Announcement about Subscriptions
 

The official announcement about licenses is available at https://www.wolflair.com/licenses

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An initial announcement was made on facebook, but not referenced in these forums, see https://www.wolflair.com/hero-lab-online-subscriptions

Because I don't trust links to not go away...

Well, my group isn't doing Starfinder right now and no interest in Shadowrun or PF2E so I guess I will lapse into demo mode.

Very interesting news. Will wait and see if they ever get old content converted as promised and open access for user created files for the games they don't normally cover but we all play.

excellent news!

Definitely this.

If Pathfinder makes it to Hero Lab online, with third party addons (Community Package & Spheres), I'd love the features of Campaign Theater, and would happily support Lone Wolf.

Yep. Pathfinder 1st would be awesome. Savage Worlds would be great as well. Without at least one of those two systems, HLO has nothing that I want.

Let's be honest though, PF1 is very much dying due to lack of first party support. Will they do it eventually? Maybe. But as a pretty small company, there has to be profit potential for them. I honestly don't see how moving 1E to HLO would be profitable for them.

I will say, this bit of news is what is holding me off from actively subscribing and will make or break if this model proves functional at all.

For the purposes of group play, this should function similarly to sitting at a table with a pile of books. Even if it just restricted to PCs that are part of campaigns I create, my players should not have to re-buy material that I've already paid for.

I'm holding off on buying a personal license until I get clarity on the model as I've seen no indication upgrading to a group license by the 24th will be a seamless process. At the same time, it would be great to not be left with only a few days to decide before the deadline. Is it likely that group licensing details will be announced this week?

It's a bit worrying that the details have yet to be announced this close to when you start charging.

Hopefully I'm wrong, but I'm betting that the most we can expect is an announcement of how group licensing will work at some unspecified future date rather than any sort of implementation by the 24th.

Hopefully I'm wrong, because without this, it's basically useless to me as a forever DM.

The 24th is the date for "unveiling new account types". This doesn't mean they will be available from that date. I'd bet that we only learn what form "group licenses" will take and that actual implementation will be in coming in the following months.

Update to Group
 

So if I just renewed my license for a year will I be able to add group licensing on to it? Please say yes....

i don't work for LW but i'd be pretty shocked if there's not a mechanism to upgrade an existing regular license to one of the new group options after they come out. in fact it might just be an add-on feature to your standard license, that would make the most sense from a business perspective imo.

I really hope you're wrong too, because getting my groups into this would be awesome.

We're still waiting I guess, I'm not extending my license until I knwo for sure. LWD? Are you there?

I am really on the fence about renewing my subscription, and I am waiting to hear the announcement about group purchases. Has there been any further word?

I've set up my account with Auth-Renew every 12 months. I expect to be able to add the group licence to that. I have 6 players at my table so hopefully, it won't be too much.

So...supposedly we were supposed to hear something about the upcoming subscription models before the 24th, and it's 1hr until the 23rd PST. Anything yet?

Well if there was I missed it, oh well. One of the groups that I GM for was even asking me if I was going to renew the subscription. I was waiting until the announcement was made. In usual Lonewolf manner, missed another self-imposed deadline. Not really surprised.

I honestly assumed they meant by the end of today, so they've got a few hours yet..

Please tell us something soon...

the account and licensing system is currently down for maintenance until 5pm Pacific, i'm guessing that's a good sign...?

It is for every update, so not really.

The following was just posted on the Hero Lab Facebook page:

"The Hero Lab Online store is currently down as we’ve been working to add new license options for HLO. We don’t want to interrupt prime gaming hours to fully implement the new items so the store will continue to be down until tomorrow morning to allow everyone to finish up their games uninterrupted.

But tomorow, new license types!"

Now that is definitely something.

Hallelujah! Can't wait

The account management page is still down (is it part of the "store"). What's odd is that LWD will post on FB, but not here, which is where they link from their product to get official information. <sigh>

this is what drives me nuts. the in-product messages direct users to these forums for info, but then they post announcements on FB only and leave the forums in the dark. (except for Joe-- he posts here regularly, which i really appreciate! but as he himself points out often, he's not an "official" source for LW.)

if FB is now the preferred channel for LW news, why do they still tell people to come here? or better yet, why not just post announcements to multiple platforms? do they not understand how to copy-paste text? their marketing/customer relations strategy is just baffling sometimes.

I agree they should communicate via the forum first then social media.

Not sure if anyone has been on the site lately, but it's back up and the new licenses are available.

since LW still hasn't posted any announcement, here's the new license plan descriptions (copy pasted from the new product pages):

Overall these options look really good imo-- a GM with a Patron-level account can share all their purchased content with players in their campaigns, and the players only need to pay 5 bucks every 4 months to get access to everything the GM owns. Pretty much exactly what we've all been asking for, well done LW!

some further info from the website:

This sucks and was not what i was expecting.

I thought demo accounts would be able to access my campaigns and content much like Dnd beyond which is a proven model.

Instead my players have to pay five bucks a quarter. I know its small but theres always one who won't pay, and its creates an obstacle to play or me enforcing herolab usage.

Why can we have a level higher than patron where I can pay more to allow demo players in my campaign.

If we don't get this, I'm out I'm afraid.

Copied from my reply here: 2020-02-25 Update: Build CB54D0C

We have discussed doing something like this internally, and may very well end up going that direction, although we have not determined a timeline yet. Keep an eye out for announcements on the topic in the future.

Please keep in mind that we are a small team and need to roll things out in stages. Going from no group licensing at all to the Patron/Apprentice model represents a massive improvement for a large number of people, and it was a lot of work on its own. Now that we've put this out as a foundation, we can begin to refine it to cover additional cases.

I mean, there's nothing stopping you from buying accounts for other people. Just create some Apprentice accounts at 5 bucks each and hand out the logins to your players if you want.

also, players with Demo accounts can join your HLO Campaign already. they just won't be able to share all your extra purchased content unless they have at least an Apprentice account.

Thanks Joe, I didn't mean to diminish the effort, I know what hard work software delivery can be.

Dacobob there is something stopping me making a bunch of apprentice account s and handing them out. It's a pain in arse making multiple payments on separate accounts not to mention security issues.

All I wanted was a product I can pay for and my players can use.

To be fair this was my expectation not something Herolab ever promised.

However this model works really well for DnD beyond. I couldn't get any of my players to fork out up front for that, but after using it for a while for free in my campaign, most of them paid out so they could experiment with building chars outside of the campaign.

I'm afraid with current model players will not bother trying it out because of up front cost, you give players something for free and then they pay for a bigger hit just like drug dealers do ��

The current demo account can't let you use it for real in a campaign, which is where it shines, and where people will be drawn in.

I think the announced model is progress, and I’m not ungrateful. I think the patron licence option is pretty good for groups of players who campaign.
We however are a gaming couple doing organised play, and though the patron licence will let us share bought resources, it will cost $65... more than twice the standard licence subscription. Whilst I understand sharing resources must cost more than a single licence, this seems like a big hike in price when we’ll get no additional benefit from it.
It would be good for this kind of position to be considered in any future licensing modifications.

Buts that's half the purpose. If eople can't access the loot I'm handing out because they haven't got the module it's from then everything breaks.

All I'm asking is to let me pay from my account. It's a model that works well on DND beyond and in my anecdotal experience draws in more custom as initially free players get sucked in and pay after they see how great it is

FWIW, there IS a plan for giving you exactly this. Since it builds on all the stuff we just released today, it's not in place yet. If all goes well, you'll be able to take advantage of it soon. But we're not announcing anything yet or making any promises, as that repeatedly got us into trouble in the past. There are some other pieces that need to be completed first, but my goal is to give GMs exactly what you're asking for here. So please stay tuned in the weeks ahead...

Super, thanks Rob, and thanks again for the product, it's fantastic!

A solution for this is part of the bigger plan that I just mentioned above. We can't do it all at once, but we've now got the most complicated pieces into place, so the foundation is all there for us to build on.