Thinking About Buying

[Paragon]

Originally Posted by RavenX

You can rig a source to preclude the base classes, feats, and items you don't need. It is possible to rig the base files but some features may need special items and tabs.

You still need to put all the other stuff in, though; its nice not to need to play with having to manually preclude everything that doesn't belong, but it doesn't add all the material you do want.

[RavenX]

Originally Posted by Paragon

You still need to put all the other stuff in, though; its nice not to need to play with having to manually preclude everything that doesn't belong, but it doesn't add all the material you do want.

Every game system in Hero Lab started as a blank canvas. Somebody added all the character creation elements. If you want to turn an existing system into a new copy that has the system data you want, its going to be work. But starting with a copy of the 3.5 ogl files may be faster than building it from the authoring kit. Authoring kit is a lot of work to hammer out into a working game system.

[Paragon]

Originally Posted by RavenX

Every game system in Hero Lab started as a blank canvas. Somebody added all the character creation elements. If you want to turn an existing system into a new copy that has the system data you want, its going to be work. But starting with a copy of the 3.5 ogl files may be faster than building it from the authoring kit. Authoring kit is a lot of work to hammer out into a working game system.

Sure. I'm just not sure you're going to be able to implement everything in D20 Modern style games with just the editor; the classes, feats and gear should mostly be doable, but I'm not entirely sure how you'd go about the Talents, for example, and its not self-evident to me how to do Wealth and the hero points (but then, I haven't looked at the D20 files in the Editor, so perhaps I'm overestimating the difficulty of at least the latter two). It sometimes doesn't take a lot for added or changed subsystems to be enough outside the regular coding for the editor alone not to be up to the task.

[AndrewD2]

It is possible to add new structure to existing systems, its just difficult.

[EightBitz]

Learning the authoring kit to develop a game system is akin to learning a programming language. The documentation, with examples, is about 400 pages, and is incomplete and out of date.

If you use the editor to modify an existing system, you will still every likely have to use commands and scripts that follow the syntax of the authoring kit's programming language.

If you have the wits, the skill, the time and the passion to learn how everything works, you can do almost anything you want. But it won't be quick, and it won't be easy.

[Paragon]

Originally Posted by EightBitz

If you have the wits, the skill, the time and the passion to learn how everything works, you can do almost anything you want. But it won't be quick, and it won't be easy.

Yeah this.