Select Specific Character when linking from Hero Lab

[Mettius]

Request: Ability to select discrete characters from a HL portfolio.

When adding a character from hero labs (Profile/Hero Labs Portfolio), unfortunately everything in the portfollio is added when I just want to select one.

For example (In Hero Lab) I have an NPC.por portfolio in which I keep NPCs which I've fleshed out in detail. It would be lovely if I could just select which character(s) I want to be part of that snippet. The way it works now every NPC in the portfolio shows up when I "view" it in RW. Breaking them out into separate .por files in HL makes managing them more difficult when taking advantage of in play management in HL.

Cheers,
-Mettius

[Silveras]

That sounds like you are linking the portfolio to the Topic in RealmWorks.. so that's importing copy of the entire portfolio.

To add only one character to a topic in RealmWorks, use the option to create a new portfolio in the Topic (blue + symbol) instead of loading an existing file (folder button), which is what it sounds like you are now doing. Then, when it opens in HeroLab, use the HeroLab portfolio menu to "Import Hero from Portfolio" .. select your NPC .por file, and you will be shown the list of characters (as normal for HeroLab) .. then just choose the one you want and import that one.

[Farling]

As Silveras suggests, you could put each NPC into RW as a separate snippet (maybe all in one topic called NPCs).

Then you can view the individual character portfolio within RW, and choose whether to see the NPC or not in a running HL using the standard option of RW.

It just moves the choice from doing "import into current portfolio" while running HL into choosing which snippet to load into a running HL.

Isn't it inefficient (performance-wise) to load an entire set of NPCs into HL in one go? (Which appears to be your current method.)

[Mettius]

Thanks Silveras,

That worked. Though it appears that I now have multiple versions of my NPC. The one in my master portfolio NPCs.por and a new one contained wholly within RW, which I can essentially hot export into HL as needed.

So this isn't exactly what I was looking for, which would be linking to the content in a HL .por file (that being the master source) vs. making a copy and keeping it in RW, but it is better than what I had before (the whole portfolio being imported).

I guess this means I have to switch to keeping my "master copies" in RW, not in HL. Does that sound right?

Farling,
I never noticed any performance issues with portfolios containing multiple characters in HL.

-Mettius

[Silveras]

The issue is databases and files, I think. When loading resources (pictures, maps, HeroLab portfolios, etc.) into RealmWorks, the process makes a copy that is internal to RealmWorks. This is necessary for the sharing of data with others... for the players to view revealed data that was "linked", they would need to already have a copy on their own machines in the same directory path... or the file would need to have been linked from an external, shared location (ex. hosted on a web site).

Some people have had success with using URL links to reference external files from RealmWorks, but the same issue applies (if the link location is not available to others, the "sharing" part of revealing data is not going to work).

For my own use (running a PBeM game), I kept the PCs in an external HeroLab portfolio, but all encounters were set up in RealmWorks with a HeroLab portfolio containing the monsters and NPCs I expected to need. In some cases, this resulted in NPCs being in more than one portfolio .. a single NPC in a portfolio on a Topic for the NPC, and the same NPC pre-loaded in a portfolio for an encounter. The "integrate into running copy" worked well for me.. I could load the monsters from the portfolios in RealmWorks into my externally-started HeroLab with the portfolio for the PCs already loaded.

Where to keep them depends on what works best for you. There's no single right way to use RealmWorks, so you should play with it a bit to find what works for you.

[Mettius]

Good points. It does make more sense to keep the files in RW given the sharing nature of the data.