Any word on the release date for the Hero Lab Plugin for SR?

The ink's not even dry on the deal yet. My guess is it'll probably be ready around GenCon time at the earliest, unless the programs insanely plug-and-play with different rules systems.

There's always the chance that someone at Lone Wolf has quietly been working on this for awhile. IIRC this product was first discussed 2-3 years ago. Could be they are farther along than we know and they just need to put some polish on an existing demo or something.

On their site, and elsewhere here in Dumpshock, they indicated at least a month.

-M&P

Remember initially its just the main book. If you use any supplements I don't see this being very useful to you for a while.

Once you have the base framework though you can use their tools to make your own stuff from the supplements you use.

I'm way too lazy to do that. At that point I'd rather just use a pencil, paper and basic math skills.

You know, I'm not even sure what the Hero Lab thing is...I barely skimmed the website when the deal was announced but didn't bother figuring out what it is.

All I know is its a character generator of some kind. There are a few freebies on the market right now though so it would have to add something awesome to get me to pay for it.

We only recently got the Shadowrun license signed, so we still have other projects in our pipeline that need to be finished. Once those are done, we'll get started on Shadowrun. That's probably still at least a month away, so we don't want to announce any timeframe for release of the data package yet. Sorry!

I believe that almost all, if not all of the games Hero Lab has licensed has a "trial version". You can't save characters or print them out, but otherwise they're fully unlocked. If you play any of the games they do generators for, download one and check it out, just to see what the program looks like.

We got the Mutants & Masterminds package for it, and it was fantastic. I'm really looking forward to the Shadowrun one.

And as a note, the core Hero Lab program is... Open, I think? So folks can create their own character generation modules for it. I don't know how often this gets used for Hero Lab, but they have a similar Army Builder program for miniatures games, and we had that back a million years ago, and used it quite a bit for Vor, and one buddy even figured out how to program it for a custom "Green Army Man" wargame we were goofing around with at the time.

Bull

That's my problem...the only games I play are old World of Darkness and D&D 4e...and a Paranoia game if I can get anyone to play :/

Hero Lab is a character creation & management program. You can create characters, keep track of them during a game, and use experience to advance them.

We do support D&D4, but you need a D&D Insider subscription to make the most of it, since we can't distribute Wizards of the Coast's content for the game.

Since you work for the company, I can take a guess how you'll answer to this one...but how do you feel your product differs from the WotC chargen program? I've really liked it but felt it was a bit bloated.

My favorite chargen software ever was the old NSRCG for Shadowrun 3rd Edition...if you've used that program back in the day, can you compare it to that?

We were playing a WoD Hunter game, and I used the Trial version to make my character. Was nice to have a lot of the options and stuff right there, and not have to flip through books. (I owned the Mutants & Masterminds license, but wasn't going to pick up the WoD one for a single character, and the game wasn't scheduled to last long, otherwise I'd have likely grabbed the full version too. I just copied down the stats and stuff after I made him in the program )

I have no idea how the D&D one stacks up. Never tried it. I do generally like the WotC one on DDI a lot though, especially since it's updated constantly with stuff from newer books, the Errata, and Dagon Magazine.

Bull

I just downloaded the trial version as my 10th level monk bought the farm in our Pathfinder game and I figured I'd give it a shot. I built Uzlan Madwolf,a 10th level Barbarian as a replacement and was very impressed witht Herolab. The build went smooth and it allowed me to tweak things without erasing a hole in the character sheet. I look forward to the SR builder and am definitely buying Herolab.

Well, the main difference is that we support a lot of games that the D&D Character Builder doesn't.

For 4th edition specifically, I think Hero Lab is easier to use, doesn't require a subscription every month to keep using, can be used as an electronic character sheet, and can be used by GMs to keep track of the party. Those are the differences that come to mind in a few seconds - if you're interested in doing a comparison for yourself, you can take our free demo version for a test drive.




I'm afraid I never used that, sorry. In general, here's how we differentiate Hero Lab from other character creators:

* Helpful to new players, without restricting experienced players - we prompt you to do each part of character creation, without making it hard to do something in a different way if you want to.

* Informative - mouseover description text is available for almost everything, and our summary panels let you keep track of an overview of your character, regardless of which facet you're editing right now.

* House rules - every group has their own house rules, so our validation engine lets you ignore errors or add "adjustments" to make any changes you want. GM says you can have an extra bonus somewhere? No problem.

* Editor - our editor lets you add your own content, for example your own custom weapons and ammunition, qualities, or races.

* In-Play support - you can use Hero Lab at the gaming table, instead of printing out a character sheet and entering the changes from that back into the program at the end of the game.

* GM support - GMs can load the party and NPCs into Hero Lab to manage encounters, and draw from dozens of stock heroes to quickly build new ones.


Hope this helps!

The thing I liked about NSRCG was that it was really powerful but very small and not processor intensive at all. It was fast, had all the info you needed, and was modular so that I could go in and edit the .DAT files easily and quickly to add house rules and custom equipment without having to learn some archaic formula or coding format to do so. It sounds from what everyone else is saying that seems to be what your software is like. I'll definitely have to check it out.

I've always thought it would be fun to have a char builder tool that autogenerated a picture of your character based on your build selections. Character with STR 1 BOD 1? The wireframe shows an emaciated sickly looking runner. Adding a cyberarm? The metal arm image overlay would be added to the picture. Add equipment and those overlays appear as well, wielding the weapon you have the highest skill in. Facial features, scars, etc would either be customizable, or randomly generated, or maybe vary based on CHA level.

Has anyone ever heard of a tool that could do something like this?

The closest thing I can think of is Heromachine. It dosen't auto generate a picture based on stats but it can help visualize a character. I use it for almost all my characters.

Just to clarify the program isn't Open Source, just to make sure there isn't any confusion. But you can extract the content you put in to the database(*) and share with friends

And yes like Colen says it is a VERY slick program, I found generating my own custom content a little arcane, but then I was using an older version and you have since come out with the Authoring Kit. And of course I'm used to the PCGen tag structure

(* Colen, it's been a while since I used HeroLab and can't remember if you used a database structure or not, I think you do. BTW hope your going to make it to GenCon, I had fun meeting you all last year)