How can those of us not nearly as proficient with the editor help the conversion process?

The editor is primarily used for settings files. There's not all that much any of us can really do when it comes to modifying the underlying game rules setting (and definitely not the underlying program) code that will be needed for the SWADE update. Probably the bigger question those of us with settings files will need to consider will be if there will be anything we would need to do to our files. It may just be denoting on them someplace that they are set up under the SWD rules, but there's always the possibility of considering SWADE updates to the files. Although that may just largely wait on when PEG does some of the settings updates they have been talking about anyway.

My apologies. I greatly appreciate the work being done here.

OK, first thing: I am a paid contractor for LWD. So, no, for this work I am not a "volunteer".

Second thing: This is a part-time side job for me. I have a regular day job (I'm a 25+ year SQL Programmer). So I have to fit this work in during evenings and weekends.

Now, for the juice. I have just finished my first read-through. Here are the areas that are going to cost me the most sleep:

1) Almost everything has changed in some way, I'd say 90%. There are very few things that will not change in some fashion. So, a lot of detail work.

2) Core Skills. Not a huge deal, you'll still have to add them, but the initial levels will be free. Adding them automatically becomes problematic when things like Hindrances takes some away. And that everyone will want to customize their own for different Settings. I am thinking a Core Skill tag that will make the initial level free that can be applied to or taken a way from a Skill at any time.

2) Charisma being gone.

3) The Knowledge Skill going away. This one I have a hard time with. There is no catch-all Skill now, and I see that as a major weakness. I'll likely make it easy to house rule and keep.

4) Throwing replaced by Athletics. This is a big one. There are a lot of places the reference the Throwing Skill as it is one of the three combat Skills. Lots of rework over this.

5) Experience Points went away. Now it just counts Advances. Oof.

6) Encumbrance is not a numeric function any more.

7) Vehicle Attributes have changed.

8) And the BIG one. Arcane Backgrounds. Not only can you have more than one, and they have to be treated complete separately, now Arcane Powers have modifiers like Super Powers do. That's two major overhauls. The second is simply tedious. The first, I will have to look at the best way to implement. The hardest part is making it so it can accommodate user-created Arcane Backgrounds for Settings as well as the stock set.

So. I have a lot of work to do, and less time to do it. Good thing the Christmas break is coming up. I know what I am doing between holidays. I'll start on this as soon as I get ths 5.7 update set and out.

Ooof. Good luck with all of that CC. I'll be cheering you on and hoping the hardest bits turn out to be easier for you than they first appear to be.

Is there any way the Power Modifiers need to be modeled in the program? As I understand it, you can do those on the fly, so what can the program actually do? It'd be like trying to put.

I'd suggest that with the change in advancement, a session-counter might be useful.

And yes, the new--and I believe release--version dropped today.

I have the new one, it's not release ready, yet, they still say don't print it.

Right now, Arcane Powers are not set up to handle dependent objects. That's a major change.

The release that dropped yesterday will be the first publicly available, i believe, but I believe CC is right that it's still not the "final" release that will be going to the printers. I think they'll still go one more round of, essentially, crowd-sourced editing before they finalize it. Not that there won't be updates after that, too, but it should be down to only more obvious fixes at that point.

That may well be; they just seemed (in the announce email to KS backers) to make a big distinction between this one and the prior one.