Basic Campaign Theater question.
 

How do players sign up? Do they need a herolab account? The document assumes a LOT of knowledge that I don't have.

Do they have to pay to have an account? is there a way for the GM to pay for that if there is a charge? Because IF my players must have a HL account and have paid for everything, then the Campaign Theater feature is worthless to me.

I want to add characters from my account into the PCs fields.

Perhaps I am missing the point of this feature? I read the doc, but I am sure that I am missing stuff.

Ignore me, I misread it.

Simply - yes, at the moment everyone needs an account. In future LW plans to have some form of shared account, but its not happening yet.
From what I read, you can put your own GM PC's into this. So you can load characters that were made on your account.

Oh like the multiple licenses they keep promising for the character generator?

I am just not sure what functionality this brings me.

I was actually more interested in an encounter generator or is that hidden in the bowels of this new feature?

I wouldn't say that it's hidden in the bowels of this update. On the contrary, it seems to be the primary purpose of the campaign theater. However, it's definitely in a beta state that, as far as I've found, doesn't facilitate putting encounters together on the fly.

Unless I've missed something, you can't add monsters directly from the archive to the stage. Instead, you have to load monsters from the archive to a HLO character folder, then load the monsters into a script, then load that script to be run with the PCs (after you've set up the PCs of course, but that's another little ordeal).

You can, however, add archive "PCs" (like the PF2 premade iconics) as "GM PCs", but that seems to have very limited usefulness.

you don't need to use a script to put monsters on the stage. just go to the "Cast Members" screen, click on the three dots next to any monster or NPC and click "Add to Stage".

scripts are there to let the GM prepare more complicated encounters ahead of time and then load them quickly during a game. if you just want to pull together a quick combat though you don't need to mess with scripts at all.

I went to try this on the 21st and it would only let me load the premade PCs from the archive, but it seems like it's working today. Probably part of the beta blues, as I was able to create scripts before, and now when I click the "create script" button, the naming window closes and nothing happens.

Fingers crossed that the downtime fixes that, too.

We're going to be improving this throughout the beta. We have plans for more "add" options directly from the stage, such as adding individual cast members, instead of just scripts, without having to separately go to the Cast view..

Right now the beta is primarily focused on groups where the GM and at least one player have HLO. The big change that it brings, that Hero Lab has never had before, is a shared space where everyone at the table can see tactical changes (HP, buffs, initiative order, etc) in real-time.

This is obviously significantly less useful if you're the only one looking at it. Still, it provides a useful tracking tool, similar to the old Tactical Console in HLC, which can alleviate some of the mental tracking.

As the beta progresses, we'll be introducing more features to help out in cases where not everyone at the table is using HLO (standin PCs for instance). We're also working internally on devising some kind of group licensing solution, which should make HLO Campaigns more viable for more groups, although I don't have any details to share on that right now.

It is possible yet or planned for the GM running the CT to apply buffs and debuffs to players controlled by other log-ins (as opposed to gm controlled PCs) Seeing the players name is useful, but not being able to apple conditions or modify their HP really cuts down in the utility and encourages me to simply make all my players build their PCs on my account and play with print outs