Sci-Fi Companion

[Paragon]

It really is unfortunate. But honestly, it does seem like HL support in general has noticeably slacked off since they started to work on RealmWorks. I suppose that's inevitable when you've only got so much staff, but since I couldn't care less about Realmworks, its annoying.

[SeeleyOne]

I was in on the Kickstarter for Realm Works. I stopped caring for that, too, as it did not do or have what was advertised. I have found that Evernote or OneNote can do what I wanted it to be able to do, and more. One of the promised features was a way to share data between users. I have not bothered with it for quite a while, so maybe it can do it now, but that was not supported when I last tried. Nor was the promised content that were stretch goals. I consider that investment to be a failure.

I have bought several other character creation programs for Savage Worlds as well. None of them can do what they need to be able to do. If you play a strictly core-only game, then okay. But do anything else and there are problems. Out of all of them I consider Hero Lab to be the closest to what they should be. This is why I have tried to help make Hero Lab do those things.

Very frustrating and annoying indeed.

[zarlor]

I think Realm Works was, and is still, expected to be an economic driver for the company. Unfortunately their development cycle has taken a LOT longer than was expected to even get them to the point where the marketplace is set up for them. Arguably a Realm Works marketplace could even make Realm Works into a kind of replacement for anyplace selling PDFs because of the potentially added functionality from the product. Since that isn't live yet, though, there is no way to really start generating revenue from the project beyond simple sales right now. Maybe, just maybe, when it does go live and that revenue starts coming in they can possibly look at shuffling a few resources around.

Personally I had high hopes for Realm Works but it's proven to be a lot less useful than I was hoping it would be. Strangely I had started using Fantasy Grounds as a virtual map product for a tabletop display I have and I actually find FG to be, overall, more useful to me than Realm Works and for more things than Realm Works can do anyway. There are a few things RW does that I'd love to see in FG (being able to check off items the players have already done, for example) but overall RW is essentially too complicated and it's interface just isn't intuitive enough to have been all that useful to me even when trying to use it for the entire time I was running a Deadlands Noir game. (I could argue the interface of FG isn't all that intuitive, either, mind you, but in some ways the learning curve for it is still not as steep as it is for RW.)

That mainly leaves selling Pathfinder modules for Hero Lab as what I believe is the primary income stream for the company, at a guess. At this point I'm pretty sure that the settings files we have for SW just wouldn't be saleable for them. Meaning it would probably cost them more to bother setting them up on their store than what they would actually get from trying to sell them at all. That may be especially true since we are starting to get a community that is a little more savvy at building and sharing settings files which makes it tougher to prevent those files from getting out for "free" anyway.

Still, I am wondering if it might not be time to try and take a closer look at what can be done with Metacreator. HL is falling way behind despite my best efforts to drum interest here by making all of these data files (not to mention the efforts of the other data files authors!) Of course Metacreator hasn't really seen any updates their, either, in quite some time. Wild Card Creator showed promise but is more than a little.... lacking, and didn't deliver on it's promise of what it would be. The only other thing I know of out there is Savage Outfitter which seems to be focused more on asset management rather than character management, but I've not used it to find out. I can't tell much from their website on how customizable it is, however, and that is a pretty huge need for many using Savage Worlds, IMHO.

Overall I think out biggest hope here is that the reasons for the delay are because of massive new functionality being added. And by massive I mean things that the Sci-Fi Companion really tossed into the SWD rules mix such as building vechicles from base frames and adding modules to them on the fly. Same for cyberware and weapons mods and so on. Much like making magic items is to the Fantasy Companion but I'd argue that that kind of thing almost needs to be a core functionality available separate from the sci-fi companion itself... an easy way to make gear outside of the editor. I'm HOPING we'll see some of that kind of functionality along with seeing a bunch of the things from the requests thread being addressed and that maybe ironing out all the bugs from that is what is taking so long. Without that kind of leap forward I'm afraid I'll just continue to be disappointed in what we're getting with Hero Lab and strongly hoping to get something elsewhere that will finally fill the kind of niche we really need for a great, portable, character creation and management system. I will say my hopes are not very high, however.

As a further note these kinds of delays have pretty heavily eaten into my motivation for making new data files. Way back when I first made that HoE file that LoneWolf asked if I would let them host as an "official" data file it occurred to me that maybe, just maybe, if I put in the effort to make every official Pinnacle settings available that way we might see enough of an influx of new folks here to begin driving Hero Lab functionality and see a bit more traffic here on the Savage Worlds side. While I think we do have a bit more of the latter (there are certainly more folks active here on this forum now than there were all those years ago) the former hasn't seem to come about. I'm guessing the increase is just not ENOUGH of an increase. As it stands, though, I may do more files for HL for Pinnacle when they come out, or I may not. I've not even bothered looking at making files for The Sixth Gun and wouldn't even think about doing The Last Parsec without a Sci-Fi Companion in place, let alone Necessary Evil 2: Breakout without SPC2 in place, all things that in the past I would have already at least started on. If it were doing something more for Pinnacle, then it may be worth doing those for me, but just to put in the effort to support Hero Lab for what overall seems to be almost no return (they don't pay me for the files, nor do I need or want them to mind you)... I'll probably make any more files that I do only because it's something my local gaming group needs. I'll continue supporting the already made files, though, of course (well, unless some better alternative crops up). Overall though, I'm just pretty disheartened and disappointed with LoneWolf these days.

[Azgulor]

My biggest issue is the lack of communication. Obviously, given the licensing agreement and publishing schedule, Pathfinder will take up the most resources. Even if I didn't play Pathfinder (which I do - I have a ton of PF Hero Lab content), I understand the business side of it. Sadly, Savage Worlds is a smaller fish but having to wait this long for companion offerings when the books have been out so long is, in my view, a missed opportunity.

I also use RealmWorks and it's revolutionized my campaigns. The level of detail that I can create while being able to track, use, and more importantly - share with my players is incredible. Additionally, being able to control what is revealed to them without having to make notes or try to remember what's been revealed has been invaluable. Finally, RealmWorks has made sci-fi gaming a breeze as I now can provide a Mass Effect-style codex for the players without having to do an info dump on them, provide them with pages and pages of documents, or fall back to a pre-made setting like Star Trek or Star Wars.

That said, if Lone Wolf is banking on the content market being a huge revenue stream, I don't see that happening. The appeal of RealmWorks is campaign management and dissemination of info to players. If I buy a pre-packaged module, the information may be presented very differently than how I would encode it. Also, I want to use the content in my campaign - so I have to be able to control how it integrates into my Realm (assuming that it isn't completely standalone).

I'll be a RealmWorks user for the long haul but the content market is a nice-to-have, not a must-have for me. Savage World companion & setting support ARE must-haves.

[Paragon]

Metacreator is, honestly, kind of a lost cause; while its sort-of supported, its got essentially a single staff member, and from my experience trying to do just an edited version of its template for Fuzion years ago, its immensely harder to do anything serious with than HL. It might be something someone like SeelyOne can do something with, but its beyond someone like me.

I also admit that I'm starting to feel that the time being taken to put out the SFC and SPC2 is starting to produce a result bordering on false advertising; there are bound to be a non-trivial number of people who bought the add-on for the Companions expecting to have something besides the Fantasy and (out of date) Supers Powers Companion, given the time frame.

[zarlor]

I don't know if it's just that my group skews older or what, but even when I GAVE them player keys for RealmWorks not a single one of them ever installed it, even for a Deadlands Noir game where being able to reference all of the clues they had already put together would have been really, really useful to them. So while I definitely consider being able to share out snippets to the players that way a great idea, in practice for me it ended up being a bust. In any case I can't say what Lone Wolf's revenue expectations are there, it's just a guess on my part. I do think that reformatting existing content on the Marketplace wouldn't be that big of a deal, though, especially if they ensure some level of formatting consistency.

As for Metacreator... sometimes there are advantages to dealing with a one person shop. I expect a few more of us would be discussing their product if we'd made the decision to put out data files for them instead of HL. Still I already own the software and I've gotten pretty used to making data files in general so I think I might try to play around with it a bit more to see how steep the learning curve would be, just to give it a bit of a shot to see how tough I really find it to be to work with.

[SeeleyOne]

To be fair, Savage Worlds does not NEED a character creator at all. Doing it all by hand is really easy. Some of the other games, such as Pathfinder and Shadowrun, require a program. I can understand why there are only a handful of people that use a program for Savage Worlds at all.

I like to use a program for three reasons:

1) I cannot write any more. Reading requires magnifiers. However, I can zoom in just fine on a pdf on my iPad.

2) It compiles all of the sources and you don't have to flip through books.

3) It keeps everybody honest and can be made to keep track of every little modifier. If there is math to be done, it will total everything up for you. Assuming that you made it work correctly in the first place.

[Azgulor]

Originally Posted by SeeleyOne

To be fair, Savage Worlds does not NEED a character creator at all. Doing it all by hand is really easy. Some of the other games, such as Pathfinder and Shadowrun, require a program. I can understand why there are only a handful of people that use a program for Savage Worlds at all.

I like to use a program for three reasons:

1) I cannot write any more. Reading requires magnifiers. However, I can zoom in just fine on a pdf on my iPad.

2) It compiles all of the sources and you don't have to flip through books.

3) It keeps everybody honest and can be made to keep track of every little modifier. If there is math to be done, it will total everything up for you. Assuming that you made it work correctly in the first place.

Since we're talking about entertainment, no system NEEDS a program. However, the benefits are obvious. #2 & #3 are pretty universal and they lead to faster character creation - which is one of the primary points of Hero Lab.

Savage Worlds, while more manageable than say Pathfinder is without using a program, has HL support. Continuing to offer companion and setting packages helps keep the "Fast, Furious, Fun" game moving instead of downshifting into "let's take 30 minutes to make a character". Yes, Savage Worlds is easy to customize, but that customization adds levels of complexity - thus the pent up demand for Science Fiction Companion and Super Powers Companion 2e. And personally, I'd throw Interface Zero into that mix as well.

[Paragon]

My own reaction to RW is that I don't like to do anything cloud-dependent, honestly.

[Colen]

Sorry about the delays with the Sci-Fi Companion, everyone. The book had a ton of new mechanics that had to be supported (cyberware, starships, walkers, modifications for weapons and vehicles, etc) which took a lot of time to get right. We're down to one last thing that's causing issues (Skill Chips) - once that's done we should be ready to release, barring anything discovered during final testing.

FYI, the Realm Works team is totally separate from the Hero Lab team. Nobody splits their time between both products, and we've never taken anyone off Hero Lab to work on Realm Works instead.