Fantasy Grounds+Realm Works: Good combo or not?

[Galach]

I am finally starting to organize my notes and maps to give form to my homebrew campaign setting, and I am looking for a way to make everything linked and organized.

In the last years, many people told me about Lone Wolf's Realm Works software and, while it looks a great piece of software, I am no sure it Fantasy Grounds doesn't make almost exactly the same thing.

As far I could understand, the maid differences are that Realm Works is a bit easier to make things linked, and that I can share information with players, while outside game, if they have a player license.

The problem with Realms Works is the complete lack of a trial version, and it is a bit pricey. So I would like to know if any of you ever used it and if yes, what it offers beyond FG.

Thanks!

[dulux-oz]

Have you looked at the DOE: Locations Extension (here (https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?20794-DOE-Locations-Extension)) - it was written for the FG with the idea of organisng and linking things within the FG framework.

[Galach]

Good morning, Dulux.

I didn't knew about it, but I will try it right now... Hehehehe

Thank you very much, sir. For sharing and, obviously, for being a nice person and taking the time to code it... :)

[Gwydion]

Hey, Galach. I own them both. I purchased Realmworks close to two years ago. It is REALLY nice for organizing a long-term campaign and having a resource outside of FG when you aren't playing for players to track npc's, storylines, etc.. However, it is a LOT of work to get set up. I input all of POTA into Realmworks and it took me countless hours. The players really liked it but it was a huge lift and completely manual. (Cut and paste). If you want a robust campaign manager that you and the players will use a lot offline, I think it is great. However, I don't think it is worth it for me as I literally only used it for POTA. Trying to figure out if I can give you player access just to look at it. If I can, I will PM.

One other warning. They have a very small development staff. They talk about a content market where campaigns will be loaded into RW for purchase, kinda like an FG module. The content market has been delayed for quite a long time and many of the purchaser of RW are very frustrated. Suffice it to say in my view if you are looking at it, I would like at it for what it does now and not as much about the content market and when it may arrive. Just my view.

[Valyar]

They are called Lone wolf development for a reason... must be one guy only, otherwise I don’t see the reason for this insane delay in Realm Works. :mad:

Having the rant off, RW is the best campaign manager IMO because it is agnostic to the virtual table software. I use it exclusively, have all Dark Heresy 2 books completely uploaded and working on DH1 adventures. What I need to have in the campaign in roll20 or FG I just add it.

There is no way to easy import content from RW to FG... RW has xml export but it will take huge amount of time to decipher their custom schemes completely and make a program to inject into FG as a module. I really wanna do it, but I can’t have third job at the moment.

The only issue I have is when copy-paste text to FG - sometimes a some weird ? Symbol appears at the beginning and end of a paragraph. And I had double checked in RW that the rich text formatting is clean, no hidden spaces or other **** inherited from the PDFs.

[Andraax]

The only issue I have is when copy-paste text to FG - sometimes a some weird ? Symbol appears at the beginning and end of a paragraph. And I had double checked in RW that the rich text formatting is clean, no hidden spaces or other **** inherited from the PDFs.

There are probably ligatures in your text. Turn off rich text if you can, this might eliminate it.

[alessandro]

I own Realm Works, but I don't use it no more. As Gwydion said, it requires a LOT of work to get set up and import all the information.
I personally use and prefer MyInfo from milenix.com to manage all my campaign information.
I find it much, much quicker and easier to setup, to import/export content and to organize a long-term campaign. It's also more flexible and customizable.
I use it in parallel with FG, keeping both open at the same time. (FG for playing, rolling dice, combat tracker, maps and tokens, etc. MyInfo for "Story", Locations, NPCs Descriptions and relationships, etc. It's much easier and quicker to locate the right info when you need it.)
It doesn't have all the functions that Realm Works has, though, but I don't find them really necessary for my use (especially using Fantasy Grounds.)
Maybe Realm Works will become more interesting when (if) the content market is implemented, particularly if you're willing to invest in buying their pre-imported content (but if you've already bought the physical edition, the pdf, and FG module, that would mean buying the same module for the fourth time).
John Four has a good free course for using MyInfo as a campaign organizer for RPG, you can check it out and try the software: https://www.roleplayingtips.com/myinfo-gm-organization/.

[ColinBuckler]

You could havea look at Cherry Tree.... Its basically a personal wiki (and its free). https://www.giuspen.com/cherrytree/

Cherry Tree also runs from a USB memory stick for portability, available in loads of languages and more improtantly still in active development.

I have looked at other programs such as ConnectedText, wikidpad but it appears most similar products have gone to online versions...

[Galach]

Hey, Galach. I own them both. I purchased Realmworks close to two years ago. It is REALLY nice for organizing a long-term campaign and having a resource outside of FG when you aren't playing for players to track npc's, storylines, etc.. However, it is a LOT of work to get set up. I input all of POTA into Realmworks and it took me countless hours. The players really liked it but it was a huge lift and completely manual. (Cut and paste). If you want a robust campaign manager that you and the players will use a lot offline, I think it is great. However, I don't think it is worth it for me as I literally only used it for POTA. Trying to figure out if I can give you player access just to look at it. If I can, I will PM.

One other warning. They have a very small development staff. They talk about a content market where campaigns will be loaded into RW for purchase, kinda like an FG module. The content market has been delayed for quite a long time and many of the purchaser of RW are very frustrated. Suffice it to say in my view if you are looking at it, I would like at it for what it does now and not as much about the content market and when it may arrive. Just my view.


Hi, Gwydion! Thanks for the reply! I was interested in RW to organize my own campaign setting, which I am building from zero while I am DMing a campaign. However, what really got my attention is the ability to share things with my players while offline, so I could have them reading things without the need to provide more concrete copy of my work. At least, until I saw players also have to buy a license (well, it is not that expansive) and the need to pay the LW cloud service, which in my opinion, sucks - you become hostage of their service if you want to use it's software at full potential. Anyway, the tool seems good, but with some catches... lol



I own Realm Works, but I don't use it no more. As Gwydion said, it requires a LOT of work to get set up and import all the information.
I personally use and prefer MyInfo from milenix.com to manage all my campaign information.
I find it much, much quicker and easier to setup, to import/export content and to organize a long-term campaign. It's also more flexible and customizable.

Good evening, Alesandro, Tnx for you answer! I don't knew about MyInfo, but I will check it =)


You could havea look at Cherry Tree.... Its basically a personal wiki (and its free). https://www.giuspen.com/cherrytree/

Cherry Tree also runs from a USB memory stick for portability, available in loads of languages and more improtantly still in active development.

I have looked at other programs such as ConnectedText, wikidpad but it appears most similar products have gone to online versions...

Hello, ColinBuckler. Thank you too for posting a reply! I used CherryTree sometime ago at work, but I really didn't liked the interface and format tools, it seems more limited than MS One Note. I had also used One Note during some time, sharing an online version of the notebook with players, but I dropped it because I could not get properly organized with it - probably it is a issue with me, but I had a hard time making cross references within One Note... =P

[notrealdan]

I had also used One Note during some time, sharing an online version of the notebook with players, but I dropped it because I could not get properly organized with it - probably it is a issue with me, but I had a hard time making cross references within One Note... =P

There’s some good info about using OneNote like this here:
https://www.cryrid.com/dnd/?page_id=153

Maybe that’ll help you? Worth a look if you haven’t been there already.

[Jay_NOLA]

I have Realm Works and used to use it heavily, but currently it can't do a lot of stuff that I need it to. It has no spell check, no printing option, and can't do custom calendars for example. When you get a Realm all set up it is great, but it does take awhile to learn and data entry is very time consuming. Your players are going to all need a Player or GM version to view info too. (They don't have an upgrade from Player version to GM version implemented yet. So keep that in mind if a Player asks what is going to be better to get now and they may want to GM in the future. The GM version is better buy.

The Player version currently doesn't do everything that was planned for it now too.

Realm Works does have an active fan community with a lot of fan tutorial videos.

Some official Realm Works adaptations of RPG modules, etc. have been done and a few are free but they are way behind on getting the Content Market or it out.

It is also going to have a cloud fee once the Content market does go live. Also, a lot of the entry stuff your going to spend time doing may be stuff that you'll see offered once the Content Market goes live and when more people use it. I spent a good bit of time just doing entry for rules instead of actually getting the campaign info in. Realm can be exported and imported now but I haven't seen much sharing of realm info for certain things like SRD stuff for a few systems.

Realm Work realms can get very big too like several gigs in size and that can be a problem depending on drive space, and downloading (synching) of realms made in it.

Realm Works is meant to be generic but it works better with certain game systems, etc. I've noticed. So what game you'll be running is going to be another factor.

You might also want to look into the NBOS program the Keep. I used that for several years. You can find it in a bundle on RPGNow which may be a better buy than directly from NBOS.

https://www.nbos.com/products/the-keep