Congradulations Hero Lab
 

Just took the Paizo survey, and Hero Lab was the only example of a character generator.

Pretty sweet when you are considered the only example worth mentioning.

/tip o the hat.

I believe Hero Lab is the only company that pays Paizo to officially license there material.

So the fact Paizo only listed the character creator they get money from isn't a fair indication as to the quality of the character creator, but more an indication they don't want to advertise free alternatives and lessen the revenue stream they get from HL

They also don't want to advertise PCGen and then get all the backlash from the folks complaining that PCGen is incomplete, and a resource intensive Java hog.
That and the fact that Lone Wolf pays for the license deserves them consideration. You don't set up competition for the company that's actually your sole licensee.

I'm not surprised. PCGen is "okay" at best (and has the basic flaw of ugliness that a lot of open-source projects share), and for character generation with Pathfinder's bajillion books, there's nothing else out there good enough to even come up in a distant third place.

It's important to also note that Paizo works strictly with LWO by purposeful decision. They refuse licensing opportunities that might compete with HL.

I took this survey and it was an "example" of a type of character generator and nothing more.

The question was "Do you use any character generation software (ie Hero Lab).". This is similar to question of "Do you use a smart phone (ie iPhone)".

The smart phone question does not mean only iPhones exist (or the company is getting paid off) it just means the most common name known is iPhone. Same with the HL name. Paizo is using it as a common name useful for providing an example. Adding more meaning than that to the survey is not needed.

I didn't know there was an exclusivity deal. Do you have a source for that?

Pro tip: "ie" is used to refer to a singular element, and "eg" is used to refer to an example from multiple possibilities.

So you could say something like: Do you use any character generation software (e.g. Hero Lab)?

Or you could say something like: Do you use LWD's character generation software (i.e. Hero Lab)?

The method I use to remember the difference is by thinking of "e.g." as "example given", which is actually close to the Latin (i.e. the language from which these abbreviations were derived).

http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/edu...r/ie-versus-eg

EDIT: OK, I stated an error regarding the usage of i.e. It's not necessarily a single item so much as a finite list. "I like RPGs, i.e. Pathfinder and Shadowrun," means that of all the RPGs, those are the only two you like.

"I like RPGs, e.g. Pathfinder and Shadowrun," means those are just two examples of the RPGs you like, but you do like others as well.

Personal experience from talking with Paizo about licensing.

If you can't deal with the way I write then here is a very nice set of other letters for you STFU! :D

Of course I mean that in the nicest way possible. :)