Lone Wolf Development Forums  

Go Back   Lone Wolf Development Forums > Hero Lab Online Forums > Hero Lab Online Discussion

Notices

Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
sqrw
Junior Member
 
Join Date: Apr 2020
Posts: 20

Old April 4th, 2020, 04:20 AM
Heya,
I wanted to leave some feedback on Campaign theater. But first let me get out of the way that I understand it's not a complete product yet and still very much in development so I'm sure some of the feedback / suggestions I have are already on the development roadmap. I read through the primer and blog post and will avoid things already covered there.

Lets start with, it is fairly complex (and that's OK), but to get started a interactive walktrough would have helped me a lot. something that goes through setting up a campaing, scene, characters and resolve a scene using the system. It might be a bit early for this given features are still added.

Feedback from rolls from players. This is so far the biggest thing I'm missing and think it'd make this a thousand times (I may exaggerate slighty) more useful. It doesn't have to be anything fancy to start with, just a little text console saying "x rolled y with the result xxx". For me this feature alone would move it from "On this as potential!" to "I'll try to talk my group into using it." because it'd make my life easier.

I've been using Realm works, and loved it for organizing campaigns, I think CT would benefit from quite a few of its features. This is where I suspect it's heading to be a online RW. The shared aspect and integration with HL is what I missed in RW so I am super excited about this prospect. As a Game master the what would be the quickest path to usefulness are the following four items (in order of importance):

1) scene notes - to start with nothing fancy, just GM notes on a scene, a text field where I can put down my thoughts and plans. Done! Boom, instantly I can throw out the word document (or equivalent) I keep track notes.
2) image sharing - would probably build on, going with the RW heritage, just a number of images in a scene I can reveal to players at a given time. Next win - No longer need roll20 for maps huzza!
3) The same concept of handouts and partial reveals RW had. I used to do that over a projector for in person groups, given circumstances everything is online now (historians reading this in 200 years will wonder what has happend :P). But combining 1 and 2 to allow for partial reveals would be absolutely lovely!
4) Custom items, much lower priority then the other items, but here in Germany we get additional rule-books and it would be wonderful if it were possible to create custom items and not limit players to exactly what is in the books currently in HLO. I suspect we'll never get the Berlin core book here righ?

I suspect "Sponsored access to content that’s not personally owned for characters within a campaign" means an option for players to go join a campaign with the GM sponsoring their account? That would be quite nice especially for getting new players in I'd totally do that with my group if it were an option but it's hard to convince people to pay money to experiment with a beta they got to pay for .

Now worth a post-amble - I know every DM rolls differently (pun intended) and has their own style so those items are subjective even so I suspect a lot of them might resonate with other DMs.
sqrw is offline   #1 Reply With Quote
Ryan F
Senior Member
Lone Wolf Staff
 
Join Date: Feb 2018
Posts: 177

Old April 4th, 2020, 07:33 AM
Hi sqrw,

Thanks for the notes! I'm getting this documented for the team to go through. In the future, if you have other feedback or notes for us it's actually much better to write into the <support@wolflair.com> inbox as it allows us to more easily track and document this type of stuff.
Ryan F is offline   #2 Reply With Quote
sqrw
Junior Member
 
Join Date: Apr 2020
Posts: 20

Old April 4th, 2020, 09:22 AM
Awesome! Will do
sqrw is offline   #3 Reply With Quote
Koro76
Member
 
Join Date: Jan 2020
Posts: 52

Old April 4th, 2020, 12:42 PM
I can definitely second a desire for scene notes. One less thing to cross-reference when running an encounter would be great!
Koro76 is offline   #4 Reply With Quote
rob
Senior Member
Lone Wolf Staff
 
Join Date: May 2005
Posts: 8,232

Old April 4th, 2020, 12:52 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by sqrw View Post
Lets start with, it is fairly complex (and that's OK), but to get started a interactive walktrough would have helped me a lot. something that goes through setting up a campaing, scene, characters and resolve a scene using the system. It might be a bit early for this given features are still added.
We're hoping to have some basic walk-throughs in the not-too-distant future. There's no point in doing videos when everything is changing quickly, since they'll be wrong shortly after they are completed. Once all the core stuff starts to solidify, it will be make perfect sense to do that.

Quote:
Originally Posted by sqrw View Post
Feedback from rolls from players. This is so far the biggest thing I'm missing and think it'd make this a thousand times (I may exaggerate slighty) more useful. It doesn't have to be anything fancy to start with, just a little text console saying "x rolled y with the result xxx". For me this feature alone would move it from "On this as potential!" to "I'll try to talk my group into using it." because it'd make my life easier.
Definitely part of the plan, but we don't have that in place yet.

Quote:
Originally Posted by sqrw View Post
1) scene notes - to start with nothing fancy, just GM notes on a scene, a text field where I can put down my thoughts and plans. Done! Boom, instantly I can throw out the word document (or equivalent) I keep track notes.
This is something we've fundamentally designed into how HLO operates, and it's something I want to see soon.

Quote:
Originally Posted by sqrw View Post
2) image sharing - would probably build on, going with the RW heritage, just a number of images in a scene I can reveal to players at a given time.
I hadn't considered image sharing, but it wouldn't be complicated once we get an important new capability into place shortly. So I'm adding this to the Book of Infinite Tasks now!

Quote:
Originally Posted by sqrw View Post
3) The same concept of handouts and partial reveals RW had.
This is two separate items with significantly different levels of complexity. Handouts don't require the incremental reveal that RW offers. So those will become available well before partial disclosure.

Quote:
Originally Posted by sqrw View Post
4) Custom items, much lower priority then the other items, but here in Germany we get additional rule-books and it would be wonderful if it were possible to create custom items and not limit players to exactly what is in the books currently in HLO.
This is actually something that we've recently made some headway on, as it's something that lots of users have asked for. We expect to keep improving the way custom items (custom everything, actually) are modeled and supported.

Quote:
Originally Posted by sqrw View Post
I suspect "Sponsored access to content that’s not personally owned for characters within a campaign" means an option for players to go join a campaign with the GM sponsoring their account? That would be quite nice especially for getting new players in I'd totally do that with my group if it were an option.
That's exactly the idea.

Quote:
Originally Posted by sqrw View Post
Now worth a post-amble - I know every DM rolls differently (pun intended) and has their own style so those items are subjective even so I suspect a lot of them might resonate with other DMs.
I think all of them are going to be desirable to different segments of the GM population, so all of them make sense to add. We just need to keep working through the Book of Infinite Tasks one item at a time and we'll get there.

Oh, and thanks for the helpful feedback!!!
rob is offline   #5 Reply With Quote
sqrw
Junior Member
 
Join Date: Apr 2020
Posts: 20

Old April 5th, 2020, 11:43 AM
Thanks for the quick and kind reply rob ! I'm super excited to where this is going!
sqrw is offline   #6 Reply With Quote
dacoobob
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Sep 2018
Posts: 305

Old April 6th, 2020, 10:03 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by sqrw View Post
but it's hard to convince people to pay money to experiment with a beta they got to pay for .
welcome to modern software development. instead of paying betatesters, get your customers to pay YOU to test your product for you! it sucks but it's super common these days. : |
dacoobob is offline   #7 Reply With Quote
bruuuuuu
Member
 
Join Date: Feb 2018
Posts: 51

Old April 7th, 2020, 06:39 AM
To be fair, modern software is often at least an order of magnitude more complex than was software in the 80s and 90s, when paid beta testers were more common, and Lonewolf are not Microsoft.

If their coffers were as deep as Microsoft's, then I might be more critical of their paid-by-users beta test, but they simply aren't.

I'd have preferred to see Starfinder as an official dataset for HLC, without starship combat, and HLO developed to mirror that, with CT and starship combat. Obviously that wasn't in the cards, and anyone who has read the forums, which include some quite detailed and heartfelt postings by Rob, is well familiar with the resource constraints that they've been working under, and why.

I'm pleased that they're still around, as a company, and continuing to work on this, quite frankly. The analogy breaks down fairly quickly, and I'm not directing my comments at any specific poster here, but if you've got someone convalescing from a serious wasting disease in a hospital, you're a grade-A jerk if you're yelling at them for not having done a hundred different jobs while they were sick, not having done them to your satisfaction, and currently being unable to continue doing all of them while running a marathon.

I'm simply pleased that they're still around, and still making headway here, especially when so many have been sent home and often can't work.
bruuuuuu is offline   #8 Reply With Quote
dacoobob
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Sep 2018
Posts: 305

Old April 7th, 2020, 10:51 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by bruuuuuu View Post
if you've got someone convalescing from a serious wasting disease in a hospital
... did i miss something? did someone at LW get coronavirus?
dacoobob is offline   #9 Reply With Quote
Ryan F
Senior Member
Lone Wolf Staff
 
Join Date: Feb 2018
Posts: 177

Old April 7th, 2020, 11:21 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by dacoobob View Post
... did i miss something? did someone at LW get coronavirus?
No, no-no-no-no-no!

They were referring to the difficulty that Rob experienced with his health and how it's impacted the company as a whole. We should also like you all to know that he is doing much better these days, but that was something he spoke about in the forums here.

Nobody on staff here has been become infected (as far as we know) with Covid-19. Luckily we are remote workers already and telecommute so our work doesn't expose us nearly as much as others.
Ryan F is offline   #10 Reply With Quote
Reply

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT -8. The time now is 08:17 AM.


Powered by vBulletin® - Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.
wolflair.com copyright ©1998-2016 Lone Wolf Development, Inc. View our Privacy Policy here.