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jrclarkiii
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Old August 11th, 2009, 05:32 AM
I have spent virtually no time on the forums, but I've been using Hero Lab for a year or so (since last Gen Con, as a matter of fact.) I'm running two demo games for beginners at Gen Con again this year and have been putting together 15 or so characters in the past few days, so these are a couple of things that have been on my mind.

Take these for the two cents or so they are worth.

1) Print format: I would give my right arm for the ability to format a character sheet that looks exactly or almost like the official M&M stat blocks from the books, with all the appropriate commas and semi-colons, etc. The one-page format is similar but just different enough...

2) Movement: For some reason, when I do a one-page, movement is frequently split up into two fields over two pages. The text would clearly fit in one box, but for some reason, it spills over, creating two pages.

3) Complications: I saw the answer on another thread that says to enter these as a Personalization. Unfortunately, Personalizations don't seem to show up on the one-page sheet format. Unlike fruitbats or favorite color, this is an official part of the M&M character that most every character will have. I really wish there was an actual space for them.

4) Output format: I wish there was a way to output all the information that is on the one-page or normal character sheet into an RTF or HTML format that I could then reshape into whatever format I wanted. Is this to keep people from publishing Feat descriptions or Power costs to the Web? (And yes, I know that the various output formats give you the information minus point costs and descriptions.)

Last edited by jrclarkiii; August 11th, 2009 at 05:35 AM.
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rob
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Old August 11th, 2009, 09:19 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by jrclarkiii View Post
1) Print format: I would give my right arm for the ability to format a character sheet that looks exactly or almost like the official M&M stat blocks from the books, with all the appropriate commas and semi-colons, etc. The one-page format is similar but just different enough...
Since I'm *not* the M&M guy, but Colen will be offline for a couple days, I'm going to take my best guess on this. Forgive me if I'm misunderstanding something.

HL *will* generate statblocks for M&M. The format *is* very similar to the statblocks used in the books - I thought it was actually the same. To access, go to the File menu and select Output Active Hero Summary.

Quote:
Originally Posted by jrclarkiii View Post
2) Movement: For some reason, when I do a one-page, movement is frequently split up into two fields over two pages. The text would clearly fit in one box, but for some reason, it spills over, creating two pages.
This sounds like a bug that we can probably fix.

Quote:
Originally Posted by jrclarkiii View Post
3) Complications: I saw the answer on another thread that says to enter these as a Personalization. Unfortunately, Personalizations don't seem to show up on the one-page sheet format. Unlike fruitbats or favorite color, this is an official part of the M&M character that most every character will have. I really wish there was an actual space for them.
I don't know enough about this. However, if complications are a fundamental part of every character, it could make sense to track them separately and list them on the character sheet. We'll be meeting with GR at GenCon, so we can ask them for an official opinion.

Quote:
Originally Posted by jrclarkiii View Post
4) Output format: I wish there was a way to output all the information that is on the one-page or normal character sheet into an RTF or HTML format that I could then reshape into whatever format I wanted. Is this to keep people from publishing Feat descriptions or Power costs to the Web? (And yes, I know that the various output formats give you the information minus point costs and descriptions.)
How about the statblock output that I mentioned in #1? There is an HTML format option, as well.
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jrclarkiii
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Old August 11th, 2009, 09:30 AM
The stat block export does seem to contain all of the information from Green Ronin's book format, and with some work I can import that into a QuarkXpress or InDesign layout format of my own design that mimics the official layout. But I was hoping HeroLab could output it into a character sheet format that mimics the format in the books, without having to go through the manual layout outside of the program.

As for the Complications, they don't cost any points, but they are a pretty integral part of the game. It would be nice to have them hard-coded into the character sheet.
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Colen
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Old August 19th, 2009, 04:08 PM
Thanks for your post, jrclarkiii. Addressing your points:

1) That would indeed be really cool. At this point we could generate it all pretty simply, except for the ability score and saving throw blocks across the top.... I'll see if this can be resolved in some way.

2) I'll look into the movement issue. If you could email me a sample portfolio where this occurs to colen@wolflair.com, that would be a big help.

3) Someone made a good case to me at Gen Con for allowing this, so I'm going to go ahead and add it to the files.

4) As Rob mentioned, you can use the built-in statblock output to get all the data you need.
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jrclarkiii
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Old August 28th, 2009, 05:17 PM
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Originally Posted by Colen View Post
3) Someone made a good case to me at Gen Con for allowing this, so I'm going to go ahead and add it to the files.
That might have been me. I hit you up before the exhibit hall doors opened on Thursday.
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Colen
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Old September 21st, 2009, 11:25 AM
Could well have been - sorry for not remembering you by name. The entire show turns into a huge blur for me shortly after the doors close on Sunday.
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