So you want to make a data file?
 

You’ve got this awesome new setting you found, or even made yourself, and nobody else has made a data file for that setting. Maybe you’ve even asked on the forum but nobody is planning to do one for that setting yet. That’s ok because you can make a fairly basic setting file on your own without having to know any coding at all. That’s right, zero coding required. Sure there may be some things you know you’re going to want automated by Hero Lab that will require coding, but that’s something this forum may be able to help you with... heck, if you do all the grunt work of taking care of most of the non-coded parts of a data file someone here may just be willing to finish the file for you, if you ask!

First off we need to do a bit of prep work. We need to name our source and set up a UniqueID for it. For now let’s call our setting “House Rules” and we’ll give it a UniqueID of “HouseRules” (No spaces allowed in our UniqueIDs and we’re limited in length to 10 characters for it. A common standard is to also come up with a 2 character designator for our setting, preferably one that isn’t used by another data file setting out there if you can help it, in order to better help us define our UniqueIDs for individual “things” in our data file. Things are just anything you might have an entry for, such as a piece of gear, an Edge, or a Power. In this case we can decide to use “HR”.

Making a .1st File

That’s our prep work done, now we need to set up our Source. You can do this from within the Editor, but the best way really is to create what we call a .1st file. The best way to create one is, like most everything in Hero Lab, to cheat! Or more precisely to make a copy of some other .1st file to use as an example. It’s good to know where these data files are and the best way to figure that out for your installation of Hero Lab is by going to Tools → Explore Folders → Game System Data Folder. That will open up the folder where your data files are located. Take a look at one of the .1st files there (if you don’t have any you may want to add a setting by going to the “View Updates” menu and adding one or more the “Savage Settings” listed there to help give you same examples to work with.) Make a copy and rename it to something appropriate, for our example we’ll call this file “HouseRules.1st” and we’ll modify it to look like this:

I know, lots of “code” looking stuff in there and I told you earlier you would need to do zero coding, but all you really need to know about this is to just look at the places where we used the words “House Rules” and “HouseRules”. We're just going to make the lines look correct with the terms we came up with for our prep work, is all. It’s important to note, again, that our line that starts “id=” uses our source UniqueID that has no spaces in it and is limited to only 10 characters!

While that’s the only XML we’ll be messing with for this tutorial I will note a couple of little coding type things that can be helpful to know in the long run. If you’ll notice there are lines that start with <!-- and end with -->, those are comments. Anything between those characters is almost completely ignored by Hero Lab. It’s just a way to write notes to someone who might be looking at the file to give them a better idea about some of the things going on in it. The only other thing of note is that things are broken down into sections and each of those sections start with a <word and ends with a </word>. So note there is a section above that starts <document then has a subsection inside of there that starts <source and that the source subsection ends with </source> and finally the document section ends with </document>. Every section that starts with <word will have to have a corresponding </word> to close out the section. There are tools, like Notepad++, to help with dealing with XML files if you really start getting into messing with them (and they can be very useful even dealing with your .user data files themselves outside of the Editor for doing large find and replace operations and the like, even if you don’t do anything else with those files that way... but I’m digressing.)

Now our source is fully set up and persistent. There’s a lot of other neat things you can do with these .1st files like creating little subsections that show up on your Character Config screen which can be useful for grouping things, such as maybe you have overall House Rules but you also want to be able to select House Rules for Sci-Fi games and a different set for Horror games, or whatever subcategories you would like to use. We won’t get into that here, though. Just look at other examples or ask around on the forum if you need help doing something like that.

Restarting/Reloading Your Data Files

You may want to restart Hero Lab so it will reload your new .1st file and recognize it as a brand new Source. However there is a bit of a shortcut you can use to force Hero Lab to recompile and reload your data files while you are working on them. Just go to the menu for Develop → Compile Data Files... select “Savage Worlds” if it isn’t already selected and click the “Compile” button. Next go to Develop → Quick Reload Data Files. You may have noticed there are shortcut keys to both of those commands so you can also just use those by hitting “Ctrl-C” then “Compile” for your Savage Worlds setting followed by “Ctrl-R”.

Note that if you create a thing in the Editor and you want to reference that thing in something else, for example you create a Drawback for an Arcane Background and then decide you want to Bootstrap that Drawback to a newly created Arcane Background, you may not see your new Drawback listed if you search for it. Recompiling and reloading like this will make those things show up for you, so do this step with some regularity as you are working. Of course be sure you also save as you work as well. In fact save a LOT! ;)

One thing to note is that if there are errors with a data file Hero Lab will refuse to load ANY data files. It's a protective measure since it has no idea how to handle any conflicts. Just see if you can figure out what the error is (the error will usually tell you the UniqueID of the thing that is having a problem) and see if you can fix the problem. Or come to the forums with your error and folks here may be able to help you out.

Using the Editor

Now for the meat of building that data file. Let’s go into the Editor by going to Tools → Show Editor. From here on out a lot of what you will need to do will just be copy-and-paste work (if you are using a published setting) or typing in the descriptions you need along with thinking up UniqueIDs. The latter should be fairly easy as long as you have a decently unique 2-letter identifier for your setting, which we decided earlier would be “HR” for our examples here. Be sure to go to File → Save As... and save your data file with an appropriate name, maybe something like HouseRules.user would be appropriate for this example.

One of the most time consuming steps for data file authors is just getting in gear, Edges and Hindrances. For some settings adding Powers can be a long task as well. First let’s cover what things go where in all of those tabs. Most of them are pretty self explanatory, Ammunition is for... well, ammunition, and Edges is for Edges, and so on. The Arcane Background tab is a little bit special in that it is where some of the bits and pieces of an AB are defined, but you’ll notice it is separate from the Edges tab even though ABs are Edges. That’s because they are pretty special in their own right so you not only need to have an AB Edge, but also need to define some stuff for them on the Arcane Background tab. We’ll cover that a bit more later.

Arcane Power is for standard Powers used with most Arcane Backgrounds. This is different if you are working with Super Powers from the Super Powers Companion. Those items are covered in the tabs that start with “SPC” in their name. We won’t really be covering those here but it should be noted that if you are doing things with these tabs you will need to have selected the Super Powers Companion on your Character Configuration screen along with your new source when making characters for that to show up for you. If you do not have the SPC then it’s possible you may not see those tabs in the Editor at all, but I thought it important to note that here for those that do have it.

Sci-Fi companion tabs are not separately noted like the SPC ones are, but just to delineate those they are Cyberware, Modifications, Robot, Robotic Mods, Starship, and Walker in particular. You’ll need the Fantasy Companion for tabs that start with “Magic” or”MI” in their name. Again we won’t really cover the Companions with this walkthrough.

Equipment is for general gear, not weapons, armor, ammunition, vehicles, basically anything that doesn’t have a separate tab. Hand Weapons are for melee weapons, essentially those weapons using the Fighting skill, while Ranged Weapons would include weapons which could be used with Shooting or with Throwing. Special Weapons is often used for things like vehicular weapons, mines, explosives and so on. What things get put there as opposed to the other ones can often be a personal choice. Some folks might put a flamethrower as a Ranged Weapon, for example, but others might prefer to count that as a Special Weapon. If a distinction is made in the book for the setting you are working on then it’s usually best to follow their categorization because that’s probably the section your players will use based on what they see in the book.

Making Something

Let’s start with something commonly listed fairly early on in a setting book: Edges. If you click on the Edges tab you can add a new Edge by clicking on the “New (Blank)” button on the bottom left. The main thing you will need to do here is copy out the name of the Edge from the book and paste that into the Name field. For the Unique ID it’s best to leave the “edg” part of that alone but replace the “Z?” part with your previously decided 2-character designator. So we’ll have something that starts “edgHR” for our example. Then figure out something after that to name it. The entire field is only 10 characters long so just fit in something... well, unique. For “Uniqueness” this defaults to “No”, which just means that the Edge is not Unique in the sense that a character could take that Edge more than Once. If a character could only ever have one of that Edge you would change it to “Yes”. Often Summary Text can be taken from the Edges table listed in a book, but if there isn’t one just make this a short description of the text. The shorter the better. The Description Text can be a copy and paste of the description from the book, essentially the full description and rules for that Edge. The rest of the items are largely just things you can pick or figure out based on the Edge, such as the Type, Minimum Rank and so on. If you aren’t sure with most of them you can leave them blank. The Short Name is used on things like the printed character sheet. If you have an Edge with a long name you can put a shorter version of the name here. For example something like “Arcane Background: Magic” is pretty long for a summary printout, instead you might set a Short Name of something like “AB: Magic”.

There is one other thing here that’s pretty important on all things. That’s the Sources section. Be sure to hit that Edit button and you should see your new Source listed there. Hit the checkbox for it. If you do not list any Sources it will show up for EVERY setting, and you probably don’t want that. Now it is possible you want this thing to show up for not just this setting but maybe for some other ones as well. In that case you can select the other sources you want it to show up for from here as well.

One big suggestion I would add here is to “cheat”. What I mean by that is if you have something that is similar to that thing from another setting you can always use the “New (Copy)” button to make a copy of that other thing. Then you just have to change the stuff that’s different for your particular setting. Be sure to change the Sources, though, to your source and by removing the checkbox for the original source you copied this from. One thing of note is that Hero Lab doesn’t really let you copy things from the paid settings... or more precisely it will let you copy them, but it won’t let you save any changes you make to them. Instead you will need to just make a new thing and with the copied version just copy and paste each of the fields you need. Then you can save your new version and delete the copied one that you wouldn’t be able to save anyway.

All Done! Time to Copy and Paste

For the most part, that’s it. Do lots of copying and pasting away to your hearts content and you’ve got a basic data file in no time! You can even get some coded things done if you are just copying an existing thing. You can get a bit more in-depth by playing with some fairly easy to figure out stuff like how to use Pick-reqs, Expr-reqs and Pre-reqs to set up requirements. More complicated things are usually set up in Eval Scripts and usually you can try to work from examples for how to do those things, but if you just want to at least have the ability to select some things and see the text of those things in Hero Lab or a printed character sheet then you can ignore coding those game mechanics if you like.

If you aren’t too sure what a particular field does just ask on the forum. You can also get some information from the Help menu in Hero Lab.

Tips and Tricks

A few tips and tricks, may be helpful to note. One of the first places to go for more details on using the Editor itself is by checking out official documentation by going to Help → Help on Using the Editor.

When copying from PDF files some things don’t paste quite right into the Editor. Personally I prefer to paste text into Notepad or other simple text editor first, then I will delete the extra returns at the ends of lines, only having returns at the end of paragraphs. This lets Hero Lab handle the formatting of word wrapping lines much better. There are also some special characters you can use to bold, italicize and underline text. Just put the appropriate characters before and after the special text. For example use [b]for bold text[/b], [i] for italicized text[/i], or [u]to underline text[/u]. There are more things even than that but those should at least get you most of the way. I believe it just uses a lot of the same BB code just like the forum here does so this list may be helpful for some of it, but the Hero Lab documentation should give you more help on that front if you need it to some fancier text formatting. Hero Lab also does not recognize an em-dash (a long dash line commonly used), usually that will copy over from a PDF file as a simple dash. I find the best replacement for that is to just put two dashes in there instead--like that.

Now lets say you want more fancy stuff in your data file, like some of those crazy pre-requisites or eval scripts and stuff. My first recommendation would be to do everything you can without those things first. Then you can jot down what things you know will probably need more work done on them. Next see if maybe someone on the forum who is familiar with what you are wanting to do might be willing to help you out. Heck, if you’re lucky maybe someone will take over to finish things up for you after you’ve done all of the heavy cut-and-paste lifting for them!

Things Which are Different from Core Settings

In some cases some settings may state they they don’t allow certain Edges. Maybe Noble, for example, just isn’t appropriate for your setting. That’s what the *Preclude tab is for. All you’re doing there is putting in the UniqueID of what you want to remove and the Source ID for this setting. So in our example we’d do a New (Blank) and fill in “edgNoble” into the Thing Unique Id field and put “HouseRules” into our Source Id field. Then Noble will not show up. You probably don’t know the UniqueID off the top of your head for most things, but you can always use the “Find Thing...” button to try to find it.

Or maybe your setting Replaces the Noble Edge with some different information. A lot of people might just create a Noble edge on the Edges tab and look at that field on the left marked “Replaces Thing Id” and be tempted to just place edgNoble into there. Unfortunately that is a “gotcha” field. It’s very important to note that the “Replaces Thing Id” field over there is meant to be used for a GLOBAL replace. It completely ignores the Sources that you have set and will, instead, replace that thing no matter what sources you choose. That’s great if you have a House Rule that says, for example, the Shooting skill should always have certain text in that you want, no matter where it shows up. But if that should only apply when you have this particular source setting checked then you really shouldn’t be using Replaces Thing Id, especially if this is a data file for a setting you intent to share. Instead use the *Preclude tab as noted above to remove the original version of that thing from this setting and then create your own version that applies just for this source setting.

Just be a bit careful with your Precludes since they can cause errors if you Preclude something that is needed by something else. For example if you Preclude the Luck Edge but left the Great Luck Edge the program would complain when you try to load your data file about Great Luck needing Luck (well, actually it probably wouldn't complain in that example since it's just a pre-requisite for the Edge rather than a code dependency, but this is just an easy example). Arcane Backgrounds have many dependencies, so be fairly careful with those. You'll probably be fine if you just preclude the Edge but leave the rest of the AB-related things, like Drawbacks and such, alone.

Some specific tabs and items on those tabs of particular note:

Ammunition: has a Cost and a Lot Cost. The Cost would be for 1 of that thing, such as a single bullet, while the Lot Cost is for a set group of those things, such as a box with 10 bullets. You can then define the Lot Size in the field on the right. Note that the Weight field is for the individual things, not the Lot. For example lets’ say the book lists a box of .50 ammo that consists of 10 bullets, costs $10, and weighs 1 lb. In the Cost field a single bullet would then be $1, the Lot Cost would be $10, the Weight would be that for a single bullet, so 1 divided by 10 or .1. Then in Lot Size you would set that to 10. Don’t forget to set your Sources!

Side Note on Stacking

Stacking is also of note here in that the default Stacking is “Add Single Items”, which means if you buy 2 boxes of ammo they will be listed as 2 separate lines on your character sheet. Setting it to “Merge Existing” will stack those into a single line on your sheet. So the first box you buy would show 10 .50 ammo. The next box you buy will just add to that showing a single line of 20 .50 ammo instead of another line of 10 .50 ammo. Merging is generally preferable for things you’ll have lots of, like ammo.

Arcane Background: is pretty special. Generally it will be “Bootstrapped” into an appropriate Edge which should be named with “Arcane Background:” starting the name. The Unique ID should be formed to always start with “edgArc”. That’s a little different than your other Edges which, for our example would be something like “edgHREdge”, and Arcane Background should have a name like “edgArcHREd” Notice we really only have 2 characters left from our 10 character limit to define the edge part of that name. Arcane Backgrounds also almost always have a required Skill and a Drawback. My personal preference is usually to create any new Powers first, then the Drawback you’ll use to Bootstrap on the Arcane Background to add this there, then Arcane Background, followed by the Skill, and finally the Edge.

Of note on the Arcane Background tab is the Arcane Designation, which you can use an existing one for or just make a new one on the fly by selecting “-New Tag-” for it. You may notice that on the Skill tab there is an entry for “Arcane Background”. Be sure to save and do the compile and reload method mention in the first post to make your newly created AB show up on that list. You can select powers not allowed from the “Invalid Powers” list. Note that the listing will show everything that you have data files for, but usually you can just check the things from only those sources your character would normally have checked.

Alternately on the Arcane Powers tab you can exclude that power's use by a particular AB by selecting it from the list on the Forbidden Arcane Types.

Creature: is for building out creatures from a given source. You’ll notice you can only seem to set some basic information here but not special abilities. To configure creature special abilities you would set them up on the Racial Abilities, or Racial Properties, tab and use the Bootstrap button to add that new Ability or Property here on your Creature.

Drawback: is for Arcane Background drawbacks. Generally the AB will Bootstrap these, as appropriate.

Edge with Bootstrapped Weapon: is being deprecated, so feel free to just ignore that tab. We can now Bootstrap weapons without having to use that special tab to do so.

Equipment: has a field for Equipment Type. That is for organizing equipment into appropriate groups. Some settings don’t use the same groups as the standard rulebook but to use different categories requires some extra work. For a simple file just pick the category that fits best. For a more detailed look at how to do this, however, take a look at the 2nd post in the Common Code Examples thread for how to set that up.

Faction: This is a special, flexible, field for a drop-down selection, much like the Race field at the top of the character sheet. We have two of these to play with, Faction and Group. These can be used for various appropriate settings, such as Rank for a military campaign, if you like. These can even be renamed from “Faction” or “Group” on the “Setting Adjust” tab so it will show, for example "Rank" instead of "Faction". That renaming can be done on the Setting Adjust tab.

Group: This is a special, flexible, field for a drop-down selection, much like the Race field at the top of the character sheet. We have two of these to play with, Faction and Group. These can be used for various appropriate settings, such as Rank for a military campaign, if you like. These can even be renamed from “Faction” or “Group” on the “Setting Adjust” tab so it will show, for example "Rank" instead of "Group". That renaming can be done on the Setting Adjust tab.

Hand Weapon: is generally used for weapons that use the Fighting skill. There is a “Weapon Type” field here that is similar to the Equipment tab’s “Equipment Type”. If you don’t want to use the standard categories for this you’ll need to look at the 2nd post in the Common Code Examples thread for how to set that up. One “fancy” thing to note is that in some cases you might have a Hand Weapon that does double-duty as a Ranged Weapon (usually using the Throwing skill) as well. There is a bit of a trick to creating two items for a thing, one as a Hand Weapon, one as the Ranged Weapon version, and setting one of them to 0 cost and 0 weight and hiding them. It may be easier to leave that to someone experienced with the process but there are plenty of examples in some of the data files out there if you want to play with setting it up (mostly look at Throwing Knives or Spears or Javelins that can be thrown for some examples.)

Hindrance: Of note here is the “Require Domain Specification?” checkbox and “Domain Term” fields. This is just for user-defined requirements. For example an Allergy hindrance might require the user to define what their Allergy is. By checking the box and setting up a Domain Term (what the user will see as a prompt for what they should enter in the field) Hero Lab will prompt them when the select that Hindrance with a box to fill out the requested information. If you do not check the “Require Domain Specification” box they will still have a box for text but they will not get any error notification if they leave it blank.

Mechanic: is for setting up some overall scripts. In most cases you can skip this for basic data files. It’s really just a place for code that applies across your setting.

Race: Races are set up usually by bootstrapping Racial Abilities to flesh out the race. Of course you can always just define those in the description for a simple data file and let the players manually make the changes.

Racial Ability & Racial Property: Largely Racial Ability is used for Creatures. Racial Property is used for PC Races. Racial Properties probably have a bit more things built into the tab for setting a few things up so you could get away with just using Racial Properties in all cases and just ignoring Racial Abilities if you preferred setting things up that way. These things are generally Bootstrapped onto things in the Creatures or Race tabs.

Ranged Weapons: usually refers to items used for Shooting or Throwing. There is a bit of a trick to creating two items for a thing, one as a Hand Weapon, one as the Ranged Weapon version, and setting one of them to 0 cost and 0 weight and hiding them. It may be easier to leave that to someone experienced with the process but there are plenty of examples in some of the data files out there if you want to play with setting it up (mostly look at Throwing Knives or Spears or Javelins that can be thrown for some examples.)

Setting Adjust: has some special items in it and is often the go-to spot for configuring some overall stuff for your setting. Some items that may require a little extra explanation is “No Standard Gear?” which is useful if you are putting Gear into your setting that has different costs and/or descriptions from standard gear in Savage Worlds Deluxe. This is how you make the standard gear disappear so it only shows the gear you’ve created for this setting. The same can be said for Creatures and Humans (which removes Humans as a race from your setting.) You can also say if you are using Factions and/or Groups here and you can rename them. An example might be for a military setting you want to call your “Factions” something like “Rank” instead.

Vehicle: is largely self explanatory, but it may need to be noted that (at least the last time I tried) you could not place appropriate Bootstrap weapons on a Vehicle directly. Instead you need to use a Gizmo for that. Don’t worry about that too much for a simple data file, just make sure to put the load out in the description, but you can look at something like the vehicles in the Weird War II data file for some examples of how to do it if needed.

*Hidden: is just a way to hide items so they are not otherwise selectable from a player’s point of view but that can still be used for Bootstrapping to other things. Generally not something you’d worry about for a simple data file.

*Preclude: we discussed in more detail in the first post above. Basically this us used to remove items from the setting completely or to remove them and replace them with a more appropriate version for your setting.

Please feel free to let me know what I've screwed up above or if anything is unclear. We've had a lot of requests recently for data files and I wanted to put something together so that folks who may like to contribute won't feel completely intimidated by the Editor and could potentially get a data file started for other folks with more experience to finish up. I know, for example, that if someone would at least just do all of the copy-and-paste of text from Edges, Hindrances, Equipment, Hand Weapons, etc., from Weird War I that I would be more likely to find some time to clean that up and finish out the coding needed to get that data file out there. Same for any other Pinnacle setting we don't have done yet (although other folks are already collaborating on Savage Rifts).

I'll try and look it over in detail when I'm more awake and have more time, but just a comment: Creatures can actually be the single most time consuming routine thing you'll do. That's because in many cases besides the creature itself, you may have to do custom entries for multiple creature abilities that are not standard. Many of those are simple text field bootstraps and the like, but some are things that actually have mechanical functions in a way that the program will interact with.

Yeah, creatures can be pretty time consuming, but how often do people really use HL to deal with creatures? It seems to me the most common use case, at least on the Savage Worlds side, is character or NPC creation and advancement. I think I may even have a few data files that have no Creatures in them at all and I've never heard anyone complain about that. My personal take is the top things that make a data file truly functional are all Edges, Hindrances, Arcane Backgrounds, Powers and gear/weapons. Even vehicles are not really that important, just the main things folks need to create and advance characters. It's usually the coding stuff that ends up being needed for automating some of the things those pieces do or for just verifying they are used correctly by the rules. That's been my general take on it, anyway.

All Hail Zarlor!!

Thanks, but I'm sure it will only be helpful if I were capable of being more succinct than I tend to be capable of. Still maybe some newer folks will get some use out of it, and if they do maybe they can help get some data files started that some of us with a bit more know-how can help finish up. Something helpful for all of us, I think... if this proves useful and actually usable, mind you. :)

I'm the wrong one to ask since I entered all the necessary creatures for both my XCOM and Broken Earth files. Since I tend to think terms of GMing tools, I wouldn't even have considered doing otherwise (though its admittedly the last thing I normally do).

Yeah, Creatures you basically have to do twice. You have to create the Creature record, then you need to create an actual Creature based on it.

Do you actually use Hero Lab's Encounter Builder and Tactical Console? I guess I've largely found something like Fantasy Grounds to be a lot more useful for the GM side. Heck I even use Fantasy Grounds at the tabletop as a player, I just use Hero Lab for sanity checking, largely, then pulling the character into FG. I just hadn't heard of too many folks using the GM tools for Hero Lab in a Savage Worlds setting (as opposed to Pathfinder where it seems it is commonly used, especially for the Encounter Builder function.)

Yes.

I have a strong antipathy to online tools that I don't host myself; I do use a VTT but its Maptool. Basically, I dislike being dependent on anyone else's server.

I'm an analog guy with digital support. I use Hero Lab instead of printing out sheets, but I don't generally use the Tac Console myself. I like to shuffle and deal cards, and I prefer real dice. I even built my own dice tower.

We often use Dicenomicon since one of the guys has a tablet so it's a combination of digital dice but you still get to see them roll and all (which FG does as well.) As for FG at the tabletop I don't use it online, I use it locally. As a player I can just run it on my laptop and still use it for dice rolls and such but as a GM I have an LCD display with a touch-screeen that I lay down on my tabletop with a computer under the table to run it, so that is a client to the host version of FG I'm running on my laptop. If any of the guys bring their laptop they can then just use that for FG or they can gather around the touch screen to make rolls off of their sheets or move characters and such.

I can't say that I found the Tactical Console in Hero Lab all that useful, though, which is why i was asking. Mostly because I hadn't really heard of the experience of using it from others. I can see some use of the Encounter Builder but if you're not using the Tactical Console, at least for SW baddies, it's not really a huge help, i don't find.

Well, yeah, I was using the Tac Console before the Encounter Builder. I tend to find most games I like to have some kind of initiative tracker, and Savage Worlds is not the least of these; the other Tac Console functions are almost gravy.

Of course I was using it in M&M before I ever did SW.

Zarlor,

Thanks for this tutorial. I an one of the newbies that is stumbling through this process. Of course working on the Savage Bestiary files is a lot of creatures. I just wish there was a way to add the creature to the encounter library/tac console default list or critters. O was also wondering has there been any discussion of creating a script to make custom pc races, Al la sci fi companion?

Salcor

Paragon: I guess I would really need to see the Tac Console in use in Savage Worlds to get a better feel for using it. Just as an initiative tracker wouldn't be all that helpful for us. One of those visceral things for my group is they definitely love to have cards. I even got a bunch of those little stands people use for putting nametags on for dinner seating that we use for displaying who has what card.

Salcor: I'm assuming you mean building out a race from within the main Hero Lab interface rather than in the Editor? I don't know if that is in the works, but doing it in the Editor is pretty easy. Just create the Race on the Race tab then use the Boostrap button to pull in any Racial Properties you like. You'd have to keep track of their costs but at least once the Race is in you can see it in the standard interface where it will show the total racial cost at the top (normally it should even out to being +2) If you needed to create a Racial Property that would just mean creating it on that tab and setting the appropriate cost on it.

Of course if the Racial Property you want to use isn't already in there as something you can use you'd have to create it. That's fine if it's just some description of something for a race that you wouldn't need to have HL do anything for (say your race has Telepathy but that doesn't boost a skill or modify anything, you just need to know about it) then you're all goo. If it needs to do something with game mechanics then it can get a bit tougher and that's where I suggest looking at other examples, the common code thread and/or asking here in the forum for help with stuff like that.

And if you missed it before, Salcor, if you put the creature portfolio--or a a .stock file including that portfolio (.stock files are just multiple portfolios really) in the "savage" directory, the creature will be available from the default list.

As to the cards and such--part of it is that I've slowly moved over to an almost entirely digital GMing style; I don't do much of anything with physical dice, cards, miniatures or anything like that any more; issues of physical landscape started to progressively make a lot of this more an more irritating (having to hop up and down to get at a place the battlemap was placed on for example). Add in the fact that I kind of find having to pause to make sure I haven't skipped someone more than a little annoying, and having something that can just list out (and better yet, walk through) initiative is a real virtue. All the moreso with a game like SW that wants you to re-randomize every round. I can't imagine how I'd deal with the card draw in a way that wasn't clumsy given available space and positioning.

Thanks for the updates. And you know I think the .stock has been pointed out to me before. My bad, but thanks for the reminder.

Salcor

One of the things my players enjoy is that we usually use decks themed for the game we are playing. We've got Batman/Mr Freeze cards for Superheroes. For Deadlands, I had to use Hoyles. I've got Star Wars decks, Batman decks, Marvel decks, 007 decks, all kinds. My buddy likes these decks that have an extra card in each suit (The X card).

Paragon, I can relate - ever played a game system called "Hero" (Champions)? Hopeless even with all-digital initiative assistance. I know, I wrote several programs over the years to handle it.

Heh. There's an argument I'm part of the origin of Champions.

I actually always found that with a grid format, I found Champions speed charts easily handleable (i.e. you put together a chart with each character, a list of their Dex, and then X marks in the appropriate phase marks.)

But one of the gigs with Hero initiative is that its static; you only have a few things that perturb the basic phasing and Dex order, and they don't come up often. With a randomized roll, even once a battle, you have to re-sort at the start of every combat, and if its every round, you have to do it at the start of each round or risk missing people. I realize there's some virtue to both some randomization in initiative and even re-randomizing each round, but I've always found it a little painful to manage without digital assistance.

Roughly a round 1990, I was introduced to MERP and by extension Rolemaster. I would never have considered running or even playing those on an ongoing basis back then(ie, a long term campaign). Now however, with proper support from computing devices, those systems would be far easier to deal with(if still a bit harsh... those critical hits can be crazy)

Oh, I loved the speed chart!! It's a great mechanic. The combat system itself is what's way too slow. One combat takes literally all day, even with all of the digital assistance.

There's actually ways to work around that; what I concluded after years of using it was that a big part of it is that it encourages decision paralysis; once I found a way to break that (which mostly involved a little modification of the Hold mechanic) it didn't play any slower than most somewhat crunchy systems (SW, say). After all, when you get down to it, the basic combat mechanic is: compare CVs, roll 3D6 for resolution, roll damage (which does take some practice to learn to read the damage dice, but not that hard), subtract defenses and apply. The only part of that which is significantly more complex than a lot of games is reading the damage dice.
The problem is that there's a lot of potential choices, and than can choke people up--but that's pretty much the price of having a lot of meaningful choice.

Only reason I say this is I ran a game of it not long ago--I'm in the process of playing through a bunch of different supers systems right now as a contrast-and-compare, and decided Hero 6th deserved a slot in there--and it wasn't as fast as some of the fastest ones like Supers!, it didn't really take longer than any of the crunchier end ones.

Well.. like I said, we did not get into it that heavy(3-4 sessions and done due to lack of players, GM attention, etc). I had to look that up, but I remember now that weapon used modified your initiative. Honestly I seem to think that there was some optional rules for D&D to do the same thing way back in the day, but my memory is crap, so I could be remembering wrong. I know a large number of computer RPG's carry that type of speed mechanic as an offset for higher weapon damage, so it makes plenty of sense from a game mechanic standpoint, but it sure does slow stuff down.

Like I said, I have not even thought more than a few musings about that game system in 25 years, but I did mention it recently to my gaming group this past weekend(we only get together once a month, if that). That day we were playing SotC with another GM in our group and after we wrapped(late), I was briefly explaining the niche SW fits into by saying on one end there is Rolemaster with tables for everything and combats that take hours and hours. On the other hand are more narrative systems like Amber and Fate/Fudge which is much more free form. Basically explaining that SW was more toward the middle with a slight nudge into the narrative side while D&D(what we have played for 2.5 decades in some form or another) is more on the right side with it's mechanics.

A few of the players are a bit apprehensive around SW due to the possibility(remote though it is) that a goblin with a normal sword could one hit an ancient dragon. Yes, that chances are extremely small, but it's possible and that's not something that D&D has(for the most part, aside from some of the stupider spells they have). Of course, they are a bit leary about their characters. They are not the type of players to run or avoid combat in MOST scenarios, so I will have to really bang into their heads that point of combat is only on means of resolving situations. We will see how well it goes. One good thing is that one of the players has known Sean Patrick Fannon(who since moved away from this area) for a few decades and has played Savage worlds a number of times, so he can help the others a bit in determining the GtFOoD factor. The sad thing is, I think his character is likely going to pick up the Arrogance Hindrance, so.. yea... that might be fun.

Uhm. I think you've conflated two game systems. No incarnation of Hero I know of had either Speed or Dexterity modified by weapon; in a couple of versions a special ability might do that, but not a weapon.

This is one advantage of having moved from D&D to RuneQuest in my early days; most of the people I game with are very aware that not all games are as resistant to potential one-shot kills as D&D.

You know, I just realized we just bloody well pulled Zarlor's perfectly nice data file making thread off onto massive side tangents. Argh.

Well, the side tangents do keep the thread bumped up near the top so a few more eyes might see it and maybe help figure out if it's decent enough or useful enough to get stickied, I suppose. The hard part is that the above makes sense to me, but is it clear and concise (I'm horrible with the latter) enough for someone new to data files to be able to at least get started with the non-coding parts without feeling too intimidated by it?

I would also add that the Hero system without electronic assistance just for dealing with character creation and advancement alone is downright unthinkable, in my book! My group likes crunchy rule systems (it was like pulling teeth to get them to play Savage Worlds until they realized it's actually a pretty crunchy system in a nicely done "simple rules" wrapper!) but the Hero system was just too much for most of us. One of the guys loves it, the rest of us won't even touch it unless the guy who loves it just HAS to run a game, and even then most of the guys just make him do all of the work.

Oddly breaking through on Savage Worlds has almost turned the group into the opposite direction. While SW is now the usual "go to" ruleset the group has pretty openly taken to really enjoying some of the lighter rules like Fate Core and some Apocalypse World spin-off systems. Go figure.

Its a truism that most of the complexity in the Hero System is front-loaded; though I'll also note even that is overstated in games that aren't power-centric (i.e. modern adventure or post-apocalyptic games), as the biggest part of the crunch is in power construction. When all you're buying is attributes, skills and talents there's really not that much to it, other than the fact there's what some people consider bloat in this area (but there's no resolving what's a good number in people's minds there; I sometimes find SW a little too stripped down in skills (not to mention a little inconsistent about how much it rolls things together).

As to how coherent your posts were--well, the problem is, of course, that most of us in this thread have been doing this for a while, so its probably hard for us to tell.

There are certainly things there that are good to know out the gate (the Preclude discussion can potentially save someone some real grief, and I'd have saved myself some time if I'd understood there was built in functionality to limit what Powers a new Arcane Background could access, and I'm not sure I even now understand fully the purpose of a .1st file)

And making sure people are aware of the common code thread is good. I almost wonder if somewhere it wouldn't be good to have a thread of "things you can't (or can't straightforwardly) do in HL for SW." The "D6 skill of choice" thing, for example, or the multiple Arcane Background issue. I spent a certain amount of time chasing around on both of those before finding out they were nonstarters.

For me the .1st file serves two primary purposes. First, it provides a consistent source. What I mean by that is if I go into the Editor and just add a source there by selecting -New Source- and typing one in, it seems to me its not completely consistent on saving that source. I feel it provides a nice, standardized method, but that's obviously not a huge thing.

The second things it does, however, is provide a format for grouping. That part is pretty huge, IMHO. Take a look at something that has a Companion book, for example. Say Deadlands Noir. If you just set something with the default of "User Setting" it gets lumped in with every other "User Setting" in a nice long list on your Character Configuration screen. Even that might be fine if you have "Deadlands Noir" and "Deadlands Noir Companion" since they'll still at least line up next to each other, so being able to have a separate section for those might be nice but not critical. However, take something like Deadlands Reloaded and a separate setting file for it like "Stone and a Hard Place". If you wanted to group those you have to rename Stone to something like "Deadlands: Stone and a Hard Place" and your names start getting longer and longer. The .1st file can take care of groupings like that for you.

Actually you can do even more than that with it, make some setting exclusive in a group as well, so you can set things so that maybe you could never use Deadlands Noir and Hell on Earth together because they are too crazily different or something. You may have grouped all of those settings under a Deadlands group but then made them exclusive from each other so only one of the main Deadlands settings could be selected out of all of them. Things like that.

If you get a chance I might suggest hitting up Dartnet and some of the other folks in the Settings thread just to grab any and all of the settings files you can. Some of those guys have gotten pretty creative with setting things up with .1st files. All of that is more advanced than would be needed for the main post here, mind you, but setting the groundwork for using .1st files more creatively by getting folks in the habit of setting it up even for a basic setting to begin with is, IMHO, a good thing. Then if you ever needed to build on it, the basics of what you need are already there.

On the d6 Skill of Choice bit...
You can also go the other direction with it with Edges. Give the players the extra points they need to pick up a Skill at d6. Then, the Edge that needs to know what Skill it was can have a menu added to it to display the Skills the character has, and the appropriate Skill can be chosen. It's then accessible to the background code. The Edge will display a menu that the user can choose the Skill from, and you could conceivably use the Edge just to store that choice.

Striking the ground with a charred staff, I shake my skull rattle and commit....THREAD NECROMANCY!

So as amusing as the tangents were to read, I have come seeking some guidance/education regarding the creation of a 1st file. I went digging in the examples of other 1st files to get some examples to compare against but there are a number of commands I'm running across that I want to either make sure I've deduced their use/meaning correctly, or get some clarification on. I apologize for the lengthy post, but since this was strongly suggested as a starting point, I need to get this project going asap.

using Deadlands Noir as a example, in the 1st file I see the following

Pls forgive me for the use of a picture, best way I could think of to make sure what I'm referring to is coming across clearly. Am I correct in thinking in regards to the red bolded text above, id= "sepDLNoir" is the unique Thing-ID that is greyed out text in the menu, and that it had to have a unique ID in order for it appear visually in the menu as a separate entry for the other 2 setting choices to fall below it?

Am I correct in thinking that this is done by setting selectable = "no"?
I assume that by making "SepDLNoir the parent file in the subsequent sources is why they show up as separate possible choices under Deadlands Noir: Campaign Setting header?
Also, am I correct in thinking in there is no need for a selectable = "yes" in order to create a selection box?

Attachment 6659


My questions are for the next set of red-bolded text below:


I'm assuming that "sortorder = X" is why DLNoir shows up before DLNoirC, but I'm confused why the sort order for sepDLNoir and DLNoir are both = to 0. I would've assumed if I wanted this to appear in the same manner visually as the picture above, that the sort order would be 0, 1, 2. Could you explain what I'm missing here?

In my 1st file, lets say I want to import material from the several companions, i.e. say Supers 2E, Fantasy and Horror for my Scion setting. Each of these has their own entry in the hero configuration menu one can check on their own under the section of "Companion Books".

My question is, based on looking at the DLNoir 1st, if I wanted those 3 companions to appear as possible choices under my custom setting entry, would the following example be the correct way to go about it?

Also, I'm a little confused regarding the need for 1st files having read Tutorial #16 which addresses the Setting Adjust tab in the editor. Based on my understand of that tutorial, if I were to tick all these boxes in the picture below and make that my "Scion.user" file, then every time someone chooses the Scion box under the character configure menu, all these checked things are loaded automatically into HL to build a character with. That however, hasn't been my experience, it seems that unless I check all those same boxes in the configure hero menu, they won't show up. Would anyone care to guess at what I'm doing wrong there?

And finally, regarding the Setting Adjust tab, if i check all those choices for my Scion game, do I have to check the same boxes as sources every time I create a new customized addition to the .user file? I.E. Create a new Arcane Edge, better check ALL those boxes. Create 10 new Edges, better check ALL those boxes on all 10 edges, etc.

Thanks in advance to anyone who brings me some clarity on this :)

Attachment 6660

Yes, each thing in Hero Lab has to have a unique ID.
Yes, selectable=yes is the default you only need to tell it when it's no.

They can both be zero because there's a parent-child relationship between the two. sepDLNoir is the parent of DLNoir.

As far as the 1st files, they are not required. Some Settings don't use them. They are usually used for those Settings that have multiple choices beyond just turning the Setting itself on.

Thanks CC, that cleared a lot of doubt. I'm a bit of a dork when it comes to doing stuff with software when I don't know how to protect it from my bumbling :rolleyes: