I REALLY don't understand how HLO licenses work

This whole thing is so over complicated that I almost want to cancel the whole thing.

I REALLY just want to make it so my Wife and I can share the content I bought. Something that was EASY to do with Classic.

So I need a Patron account, and she needs a Standard account, but she ALSO has to buy a game system. Then She's in my campaign, but she can't access any of the content I own.

I just want to buy some extra licenses. Not deal with all of this extra crap. Because I have now spent $70 for both of us and I don't have the functionality that I THOUGHT I would get.

It was VERY difficult to figure out how to make her an account so she could buy anything. The link from HLO, only allows content creation if you have a license number. You have to make a demo account and then upgrade it. WHY do you think that is a good UI.

https://herolab.online/create-or-activate

What link do you click to create a new account, because it's not the "Create a new account" button. I am also very confused by using the HLO page to activate licenses. I thought this was an online only product.

I am so incredibly frustrated with the whole thing.

Tasha, your wife does not need a Standard Account to use the content from a Patron Account as a player. She only needs an Apprentice Account, then she can link her character to a Patron campaign.


EDIT: Send a email to support@wolflair.com to explain and I'm sure they'll refund the money you overspent.

charlieluce said:

Tasha, your wife does not need a Standard Account to use the content from a Patron Account as a player. She only needs an Apprentice Account, then she can link her character to a Patron campaign.


EDIT: Send a email to support@wolflair.com to explain and I'm sure they'll refund the money you overspent.

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The whole thing is so confusing. /sigh

Thanks for your help

Patron accounts grant access to their content through campaigns. A character made in the campaign must be "owned" by the Patron/GM, but can be "controlled" by the player. To do this, your wife just needs the Apprentice Account.

While it is confusing, have some empathy because I and others literally begged for this functionality and Lone Wolf got it in as quick as they could. They're working on a more streamlined option, but for now it's a lifesaver for me.

the actual system is fine, but the website interface for explaining it and buying/managing the subscriptions sucks and is extremely confusing. i've been using HLC and HLO for years and it still takes me several tries each time to find the right webpages to manage my accounts. i can't imagine the trouble newbies would have.

fwiw though, Rob recently acknowledged the problem and said they're working on an overhauled site.

I am a HLC user and was a Beta Tester for HLO.

I already had an account thanks to Realm Works(KS's and Beta tested it) so hadn't needed to make a new account. I was surprised by how difficult it was to create a new account. I want to get my players to buy at least apprentice accounts, but I don't want to have to give them a step by step for something that should be super straight forward.

Yes I want the functionality to allow others to use my content too. This isn't the easiest way they could have structured the website.

When my wife makes characters attached to the campaign, she gets really slow performance. When she makes characters in her own space it is very fast.

I fully agree with this. My partner and I also wanted to share the content. At first we tried it the HLClassic way of secondary licenses, but she and I cannot be logged in on the account simultaneously. It's been a time-sink trying to find out what the options are. and that the secondary licensing options we had in Classic are just not available in HLO, even though intuitively that would have made sense to me since HLO asked me to link my HLClassic license.

Our second attempt was similar to the one that Tasha described: to make a second account for my partner, and have her characters owned by the campaign. However, because both she and I run a campaign that the other plays in, this didn't work either. I cannot assign the GM role to her account for the campaign she runs, so we’d need to swap accounts to get that to work. That’s a whole can of worms that’d I’d rather avoid.

In the end, this is forcing us to have three accounts, one "campaign" account, and a "player" account for each of us, with the campaign account having all the content at patron level, and each player account on apprentice level. I really hope there will be better options than this...

If you both have patron accounts, you should be able to join each other's campaigns.

You could also do it with two accounts you share passwords on both. You have folders for your own characters on the satelite accounts. Only using the Patron account for running the game.

IMHO it's needlessly complex.

PS when you join you should be able to choose the game system you want just like you can with HLC. Instead of being forced into Starfinder as the base standard game system

I chose Pathfinder 2nd when I joined; I don't even have the Starfinder base system for HLO. Ditto for all my players.

Tasha said:

If you both have patron accounts, you should be able to join each other's campaigns.

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yes but two Patron account subscriptions cost more that one Patron and two Apprentice accounts. also, keeping only one Patron acct means you only have to buy books once

dacoobob said:

yes but two Patron account subscriptions cost more that one Patron and two Apprentice accounts. also, keeping only one Patron acct means you only have to buy books once

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No, what i meant was to have 1 patron and 1 Apprentice account. They share the Passwords on both. PCs get made on the Apprentice account, and NPCs get made on the Patron account