[zarlor]

I've done quite a few of the settings files, but I will say I don't fully agree with CC about our shooting ourselves in the foot on that. When I first made the decision of which product I wanted to use the two that really only had any true settings in them and had some potential to modify for house rules and such what Hero Lab and MetaCreator. Neither one of them had more than a few data files available, though. There was a Deadlands file, Rippers and maybe one or two others through the official release mechanism, if I remember correctly (there were also a few other files on non-PEG, Inc. settings that were available privately, as is still true today although there are a lot more now).

After playing around with both programs I settled on HL and decided I would have to make data files for the settings I wanted, because they just didn't exist and nobody at LoneWolf was really giving any indications they were going to do them that I was aware of. If they had I probably would have been willing to pay a few bucks for them, but I just didn't see it happening. It wasn't until I was posting a ton of questions here and was contacted by LoneWolf if I wouldn't mind publishing my HoE file through their update mechanism that the first of my files went out for free. Apparently LoneWolf has an agreement in place with PEG, Inc. to allow that to happen for official Pinnacle settings (third-party is a different story, as I've been given the impression Lone Wolf would need some agreement in place to make any of those files available in their update mechanism and only a few of those have been done). I've told LoneWolf they are more than welcome to actually try to sell my data files if they really wanted (I need no compensation, I'd be doing them for myself anyway!) but they have only thanked me for the offer but decided they prefer it this way.

I don't know the exact reason why that is the case but my personal guess is that I don't think the Savage Worlds setting, nor the add-ons for it, sell all that well. SW may be 2nd for things like Fantasy Grounds and some other utilities, but I think the overall scheme of things it's a pretty distant second in this case to Pathfinder/d20. So I just don't think Lone Wolf makes enough money off of us to do something like pay CC the big bucks to make all of the major overhaul of changes we'd probably like to see.

Now is that because I (and others) made those data files that SW doesn't make much money here? I personally don't think so. To me it was a bit of a catch-22. Without having data files why bother getting Hero Lab for a relatively simply system to craft characters for, like SW is? Yet now that we have data files for free, do we now have enough folks using Hero Lab to make money off of data files is they started wanting to sell them? Or are there simply too many free files out there in the wild that they don't think they could get away with selling them? I don't suppose we'd really know unless they tried.

In any case I think the main answer is really that Lone Wolf doesn't make enough money off of us... so presumably there just isn't enough of a market among Savage Worlds players/GMs when compared to the mega-monster of Pathfinder/d20 and even AD&D that Lone Wolf probably just doesn't see that they would get enough out of their investment to spend more effort on this side of their products.

That doesn't even include the pretty massive investment and focus they are placing on Realm Works. (Yes, I know it's a different development pool, but it's still the same pot of financial and management resources which are, IMHO, focused more on those areas rather than on Savage Worlds.)

Even so, it's still be a pretty useful investment for me personally. Yes, there are a TON of things I wish were better about it, but it's definitely improved over the years and the content is still pretty good overall. Heck, for my own personal files that I submit to Lone Wolf I also post at the exact same time that I have a file ready for use. Some of those were available within a week of the public release of a setting by Pinnacle so you could get a usable file very quickly. With the caveat that it may change between then and when Lone Wolf approves a finalized file. I just haven't been all that involved in data file creation lately, is all. Even so folks like Dartnet, jbearwillis and now Paragon, among others, have really stepped up to the plate with some of their files and SeeleyOne has been massively helpful on getting crazy things to work in code and helping folks out here, too. Obviously CC has been instrumental in implementing some really crazy stuff that a data set built to originally handle just base Savage Worlds wasn't really meant to do.

So in that sense, much like a lot of the Savage Worlds community, it's all about community support here. I'd LOVE to see more Lone Wolf love sent our way, and I have some willingness to pay for that, even, but I can only guess that our community, and therefore are market, are still just too small fish in the Lone Wolf pond to make it worthwhile for them to send more resources our way.

I guess the real answer, then, is to get more of your SW playing friends to buy Hero Lab and the Savage Worlds datasets? I really is exceptional useful for some of the reasons others have pointed to here. As was also pointed out SR is a pretty huge setting, but it's also hugely oddball compared to base Savage Worlds, so getting it to really work right is going to be pretty tough so I guess I just wouldn't suggest using that setting as a measure of what Hero Lab is good for.