What games should Hero Lab support?

[rob]

Instead of addressing questions about multiple individual RPG systems, I'll outline our overall philosophy/strategy. This should provide guidance regarding most titles you can think of, although there will almost certainly be an exception or two that arise along the way (there always are). :-)

1. Our initial focus is on the larger RPG systems (e.g. World of Darkness).
2. Once we've got the majority of those in place, we'll be focusing on the less widely played RPGs that have strong player bases and could benefit greatly from HL.
3. We'll also be working with some of the smaller RPG houses to enable them to develop their own data files for their games - with our direct assistance. Discussions about how that will work have already begun with a few of the smaller houses.
4. We have no plans to do any work ourselves on out-of-print and/or "niche" RPGs. We're simplifying and streamlining all of the tools we use in-house for data file editing based on everything we're learning with the first few licenses. When we finally release the tools for users to create their own complete data files, users will then be able to develop the files themselves for out-of-print and/or "niche" game systems.

Note: Please don't ask for a date on the tools for creating a game system from scratch, since we don't have an answer for that yet. My hope is that we'll be able to provide an answer to this in October, after we've got the WoD and M&M files out (and have completed the learning cycle from those games vis-a-vis the tools).

Hope this helps,
Rob

[rob]

Quick clarification on my previous post....

Please continue voicing your opinions regarding which games you want us to support. That info is VALUABLE to us. In fact, that info will heavily influence the likely exceptions that I referred to in my post.

I outlined our game plan purely so that everyone would be able to reasonably gauge where their favorite games ranked by default. Casting your votes here has the potential to increase those default rankings, so please let us know your wish list! :-)

[FifthWanderer]

I can understand your decision not to directly support niche or OOP games. You only have so many resources, and you have to allocate them carefully.

Hopefully when the authorship tools are made available, they will be good enough for people to build game files from scratch, not just hack or modify existing files. I'd also like to make a request for clear, thorough documentation with no hidden features the designers are keeping for themselves. *cough* Metacreator *cough*

I do have one question: Will there be a way to make data files available through Wolf Lair's site or some other common means? I'm thinking about taking up the challenge for Spirit of the Century, and I'd like to make sure the files are available to others.

[MPHopcroft]

The Hero Lab amateurs group I've started on Yahoo's server (http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/herolabamateurs/) was designed with exact;ly that purpose in mind.

I have my own list of "niche" titles that I'd like to develop or see developed, so that's nothing new on my end.

[rob]

At 08:21 AM 8/22/2007, you wrote:

Hopefully when the authorship tools are made available, they will be good enough for people to build game files from scratch, not just hack or modify existing files. I'd also like to make a request for clear, thorough documentation with no hidden features the designers are keeping for themselves. *cough* Metacreator *cough*

This is the plan. The Authoring Kit documentation for our Army Builder product is over 350 pages in size, with at least 50% of that being "how to" and/or "tips and tricks" material. Writing all of the documentation is extremely time-consuming, so it probably won't start out quite so extensive, but the goal is fully detailed docs.

There will be a couple of features that aren't documented, but they will have ZERO impact on users writing data files. The features not documented will be those specifically tied to the handling of licensing vis-a-vis data files. Since user-created data files won't be governed by special licenses with publishers, that information won't be needed. All other material will be made public. It's possible a few things will not make it into the initial release due to time constraints for writing the documentation, so I'll put out that disclaimer now, but that will be a time issue and not a philosophical one. :-)

I do have one question: Will there be a way to make data files available through Wolf Lair's site or some other common means? I'm thinking about taking up the challenge for Spirit of the Century, and I'd like to make sure the files are available to others.

I expect there to be such a mechanism, but it could be problematic if a publisher complains. So this topic needs to be investigated a bit before I can say an absolute "yes". As an example, the site "datafilesrus.com" provides a clearing house for numerous data files for our Army Builder and Card Vault products. I would be surprised if an equivalent site isn't created for HL data files. It's also possible that we can provide a "yellow pages" lookup for user-created data files that is built into HL, much like we do for AB and CV. But that's not a definite until we can verify a few things on the legal front, which can be done in the next few months.

[Tashtego]

I'd be interested in support for Troll Lord Game's Castles & Crusades. It's a sort of streamlined d20 variant.

[Magickman]

My no listed vote would be for:

D20 Modern
D20 Future


And in a perfect world, Star Wars D20 (Revised and Saga)

As far as what is on the list, I guess WoD would be my vote.

[bertg]

I'd love to see one for AEG's 7th Sea, but I don't even know if that game is still being published...

[segnett]

Definetely the Cortex system (serenity/battlestar galactica).

Its a great system with a lot of community support.

[MPHopcroft]

Mongoose's plans to release an Open License version of the Traveller ruleset may well figure into future plans, depending on its success.