Any work around to Hero Lab portfolios no longer launching from Realmworks
 

Sorry for duplicate posting, I know that this has been discussed but am unable to find the thread(s) discussing it.

One of the most useful features of RW and HL is using them together. If you have HL and RW both open, you can integrate a portfolio saved in a HL Portfolio snippit in a RW topic into an open HL portfolio. This is such a help during a game, especially with larger encounters.

But that no longer works.

Is this due to the 64-bit HL? If I revert to the 32-bit version will linking work again? Or did one of the RW upgrades break it?

If it is a HL upgrade that broke it, can I revert to an older version?

It's really bloody disappointing that LWD (Rob) has not addressed this. They sold content to their 'family' and then broke that content within mere weeks.

Sure they have barely acknowledged it and then blamed the community on the fact that they didn't know but come on.

This is a true indication of just how bad LWD have really become.

It still works in the 32 bit version I have installed. I think it was the last version before 64 released but I have never been very good about updating HL when everything is working.

I have the latest HL (windows) version and the latest Realm Works (I believe it was listed as a beta version).

Neither my 32-bit nor the 64-bit will allow Realm Works to integrate into the running portfolio.

My fix is to not rely on saving the portfolio into Realm Works for integration purposes. Basically, I have the adventure as a folder. And then each encounter listed by page number and description of what is in the portfolio. These are all Hero Lab portfolios. I'll generally load from file, and have a copy of the portfolio within RW, even though that will not integrate with a running Hero Lab. It's sometimes handy to be able to view it, from within the other app.

My RW will have the encounters for the adventure, in a descriptive sense, not necessarily the encounters entirely. But there is enough information that I know which encounter to import (from the HL portfolio, via the menu to import a character (several bad guys) into the player portfolio). This aspect is entirely Hero Lab to Hero Lab, and would work fine even without Realm Works.

If I need something from Realm Works, that for some reason I don't have within Hero Lab, there is a work around for that too. RW has the option to open whatever it is externally, which means open it with Hero Lab instead of RW. It has a really weird number for the name, but that can then be renamed to something more logical.

In the case of the Bestiaries, the content seems to be protected, but the pictures are nice. I open the relevant Bestiary by typing in the monster... Hill Giant, save as, then click on the auto generated link and open in a New Tab. Then click on the image, which enlarges it. Snaggit to grab the image. Copy that to the click board. Then from there, I can paste it into a Realm Works picture for revealing to the group from within the RW adventure/encounter section without needing to open the bestiary. I can also save the image and then my VTT can use it for the creature type or Hero lab can use it for the picture. Generally the HL picture and the RW picture is the same, but not always.

Ualaa, I do both. I save the HL *.por file for an encounter / NPC / monster filded in a directory structure under by Documents/HeroLabs/5e folder. I have a bestiaries folder with all my 5e custom beasts and then I have adventure folders with sub-folders for campaigns. I don't further subfolder. I just name them with the map location added as a prefix.

Then I also add a HeroLab snippet in my encounters, major NPCs, and monster topics and articles.

While it is not *that* difficult to manually bring in a monster/encounter, it still is disruptive enough that I not only notice it but I often don't bother unless it is a very complex encounter.

In comparison, when I could click on a button in RealmWorks and have the encounter instantly added to the open portfolio, it was so darn convenient that it was the sole reason I started using HeroLabs.

No I'm using HeroLabs less and I'm carefully watching what D&D Beyond is doing with its encounter builder. Creating custom monsters in DnD Beyond is actually easier than with HL, especially those built on standard monsters. For example, Rappan Athuk has lots of variations on goblins, gremlins, zombies, etc. In HL I have to create a custom monster from scratch most of the time, because you can't easily create a character from a monstrous race and make changes to it. It is easier to build it from scratch as a custom monster.

I only went through the hassle of doing this because of how the RW and HL integration made running my games easier.

But with the DDB beta encounter builder, I'm thinking of putting all my custom monsters and my encounters there and just putting a hyperlink to the DDB encounter/monster into RW. The only thing that I'll miss is HL's tactical console. But I'm at the point of just tracking hitpoints and initiative on paper again. HL just doesn't seem worth the effort, especially since I can't launch it from RW.

Hey, Daplunk, I know you are also running Rappan Athuk in RW. Are you using HeroLabs for encounters or have you moved on to something else. I'll be continuing to use RealmWorks I expect for a few years as Rappan Athuk is massive and RW is a great help when running it. The huge investment of entering the content into RW has been worth it, but I'm finding HL to have diminishing returns in terms of time to create custom monsters and encounters.

At this point, DDB's beta encounter builder and homebrew monster creator for readily referencing encounter statblocks (through a URL in the RW topic/article) and just using pen and paper to track initiative, HP, and conditions seems to be the best way forward.

I found the exact same issue. There's too many custom monsters with the FGG content and the time vs effort is not balancing up.

At this point I've basically stopped using HLC all together.

We use DDB for character management (sorry LWD but it's way better and they have the license) and I'm using Improved Initiative (II) for combat management.

II allows you to import monsters from CSV, thus I use the same CSV as I did for the RW import with a few tweaks and easily and VERY QUICKLY get the monsters into II as well.

How far as you through entering RA? What system are you using?

Cool, hadn't heard of it. I just played around with it a bit and I like how you can set durations to conditions. Nice also that players can join for remote play and that the player view only shows "healthy", "bloodied", etc.

It looks like the "encounter" link will stay active for an entire session, correct? With the number of encounters in a mega dungeon like Rappan Athuk it would be annoying to have to keep sharing links for each new encounter.

It seems like II would work well for me if I can figure out an easy way to add in all the custom RA beasties.

I don't see why you can load from CSV, just JSON. I also don't see any help files. I'll dig through the Patreon so see if I can figure it out.

I should probably just suck it up and learn Roll20 or Fantasy Grounds, but I find it much easier to prep with RW and simply share the map with RW and a shared window in Google Meet.

[/QUOTE]

Using 5e. I'm focusing on adding areas most likely to be encountered into the next few sessions and am not adding in all of the fluff, such as timelines.

I created a custom Adventure Area template form and created place holders for all levels and added maps for all level, include keyed maps as overlays. That way, even if the party gets ahead of me, I can still share maps with fog-of-war and run from book.

In terms of area and room text, I've entered all content, most of which include herolab portfolios embedded, for:

0A to 0E
1 through 2B
3C, 4 through 4C
10B

Herolab is what really slows me down. Another slog is on several occasions, I've had to remove links and do a bulk re-link as there is so much interconnection. What I should have done is created place holders for all scenes/rooms with room numbers so thinks would probably autolink as I added content. But that makes it harder to track my progress as I enter content.

As I add content I'm also creating the custom monsters, magic items, spells, diseases, etc. One problem now is that for monsters I wasn't bothering making creature articles for the monsters. I was just creating HL stat blocks. With HL no longer linking to RW, I no long have an easy way to pull up the creature stats. I've noticed that the viewer in RW for HL statblocks does not show all the content in the HL POR file, such as spells, special features, etc.

I started adding some creatures as articles, but I'm rethinking that as complex enounters would require opening up a lot of tabs in RW and switching among tabs is not very fluid. D&D Beyond is a bit easier, but you cant easily track combat, just reference stats.

So II could be what I need. Though, even with a CSV/JSON import, it will still be a lot of work to enter in all the stats.

Also, one thing I don't like about the Rappan Athuk monster appendix is that they strip all the flavor text where sometimes I'm not even sure what is it supposed to be, look or act like. I find I often have to go to Tome of Horrors or one of the other FGG bestiaries to understand the monster. For those, I have been adding in the flavor text and pictures in RW.

CSV is very simple to parse, JSON is a lot complex. Thus CSV would probably always be supported by any new tool before JSON :-)

I agree. Typo on my part. I can NOT see an option to load from CSV. I have not figured out how to mass load a lot of monster stats into this tool as DaPlunk describes it.

It is a nifty site and I've decided to back the creator's Patreon while I try it out, but right now it is looking like another big data entry job, which will probably turn me away.

BUT there is one killer feature that II offers: they have a Chrome extension that will allow you to take any stat book on DnD beyond and import it into II. So if I continue creating custom monsters in DnD beyond, it is very easy to get them into II.

What would be even better is if you could take any copied text that is roughly in the standard 5e statblock format and have it create a monster in II. Being able to copy from a PDF and paste into an initiative tracker with data put into the write fields would be a killer feature.