multiple license question

[mirtos]

So here's my question. My group often shares books. Perfectly legal. Im wondering if there i a legal way for us to do the same with licenses.

In looking at switching to Pathfinder, Im looking at the data sets we would want, and it $159.00. Ok, as the DM I can sport that, but id also like to have the players have the abilities to have it on their laptops. We have 6 players. So thats a total of $1113.00 for the group of 7 (6 players +1 DM) if we have to each buy the licenses.

Does anyone know?

 

[LonePaladin]

The initial purchase covers installing HL on two computers; you can get two extra licenses for $10 each.

link

 

[Unseelie]

So here's my question. My group often shares books. Perfectly legal. Im wondering if there i a legal way for us to do the same with licenses.

In looking at switching to Pathfinder, Im looking at the data sets we would want, and it $159.00. Ok, as the DM I can sport that, but id also like to have the players have the abilities to have it on their laptops. We have 6 players. So thats a total of $1113.00 for the group of 7 (6 players +1 DM) if we have to each buy the licenses.

Does anyone know?

Pretty sure that the end user license forbids what you're trying to do. I've raised this before and was told it wasn't allowed, so I've stopped using add on data sets and only use the core books. The alternative is duplicating the items you need by hand into your own data files, or making your players code the items needed for their characters... and then fighting with duped things and replace thing issues.

 

[rob]

Here's how we think about it. Your group is sharing books, which is perfectly acceptable. The key detail here is that there is only one copy of a book, so only one of you can use the book at any given time. You need to pass it around the table. Now extend that concept to a Hero Lab license. If you put it on one laptop, you can pass the laptop around just like a book. However, if you put the same license on multiple computers, then everyone in the group can share the same copy at the same time. That's no longer anything close to sharing a book. It's now equivalent to making complete copies of the book and passing them out to everyone. Most reasonable people would consider that an inappropriate activity, and we do as well.

The Hero Lab license is setup along these lines. However, we go well beyond the limits of a single book. We provide a free secondary license to run the product on a second computer, so you effectively get two books for the price of one. You're also able to purchase up to two additional secondary licenses for only $10 apiece. So you can essentially buy two extra full copies of all the books for $10 apiece. That's a lot more generous and flexible than managing a single book. However, there is still the limitation that you can't just give the product away to others. We consider that to be reasonable.

In your situation, you might consider getting an old used laptop and putting a secondary license on it. Then you can pass that around amongst your players, along with your own laptop. That's the equivalent of having two sets of all the books available at the table for sharing, and it's all in keeping with the license.

Hope this make sense!

 

[Unseelie]

Also, to be fair... really it's only the GM that needs to have all of the books. For the most part, the players can get by with the Core Books, plus the APG, UC or UM depending on what they're playing. There's a damn good argument for everyone having UE as well.

The books that cause me the most work due to my players not having them are UE and UM (but that's just my Wizard).

 

[mirtos]

Thats true. so my math is off, the "player" books add up to about $64.00 bucks. might be more reasonable. I still think providing some way of having the DM have all the books, controlling the portfolio, but having a "player view" (in essence a limited version but without the ability to add spells, feats, etc) would be useful, and you could probably get extra sales in. This would allow portfolios created to load succesfully even if the person didnt have the books, but wouldnt allow them to do more. This would be on par with a player creating a character sheet based on a book they dont own but the DM does.

You might even get more sales out of it.

The idea of passing a laptop around only works if the people are round to pass it around. Im not suggesting giving away content for free, but it might make sense to consider group licenses. (with one license being a master, and all others being a slave, to talk computing terms). To ensure that people didnt use this to do things they shouldnt, when the master license wasnt "running" you could have the child licenses not show things they dont own.

This way a group like me could pay $200 bucks for the master (or whatever the total is) for when things need to be looked up, and allow basic use of the software when the master license isnt running (for 20/license). I know this is substantially different from the way you currently do licensing, but I could see many groups wanting to do something like this. In my groups case, assuming my master license would cost 200.00 (estimate) and every child license would get basic core on their own, and could access my license when running the game, that would be $320.00 to Lone Wolf.

Right now, I'd have to consider doing one of the following:

1. Purchasing everythign myself, and do what i currently do, which is create PDFs and provide them for the players. In which case, ill end up paying around $200.00

2. Going with core only, and getting players to install hero lab (better for the group, as long as we are ok with less content), but this would net LoneWolf less money (if every computer had it installed, it would be a total of $140.00


Maybe im alone in this, but I dont think I am.

 

[ShadowChemosh]

.........
Maybe im alone in this, but I dont think I am.

As your asking I am going to say I am not in agreement with you. Or maybe I am more of a Jerk to my players.

I would never ever dream about buying my players Dice, Books, Pdfs, food, or anything else. I for sure would not buy them a license for their Anti-virus software, their latest phone app, or MS office. So why would I buy them a license for their hobby?

Like I said I maybe more of a jerk but I even now require HL software for characters at my game table. No exception to this rule. If someone really couldn't buy HL I have them show up early and enter their character into my laptop HL. If they have it pre-done on paper this takes just minutes. Then boom I have it for the game.

Do DMs really buy their players stuff for them on top of hosting the game and running the game?

 

[mirtos]

As your asking I am going to say I am not in agreement with you. Or maybe I am more of a Jerk to my players.

I would never ever dream about buying my players Dice, Books, Pdfs, food, or anything else. I for sure would not buy them a license for their Anti-virus software, their latest phone app, or MS office. So why would I buy them a license for their hobby?

Like I said I maybe more of a jerk but I even now require HL software for characters at my game table. No exception to this rule. If someone really couldn't buy HL I have them show up early and enter their character into my laptop HL. If they have it pre-done on paper this takes just minutes. Then boom I have it for the game.

Do DMs really buy their players stuff for them on top of hosting the game and running the game?

Actually, you miss the point entirely. I was never saying i would buy my players hero lab. I was saying that for the gaming group to use it as a whole what it would end up costing the group, and it basically being unfeasable. As for the idea of getting people to show up, that might depend on schedules, but thats also not feasable. Especially in this day and age, many gaming groups are split across states. I know I have local people and people who "tele-game" for lack of a better term. I also know Im not the only person who runs a game like this. There are advantages in game to having everyone run a copy of the software, but it also requires everyone being able to afford it. And this is why i brought up the client/server license (master/child).

 

[Umarian]

Maybe im alone in this, but I dont think I am.

I would have to disagree also. Nothing says that you have to buy every package at one time. Whether you are the GM or a player, if you are not using material from UM, you don't need that license at that moment in time.

So saying that they have to buy every book at the time that they get HL is not really accurate. Like Shadow says, as a GM you aren't expected to buy the physical book for your players, so why should you buy the license for them?

In my games I require por files from my players. Some of them have bought the product for their own use, others have someone with the program build their characters for them and use the pdf version, or I have them give me their characters and I enter it into my HL and they play off paper. It works just fine. It would be easier if they all had HL, but I can't, and won't, buy the licenses for them.

 

[mirtos]

When i said "maybe im alone in this, but i dont think i am", i never meant to imply that i would be buying things for players, I was talking about total costs. What I meant to say was that if I wanted to use the software as a group thing (and part of the reason im thinking about this is because of how well its going to integrate into realms works) and ensuring we all have the same data available to us at all times (again, we're not sitting around the same table), so that I think im going to find myself deciding between more content or us all having the same software. And when I said i dont think im alone in this, I meant this type of thinking. I cant speak for Unseelie, but Unseelie implies thats the reason they no longer use the core only. "tabletop" gaming is changing, and I think that the idea of having master/client is actually something that LoneWolf could consider and would potentially bring in even more income.

All this being said, dont take this as a complaing against hero lab. Ive been using it for i guess two years now, and love it.

 

[ShadowChemosh]

When i said "maybe im alone in this, but i dont think i am", i never meant to imply that i would be buying things for players, I was talking about total costs.

My bad I got confused with all the mention of total costs that it was being handled by one person.

 

[chiefweasel]

I dont buy things for my group, heck they bring me lunch when we plan. Since I use the tacticle console I insist that everyone have an upto date character in HL. Cant run the session well without it. I am hoping with Realm Works that the players will be able to use the clound environment as a storage place for their characters so they can update them and post them back to me before game day.

 

[rob]

@mirtos: Switching to a "master/client" model like you describe is definitely possible. However, it would require a complete rewrite of how Hero Lab currently works, since it would now become a purely server-based application. At that point, anyone wanting to use Hero Lab without an internet connection (i.e. lots of current users) would no longer be able to do so. If we tried to do a "master/client" approach without requiring an internet connection, there would be no way to enforce it, at which point all the less scrupulous gamers out there would exploit the hole and "pirate" it freely. Based on our experience a decade ago, back when consumers weren't as tech-savvy and technology wasn't nearly as readily exploited as it is now, our sales would drop by roughly 75% and we'd be out of business if we relied on gamers being honest. So we haven't yet found a better solution than the one we currently have for maximizing the utility of Hero Lab to users while still keeping it secure.

Hope this makes sense!

 

[mirtos]

@mirtos: Switching to a "master/client" model like you describe is definitely possible. However, it would require a complete rewrite of how Hero Lab currently works, since it would now become a purely server-based application. At that point, anyone wanting to use Hero Lab without an internet connection (i.e. lots of current users) would no longer be able to do so. If we tried to do a "master/client" approach without requiring an internet connection, there would be no way to enforce it, at which point all the less scrupulous gamers out there would exploit the hole and "pirate" it freely. Based on our experience a decade ago, back when consumers weren't as tech-savvy and technology wasn't nearly as readily exploited as it is now, our sales would drop by roughly 75% and we'd be out of business if we relied on gamers being honest. So we haven't yet found a better solution than the one we currently have for maximizing the utility of Hero Lab to users while still keeping it secure.

Hope this makes sense!

Thats a completely valid point. And I fully get that. And right now, an unscrupulous gamer could take advantage of your ability to have extra licenses for just 10.00 each, and give them out (even though its against the EULA) I'm just suggesting things that could hopefully both improve the product for both the user and for the business. As an example, Why not consider a dual license system? It would incorporate well into your realmsworks goals.

Primary License: as it is now. If you have a primary license to something, you can use it whenever. Your primary license could then be told to be a "master". It would have a maximum # of "children". Primary licenses would work all the time, when connected or not. the master would have to pay for the number of children its allowed to have. (either the DM pays for this, or as many people suggested the players would pay for this).

Child License: Only allowed to use something if connected to the internet, to go against a license server, and only if its master is also connected, and only as long as master gives approval.

This way you could have players that have only purchased core. At any time, they could use core. But if I as a DM want to use something not core, I put that in the portfolio, give them the portfolio (or store it on the cloud, as I plan to use Realmsworks), and as long as I have my master server running (not much different than when im running my other DM servers, such as MapTools) they can connect via the secondary license, and still use the portfolio. I would imagine the master license would be more than the cost of just a single license, but less expensive than the cost of what it would be to get all the books as individual licenses. Now this might be an issue with Paizo, I dont know, but considering they allow PDFs of most things, I wouldnt expect it.

For example using my example... 7 players (1 DM + 6 players) to have all the "player" books, would be about $420.00. (60ish times 7). I could forsee a gaming-group license for $200 (split it among all the participants) and they would pay a little over $30.00 each. Gaming groups that have limited funds, conventions that run games, etc, all of these could be possible outlets for this type of thing. If people use HeroLab for one game, pooling money is something that could happen. (at my game, for example, we all pool money to buy food, for example).

At the same time, it wouldnt limit the people who dont want to buy a master license.

Also this optional idea of master/child also could lead you to something that I KNOW people have requested (ive seen it in old posts), the idea of a player copy vs a DM copy, so that everyones player copy is updated whenever the master (DM) makes any changes. This also would tie in very well to RealmsWorks.

 

[rob]

@mirtos: Those are definitely directions we've been exploring. Once Realm Works is live, we'll be able to do much more than we currently can with Hero Lab. We'll still have to migrate Hero Lab to operate via the server, which will take a lot of work, but the long-range vision definitely incorporates elements of what you've proposed. Just please don't expect it this year.

 

[mirtos]

@mirtos: Those are definitely directions we've been exploring. Once realm works is live, we'll be able to do much more than we currently can with hero lab. We'll still have to migrate hero lab to operate via the server, which will take a lot of work, but the long-range vision definitely incorporates elements of what you've proposed. Just please don't expect it this year.

That makes a lot of sense.