based on the things they have promised since the beginning.
I have been doing professional programming and development since the late 80s, on everything from corporate website servers to complex applications. I know what goes into this type of thing, and I know the signs of a company that has promised more than it can deliver. In fact, I have often been hired to come in and help get companies of that sort back on track. From what I have seen, the Lone Wolf folks are decent people who want to make a good product, but got overambitious and hyped the product (right from the beginning) as being more than they could deliver, even over the course of a few years.
As it stands now, without a much better UI and the ability to pull in data from standard formats (or even .csv files), the amount of work that most companies would have to go through to put their campaigns and worlds into Realm Works, coupled with the relatively low adoption rate of Realm Works at this point, would probably not be cost effective.
Fair enough, and I'm sorry if I came across as hostile (not my intent, but I'm told I can be very passive-aggressive).
Yes, it's not fully functional, I absolutely agree, there. It's a question of which functions are important. And rob has gone on record as saying that if RW sunsets, they'll make sure we can get our data out.
Sorry for making this conversation stretch here and the LWD forum, but it's good for people to get an idea what we're talking about.
You didn't come across as hostile!
To me, regardless of which functions are important to individual users, the biggest problem is that it's still not fully functional after all this time, defining "fully functional" according to the way they have pitched the product over time. To me, they should have either promised less from the beginning, or spent more time working on the product before releasing it. As I said before, though, I don't think there has been any intentional deception on their part. I think they just got in over their heads.
I do like the product and like the Lone Wolf people. I have just been burned too many times in the past on proprietary products that lock up your data with no way to get it out. I'm sure that Rob is being honest about opening up the data if the product support ends, but I think Lone Wolf had honest intentions when they pitched particular features as "coming soon," too. Something could happen in the future the prevents him from opening up the data. That has happened more than once to me - the company president or creator promise something like that, and it never happens.
Getting back to the original question, putting an AP into Realm Works format right now would not be a cheap or easy task. With changes to the UI and the ability to import certain parts of the data (from common data formats), it could be much less onerous. If and when they get to that point, I'm sure more companies would be willing to put their content into Realm Works format, just as more and more are adding Hero Lab files. Realm Works itself is just not there yet, though, and I'm not sure that their upcoming marketplace is going to make the importation process a lot easier for companies. Does anyone know if they have addressed that somewhere?
Just a small note (not addressing any particular point, but I consider it worth mentioning considering where this discussion has gone):
LWD are a small software company, selling to a niche market of a niche market sector (tabletop gamers who want electronic solutions). I think their actual staff is around a dozen people (perhaps a bit more, but not even twenty). Regardless of this, they have been in business for 20 years. They are, without a doubt, the "big boys" in their chosen field of software development. Realm Works is a flagship product that they have invested a lot of time and money into, and their philosophy is such that they want to do it right (allowing for bugs, of course).
This is not a project that's going to be discontinued suddenly one day, without forethought. This is a project that a long-running software developer have chosen to create.
Yes, they've made errors in their assumptions of complexity and the timescales they can deliver aspects of it in. They'll be the first to admit that. Their expectations were blown away by what needed to be done to get it right.
We currently have an excellent campaign management tool. It is definitely missing pieces. Those pieces will come. Perhaps not soon enough to suit every user, and each person must make their own decision about whether the current feature list meets their needs, but the feature request list is an ongoing, flexible thing that users are (shortly) going to be asked for input on.
I, personally, have a lot of patience for LWD and their ability to deliver what I want. I will certainly pester them about features. Please, everyone, do the same. But be patient. They're a small team, but they're the biggest players in town.