Best practice on a datafile regarding Creatures?

[Paragon]

Okay, so I'm doing this datafile for the Broken Earth setting for SW; when I'm done with it I'm going to make it available to the publisher (who I've talked about it regarding semi-regularly) and see if the Lone Wolf people want to host it too.

Is is standard practice when doing this to exclude non-native Creatures in the datafile? You obviously want to do this with player-accessible things that aren't present, but I can see too different arguments when it comes to creatures, that are normally only going to be used by the GM anyway. Obviously I'd want to leave in things like regular dogs/wolves and many of the human types, but I'm trying to figure out what I should do with things like the Mechs and Orcs.

[SeeleyOne]

I would recommend that you only worry about hiding official stuff. Let the people mess with the other user files if they use others. Alternately you can have it as a separate setting to check, such as a sub-menu for the Broken Earth. "Broken Earth only" or some such.

Who is to say that people always have to play by every single setting rule for a particular setting. Sure, many will want to do that, but some like to mix and match settings and hiding everything no-matter-what means that someone else has to come along and modify it.

An example is Magical Items in the Fantasy Companion. You might want a setting that has them, but then you have to make sure that Race Edges and Races and maybe even the fantasy gear do not show up. What if someone wants to play Shadowrun and they want their own version of the races?

In my opinion, some things are far better being made into different options that can be selected all-or-nothing.

[Paragon]

Well, honestly, that's probably beyond my capabilities. I just was getting to the point of doing the creatures for BE, and wondered if I should be excluding everything else. Guess I could check some of the other official datafiles and see what they'd done.

[SeeleyOne]

It is easy to do. Make a 1st file. I will attach mine as an example. Or rather, I would if it was an allowed attachment. You can make a text file and rename it as a 1st file.

I really wish more people would do this with the different parts of a setting when they are making a datafile. I am thankful for the work, but sometimes I want X and Y from a setting, but not Z. If it was a bit more modular that would be better.

I will share my 1ST file as code:
(Removed as it looks like crap)

[SeeleyOne]

OK, that code entry looked like crap. I attached it as a text file. Just change the extension to 1ST and put it in the same folder as the user files. Look at how I did things and compare to how they appear and act in the Configure Hero menu.

[zarlor]

Honestly I don't think I've ever done an exclude of standard creatures in any of my data files. Mostly that's a GM side function anyway more for maybe making encounters and the like, so if they don't want to include dogs or something for a given encounter then I figure they just won't pick it. Better to leave the flexibility for something like that, I think.

[SeeleyOne]

Good point. The purpose of most of the settings in Hero Lab is really to help players to not make mistakes and to not pick things that they should not have access to.

I have never actually used the creatures in HL. I only looked at the vehicles a short while back because a question was brought up about it. Another feature that some use, but I never have, is to use it at the gaming table. Perhaps if I did that I would use the other features.

[zarlor]

I definitely like to use it at the table, and there appear to be some features on the Pathfinder side that work well for that which we seem to be missing on the SW side, and overall it could really use some other enhancements to make it more useful that way but overall it's still worth using that way. We have had more than a few feature requests for that which haven't been touched for years, though, which I really wish Lone Wolf would dig into. I agree on the vehicles as well. Not nearly as useful right now, but maybe if the "build-it-yourself" version of things from the Sci-Fi companion is integrated into Hero Lab it could be more worthwhile to use for those. Then a vehicle we might add to a data file could be used as a baseline for tweaking in the main program, which even now seems like something we really need.

[Paragon]

Yeah, I decided to leave it alone.

I use HL at the table all the time. Honestly, and with no offense to the LW guys, but sometimes I get the feeling they're so focused on RealWorks these days that HL is kind of an afterthought with them, and I think that's unfortunate. Further, I sometimes get the feeling that to the extent that HL is paid attention to, Pathfinder gets all the love. But there it is.

[SeeleyOne]

Well, to be fair, let's look at it from what is probably their point of view.

1. Realm Works was a kickstarter project that they want to give all of its needed (and advertised) features. I have it, but to be honest I have not had enough time to use it much. In the kickstarter it was said that we would get some pre-made data sets for some adventures. I have not seen those, but then again I have not even booted it up in a few months.

As a company it is in their interest for Realm Works to be a successful, money producing product. They are planning to charge for some of its cloud features, which is potentially a steady source of income. So I can totally understand why they put all their time into that.

2. Hero Lab is a known entity. It pretty much brings in its own customers. The reason that all of the time is put into Pathfinder is that each month they have more things to sell. Again, this is a source of income for them.

The rest of the Hero Lab stuff gets unintentionally ignored. Do you work on something that I will be paid specifically for, or do you work on the two income-bringing projects?

Yes, it is very frustrating indeed. But I can totally understand how they are in a business stance. They do not have the manpower to plop into other projects. But then, let's say that they do. What would that person/people work on?

I am guessing that Savage Worlds does not really bring in much money. Sure there is the core and a couple of companions, but how many people actually use those? Most people just do it all by hand, and Savage Worlds is an easy system so that is fine. But I like to use a computer to do it all. It collates the data and keeps us all honest.

As I have looked over the Hero Lab for Savage Worlds it has become my opinion that it is likely that it was one of their first, if not the first, game that they had put into it. There are some things that can be done differently, but at the time Savage Worlds was mostly just the core book and some setting expansions. The initial design was based on the needs at the time. They had no way to know how Savage Worlds would have grown especially in the past five years.

This is one of the reasons that I post my solutions to getting around some of the design features. I want to allow for others to be able to expand its usefulness as a whole. Think of it like DLC.

A quick example is that I came up with a way, and shared, how to make both user-definable and predefined Knowledge skills work at the same time. But there are many ways that I have shared, some better than others for different reasons.

I would love to help make Hero Lab better but there is no way to do that beyond sharing these "DLC" mods.

Hopefully some of our wishes will be addressed with this "upcoming" release of the Sci Fi Companion. The companion has been out for what, a year now? I even offered to help. Very frustrating for us indeed.