Pre-Order Rise of the Runelords for Hero Lab

[ruhar]

I fully understand that LW needs to make money, I just think the price is a little pricey.

Originally Posted by nullPointer

Whoever told you that you, as a GM, had to spend all the money was lying, and perhaps its time to find a new group, or a new playstyle

Originally Posted by Exmortis

Seriously man, I am sorry but I think this is not about the cost of the HL as much as it is who you player with.

I'd like to know how many gaming groups actually have players who donate money to their GM to buy materials? I have never played in a game as a GM or player that players did that. Do your players pay you nullPointer and Exmortis?

Originally Posted by AndrewD2

If you subscribe to APs you get 20% off the cover and a free PDF.

I did point out that it is a little cheaper with the subscription, but you still have to pay shipping for each hard copy. It totals to $134.28 for a complete Adventure Path. Add HL and you've dropped nearly $160 for an Adventure Path.

[Farling]

You could do all the work yourself. How long would it take?

At $5/hour (or equivalent), you would only get 10 hours of work done before you reach the price of the LWD package.

[nullPointer]

Originally Posted by ruhar

Do your players pay you nullPointer and Exmortis?

I'm more often a player than a GM, so conversely, in a way yes, I do "pay" my GMs
I supply the place to play, the minis, the battlemap[s], have a few hundred spare dice laying around if someone needs, and will often spot another player or GM for dinner or a couple drinks if they're short on cash

I play with friends, so don't expect them to bankroll my fun, and am happy to help my friends have fun with me, when I can afford to.
They, in return, thank me by appreciating when I do that kind of thing, instead of expecting it.

We're getting off-topic here, though, so I'd prefer not continuing to discuss gamer-group dynamics in a thread about a launch of a wonderful new addition to HL

[Pollution]

Originally Posted by Farling

You could do all the work yourself. How long would it take?

At $5/hour (or equivalent), you would only get 10 hours of work done before you reach the price of the LWD package.

I think you mean 5 hours. 10 @ $5/hr would be $50. The package is $25.

NOW, that being said, having put in a TON of stuff into both HL (hard) and RW (easy, but time consuming) I don't think $25 is outrageous for what amounts to a YEAR of play material.

You have to look at it not just in a "how much does it cost" but also in a "how long will it last?"

Nobody is going to go out and pick up this package for $25 and NOT use it. I purchased EVERY Paizo package for HL (save Mythic) because, A: I wanted it, and B: I might use it in any number of games.

I won't be picking this up for say, Kingmaker, because I'm not going to run Kingmaker.

I'd buy it for RotRL, Emerald Spire, and maybe the new Giants one (thinking HARD about doing that one after RotRL). And at $25 that's at least a YEAR of sessions (we got through book 2 in RotRL in about 5 months playing every other week). You're paying about $2/month for easy access to official tools to run the AP.

The price isn't a problem, it's the librarian in all of us that says, "Dude, new book, I need that!" (those of us that bought Blood Dimmed Tides for WoD know who we are).

You don't NEED this package, unless you're running the AP.

As to RW integration and pricing complaints. Yeah, you're spending over $300 on the books and then another (my guess is $50) for the RW version (if/when they come out). Is that a lot? Yeah. But what else were you gonna do with that money? Go to a bar?

Roleplaying is an expensive hobby, and to be frank (or Bill, or John) sometimes it's hard to justify purchasing a new pack of Pathfinder Pawns. But I ask again, what else would you spend the money on? Bars? Strippers? Blackjack? Whenever my wife complains about how much I spend on my hobby, I point out that she buys 3 bottles of wine per month on average. So anywhere from $40-$60 a month. She also Knits (another $20-$40/month). I buy gaming stuff at about the same cost. I don't go out and blow $100 at the bar, I don't drink, I don't gamble, I don't do drugs. I play a game that costs a bit to maintain, but it's MY hobby, it's MY outlet. She gets it.

And, I say to you, you don't HAVE to buy the encounter. It's not ABSOLUTELY needed. It's just handy, and helpful. hell, you don't NEED HL or RW, it's just handy, and helpful.

[Exmortis]

Originally Posted by ruhar

I'd like to know how many gaming groups actually have players who donate money to their GM to buy materials? I have never played in a game as a GM or player that players did that. Do your players pay you nullPointer and Exmortis?

Yes and no. We share the GM job around 5 of 7 in the group. So those of us in the group of 5, all have GM costs and we pay them. The other 2 have donated to those wo have asked. I do mostly custom content, so I pay for RW and cloud service because thats my choice to use it over pen and paper. However the players are on the hook for RWPE not me. I am not mandating it, but I also am not printing a single hand out, it will all be in RW. They are planning to buy it as a group, one already owns it as a GM (he was a KS supporter).

If GMs get things blown up and printed, we have taken a collection to help with those costs, or the GM didn't chip in for pizza a few weeks in a row.

Also every player is responsible for their own players books, materials and dice. Everyone one of us has their own HL licenses, dont buy HL, use paper, sheets don't meet standards? XP loss incoming. Paizo provides sheets you can copy, no reason you can't have a sheet up to snuff.

Is there a member that may get away cheaper than others? Yes I am sure there is. But it's not too big of a deal from high to low.

[liz]

Originally Posted by ValaraukarU

Is there a legal reason why these community files would become unavailable? I.E. is there some new reason we can't share our AP portfolios or is it just a matter of not wanting some possible conflicting files on community and not wanting to maintain them with official versions?

The reasons are the ones shared by ShadowChemosh here.

Originally Posted by ValaraukarU

I am also curious if you are using the community packs as a starting point for the work on products or if you started from scratch on them?

We built the Rise of the Runelords package completely in-house. For future adventure paths we may do things differently, but only in partnership with whoever entered the original portfolios.

[ValaraukarU]

Originally Posted by liz

The reasons are the ones shared by ShadowChemosh here.

The post linked here did not specifically answer my question or I would not have re-posted it after his post. It describes an agreement between the "community" and "LW" that the community files would not be available after LW adds the official version product. It also explains some of the advantages of a product version over the community files. It does not however explain why the community files will no longer be available.

Is there a legal reason why these community files would become unavailable? I.E. is there some new reason we can't share our AP portfolios or is it just a matter of not wanting some possible conflicting files on community and not wanting to maintain them with official versions?

[Lord Magus]

Will the new "official" encounter portfolios be customizable? I often modify AP encounters to give them a new twist, or to make them harder: toss in a template here, a class level there... Will this be possible?

[Villadelfia]

Originally Posted by ShadowChemosh

Going forward is the same concept in that as official APs come out from LW the Community Files hosted on d20pfsrd will becoming down. We have also agreed to not do any more AP's going forward. Everything in the current "GM Packs" will stay as they are but no new things for APs will be created.

Given this information, I have decided to pre-emptively backup all of this in several locations.

I do not agree that LW should have any say at all in what the community can and cannot bring out themselves. I, as a consumer have every right make an informed choice on where to get my stuff, and I feel that LW is trying to bully the community to be the only provider.

I have it backed up on my server, but I've been forced to remove the link to it, so I did.

I will also reiterate my point that $25 is WAY too much if you already own all needed packages. They should give a serious discount for those that already own the sources needed, a $10 discount would be nice.

I've also seen some reasoning above that the price is fine given the amount of time you will be spending with it, but that argument is disingenuous at best. If you keep playing pathfinder forever you will be using the core package forever, so should the base hero lab package cost $infinity? My point is that amount of time you we be spending with material should have no bearing on the price.

Then there's the argument that you would be over the cost after 5 hours of your own time, but that ignore two important factors: The first is that this was not made bespoke for one person, it was made to sell en masse. The second is that data entry in hero lab is a mostly mindless job from prior experience, I can do it while watching movies, which means that it's not actually using "billable time", therefore the opportunity cost doesn't fly.

In the end I see the fact that they will charge the same price to the guy that just bought pathfinder core as the guy that has spent at least $324.70 (at least because I seem to have misplaced some mails) as contempt for the loyal customer and the strong-arming of the community as abuse of their monopoly on character building tools.

[liz]

@Lord Magus, yes the encounters and portfolios will be fully customizable.

@ValaraukarU, files for adventure paths that we sell will no longer be hosted and maintained in the Community Repository. There are no other reasons the files will no longer be available - as with anything else we sell for Hero Lab, anyone is free to build their own versions if they wish.

Regarding Villadelfia’s post: Everyone here is welcome to share their thoughts and feedback about our new Adventure Path package (and other subjects), as we’ve demonstrated in this thread. We always love to see users sharing content that they’ve created, but just as we’d ask forum members not to link to content that we or our partners sell, it should be obvious that links (and posts) like this are not appropriate on our forums.

I’ve reached out to Villadelfia asking him to remove the link, and I’m honestly a bit shocked and disappointed to see this kind of behavior from a member of our community. I hope it’s clear how this post crossed the line.