Hero output / export options

[phantomwhale]

Having primarily used Hero Lab to "create" D20 heroes and villains, saving me hours of tallying skill points and calculating full-round attack blocks. I then printed them out, using the PDF exporter, to use with my games.

Right now focusing on using it with other systems however. One of these might be Savage Worlds, pending the Authoring Kit's release, which bring me to wonder what I might use Hero Lab for, exactly ?

Creating characters in SW is "fun, fast" and well, quick. Whilst it would be great to create and manage them within Hero Lab, after I've exported them and printed them onto PDF, I've not saved much time.

So I got to thinking about "steamlining" the process a little... currently I use Hero Lab for character generation over any other software tool as it's the "best of breed" - no point wasting time with freeware / lesser quality tools when I can spend a few more dollars and get something that works. I also use Fantasy Grounds II for my online RPGing for similar reasons - it's really good and works easily, saving me lots of time.

So I was wondering what the feasability or effort required might be to allow Hero Lab characters to be "exported" into an FGII format ? Or if there are any plans / discussions around what a user can do with a "digital" character sheet, other than export to PDF or other text formats ? Perhaps this is not something others have considered or regard as useful, but would be good to explore the idea a bit and see what's possible !

Comments ? Ideas ? Input from developers ? All welcomed !
Ben

[rob]

At 11:26 AM 11/16/2008, you wrote:
Right now focusing on using it with other systems however. One of these might be Savage Worlds, pending the Authoring Kit's release, which bring me to wonder what I might use Hero Lab for, exactly ?

Creating characters in SW is "fun, fast" and well, quick. Whilst it would be great to create and manage them within Hero Lab, after I've exported them and printed them onto PDF, I've not saved much time.
Even in a comparatively simple game system like SW, there are lots of interesting modifiers and calculations that can come into play, especially with a variety of edges. HL automates all of it. Then there's the time to actually fill out the character sheets, which HL does with a few mouse clicks. There's also the issue of advanced characters, or characters with powers. HL will greatly streamline the process of creating and managing all these different types of SW characters.

So I got to thinking about "steamlining" the process a little... currently I use Hero Lab for character generation over any other software tool as it's the "best of breed" - no point wasting time with freeware / lesser quality tools when I can spend a few more dollars and get something that works. I also use Fantasy Grounds II for my online RPGing for similar reasons - it's really good and works easily, saving me lots of time.

So I was wondering what the feasability or effort required might be to allow Hero Lab characters to be "exported" into an FGII format ?
As I mentioned in another thread a short while ago, expect to hear something regarding this general topic when we release V3.0.

Or if there are any plans / discussions around what a user can do with a "digital" character sheet, other than export to PDF or other text formats ?
The primary uses that we've identified for digital character data is character sheet output, in-play management for players, combat management for GMs, tailored output for re-use (e.g. statblocks), and gateways to other tools. All of the aforementioned are already in place within HL, except the last one, which will be possible in just a few weeks.

What other uses do you guys have in mind? If you tell us what you want, we'll do our best to figure out a way to add it. :-)

[Shepherd]

I'm cranky about this in another thread, but I would like a straight text-dump export that can then be cut and pasted into programs like Adobe InDesign. The PDF export seems to treat every letter and number in the PDF as its own entity, making any coherent cut-and-paste extremely scattershot at best, and impossible at worst.

[KaitlynStuart]

Shepherd,

Go to File-->Output Active Hero Summary. That produces a plain text output that you can save to .txt format.

[Shepherd]

BRILLIANT! You are the wind beneath my wings!