Any thoughts on this product from Herolab?
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Any thoughts on this product from Herolab?
I enjoy using it. It's quite a bit of upfront work to get data into it, but once it's in it is nice to have.
I used it yesterday during a meeting while running Age of Worms. First time I had a separate player's screen active and it came in handy multiple times.
Also, let me add that I do not use the Cloud portion on the program, so I can't really comment on that part.
Hopefully they eventually get together with some 3PP to provide some adventures/settings with all of the data entered and linked.
What sort if upfront work?
What sort if upfront work?
You have to enter in any information you want available. So, I entered in all of the data about Diamond Lake and the encounters from The Whispering Cairn. A bunch of copy/paste and editing to decide what is player knowledge and not just GM info.
You can also link Hero Lab portfolios in it for encounters.
It is a great tool, and once you have the data in it, It is nice to use. Having things hyperlinked is a great help while running, and being able to show players info when they learn it is very useful. There are a ton of features that I'm still learning at this point, but it is worth the money to me.
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As one of the Early Access Kickstarter backers (note: I could well be biased), I would have to say that Realm Works is the bees knees of campaign management software.
Until the content market and community repository come online, it will be lacking the ability to share content with other users, and right now there's a lot of work involved in getting your campaign up and running in a usable state, but I'm finding it invaluable.
Now, I am a cloud user, and since I play online, it's proven very useful to ensure that my players can keep track of what the party learns.
Well worth the investment, in my book, but don't expect it to be effortless. The effort, though, is worth the time, and your games will improve as a result.
Is it simply for online gaming or can you use it for a table top game?
It's actually designed more for tabletop use than online gaming.
In theory, the perfect set-up is that the GM has a computer with a secondary monitor at the table. Realm Works would have the entire game system being used in the Mechanics section, while the world is held in the World Almanac, the people, places, encounters and other things for the current adventure are in the Story Almanac, and the adventure is fully plotted out in the Storyboard.
No books at the table required for the GM, not even the adventure. It's all at their fingertips through Realm Works.
As the adventure progresses, the GM reveals information (Realm Works calls each piece of information a "snippet", whereas an entire subject, say a person, is a "topic"), so when the players meet the devilishly suave and sophisticated drow called Chemlak, the GM reveals the topic (Chemlak), and snippets for race, gender, age, and perhaps a picture, which the players can then see on the second monitor. When the players learn that Chemlak is a fighter, the GM reveals that snippet, too, and up it pops on the player view. During the course of the session, the players learn that Chemlak is married to a slightly mysterious human woman called Nicola (relationship snippet revealed, as well as topic Nicola, and snippets for human female), and that he also has a drop-dead gorgeous woman called Maera who sort of follows him around like a puppy (relationship snippet revealed, as well as topic Maera, snippets for human, female, and beautiful).
The session ends, the GM syncs the Realm to the cloud.
At any point before next session, any of the players who have Player Edition can download the synced changes from the cloud to their own computer, and view everything the GM revealed that session (and in previous sessions), make their own notes, and follow links between revealed topics, and (because I'm pipe-dreaming, here), if they need a refresher on how the fighter class works (they're reminded because they learned that Chemlak is a fighter), they can follow the link into the Mechanics to see.
Now, I said I was pipe-dreaming, but the only bit of that which is actually a dream is that right now entire game systems aren't available as mechanics (unless you do it yourself). The rest of it works.
For the record, it can be done on a single monitor, but requires a minor amount of shenanigans to function that way (switch to player view, turn monitor around).
That's what Realm Works offers. Most of it right now (especially if you homebrew). In the near* future the content market and community repository will become available, meaning that buying, selling, and sharing of pre-written content will become a thing.
* Software development near future, not anyone else's. This could take some time to be fully realised.
Very nice, so say I was going to run an AP, I have the information on pdf I just copy and paste the information in the relevant places?
Yes, you can, though you'll want to take the time to split up the information into snippets from the wall of text an AP normally provides. Which is really easy to do, since there's a keyboard shortcut for exactly that purpose.
In case you hadn't guessed, I'm a huge fan of Realm Works, and it's getting better all the time, though progress from a small development house like Lone Wolf has been... a bit slow. I personally don't hold that against them, I'm in for the long haul, and it's helped my campaign management immeasurably (I've gone from scattered notes from 25+ years of GMing to, well, lots of scattered notes, but my current adventure is all in Realm Works).
Can you do more than one campaign with it?
Goodness me, yes!
I have my ongoing Pathfinder campaign, a Star Wars: Age of Rebellion campaign, and the very beginning of my next (completely homebrew) campaign as well.
Until the content market and community repository are available each campaign has to be either a re-use of a previous one, or done completely from scratch, but as far as I know there's a very generous storage limit on the cloud (nobody has yet hit it, as far as I know, and some people have over 500Mb realms that they're working on), and if you work offline only, you're only limited by your hard drive.
Nice! I might have to play around with it. Does Herolab have a free demo like they do with Herolab?
No free demo, unfortunately: as I understand it there are some issues about offering a demo version.
Check out the videos that are available, go take a look at the RW forum, and if you can afford a $50 outlay for a piece of gaming software that will massively help your GMing (once you've done the prep work), then buy it.
I'm a big believer in making informed purchases, so I'm trying to give balanced information. On the inside I'm screaming "OMFG, it's so damned awesome, everyone should buy this, now!" But RW won't be suitable for everyone. And it does (to start with) increase the GM's workload, getting things put in. Having used it exclusively for a few months (goodbye, paper adventure notes!), though, I never want to go back. I don't want to ever run a game without RW, now.
That's how good it is to me.
I strongly dislike this product but that is probably my fault as much as the product. let me explain....
I was an early Kickstarter backer and somehow was lead to believe this software included a mapping capability as well as campaign management. This is not the case. There is no mapping capability. It requires some additonal means of creating maps.
It is a deal breaker for me. I really was looking for a means to catalog a home brew world and tie everything together, the maps with all the details.
After trying for awhile I just could not really see a use for the software. Maybe I am just old fashioned orhave most everything I need already in place.
Make sure you understand what you are buying. I clearly did not =)
I supported this when it was Kickstarter in the hope that it would be ported to OS X like HeroLab. Someone mentioned that it would be a possibility that this would be done.
It doesnt look like that's going to happen anytime soon and I kinda regret supporting the Kickstarter now. It's my own fault and really should have waited for a more concrete discussion of OS X availability.
It's something that I'd really like to use but I dont want to take up several gigs of HD space for another OS just to run ONE application. I did that before with HeroLab abd ComicBase. Never again.
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I've done a bunch of the groundwork, and yes it does take a lot of time to do what I did. I have all of the CRB (Core Rulebook) spells entered as well as over half of the CRB magic items. I also have all of the CRB poisons and other stuff as well as many other glossary terms. Plus I have about half of the CRB feats. I add other book's spells and items as I use them and those are slowly growing. I really want to get the summonable creatures entered in with stats for augmented, celestial, and fiendish entered into it to make quick lookups for summoning easier.
When preparing I cut and paste stat blocks, format them and then when I click save all of the stuff I have preentered gets suggested as a link. Speeds up my researching. Then I add the few items that I feel are missing to my rules database to make it easier to research, and go back and tell it to look for more links. Adding the few items I find missing doesn't take very much time.
I can't wait for them to make it so we can export and import content from one realm to another, which will make this prep work pay dividends. Right now only my Pathfinder Society realm has all of this prep work done on it and I created a naming convention for areas that flag what scenario they go with. The scenarios I am not running gets moved to the world almanac and the scenario I am currently running gets put in the story almanac, to make it so I don't have to search through a huge list of scenario locations to find the ones I am running the players through.
It works really well for me. When I ran Legacy of the Stonelords, I was so prepared and kept the game flowing that my table managed to make it through almost every single encounter without feeling overly rushed and I don't believe the overseer GM gave any extra time for us to get through more. I just had all of the data right there at my fingertips organized like an enhanced wiki. Now, I was running a low tier, and lower tier combats tend to flow faster.
Also, now that I did a lot of initial groundwork, it now takes less time for me to be more prepared for running scenarios.
If I ever run multiple scenarios at conventions, I will always use this to help me keep my research organized and handy. I can't get over how much it has helped me.
All of this information is very helpful! Thank you so much!