Welcome everyone to a game called Realmz.
Realmz is a top-down party-based tactical computer RPG heavily inspired by Dungeons & Dragons and many other RPGs of the time. (So much so that early versions had artwork ripped from TSR and features like character alignment and the actual D&D ability score names.) What set it aside from other RPGs was the open-ended world and the scenario editing tools which let users create and also sell their own scenarios.
Anyway, time has not been good to the game. It runs poorly in Windows, and not much better on the Mac side (not at all in Mac OS X). The interface is cluttered and can be confusing for new people. The scenario editing tools are pretty tough to slog through, but was still powerful at the time, being able to add and edit monsters, items, spells, even races and characters.
Tim has pretty much fallen off the face of the earth. I know he was in central Wisconsin and then moved to Florida, then who knows. Not much is known about him; a person named “Skip” had assumed maintenance of the web site. A few years ago he opened up registration codes for the core game and a few of the default scenarios.
People have wanted to port Realmz but lingering copyright issues will probably prevent that from ever happening; art was done by other people and many of the scenarios are contributions made by others. You may also notice some resources were shared between it and Spiderweb’s Exile series. (Fantasoft was once a publisher for Spiderweb’s early Exile series. Jeff Vogel I’m sure knows more about this relationship.)
Tim had also released a game called New Centurions which was like Realmz but in a Sci-Fi setting. It is
very hard to find these days, but if you do find it, I’d love to see it here.
A great place to still talk Realmz is at the
Realmz Castle Yahoo! Group.