[lifer4700]

"With great power comes great responsibility."

That stuff is for super heroes. When it comes to software, you get something more like this.

"With great flexibility comes great complexity."

I'm not trying to scare you off, but coding your own game system is not for the faint-of-heart, nor the short-on-time.

I am fully convinced that Hero Labs is quite capable of being configured to make a character in any game system imaginable, it is that powerful and it is that capable. It is all a question of how much time you have to learn the dark art of Authoring Kit.

Back when our group played Pathfinder, I had been modifying HL Pathfinder through the use of the editor, kludging my way through figuring things out. We stopped using PF a while back, so I've not used HL for anything in the past year or so.

Very recently, I got a wild hair (probably due to Realm Works) that I should add the game system that we DO now play with into Hero Labs! I bought the Authoring Kit and began learning the XML/Script in earnest. I started modifying a copy of the 4E files, just to see how things worked, and what was possible. It has taken about a month (part time) and some posts with experienced people on these board, but I finally have a reasonably firm grasp of how the system works, and what I'm going to need to complete my project.

I believe that if I dedicate a few solid hours per night, I might have my d20-ish system ready for beta/playtest in around 6 months. I'm certain the first few weeks will simply be trying to document the game system and how it translates into things and gizmos, attributes and compsets, while also working out a crude phase/timing system. Even before I start editing XML and writing scripts.

I'm excited to get going on this, and again, I'm certainly not trying to scare anyone away, but it is definitely not going to be a quick project. The only real advantage I see in using Hero Lab instead of simply writing something from scratch using C++ or Java is that I will be able to easily integrate character portfolios into Realm Works.