Realm Works without Hero Lab

[Conandy]

I am a potential new customer, and have been watching a lot of daplunks videos and everything i can find online about using RW. I have downloaded Hero Lab trial, but have not paid for the full version yet. I don't own RW yet.

Every single video I have seen basically assumes that all monsters and NPC's and player characters are set up in Hero Lab files.

My question is this: Is it necessary to have Hero Lab in order to set up monsters and NPC's within Realm Works? And if one were to set up the information in RW without HL, would I be shooting myself in the foot if I add HL later?

As Realm Works doesn't have a trial version, I am unable to assess some of these issues before making a purchase.

And to be honest, Hero Lab feels a bit clunky, without as much transparency as I would like and its default printed character sheet is not great. My play group is pretty darn casual and all over-40-somethings whom I doubt want to invest in the Hero Lab tool for their characters. But not having the full version means I may be giving it shorter shrift than it deserves.

I am in early campaign planning stages, and thus started looking for campaign management tools. I love what Scrivener does, but I love the fact that Realm Works offers so much more functionality for a RPG campaign.

Thanks for any help or feedback.

[Silveras]

HeroLab is not required. That's the easy part.

HeroLab is a poweful tool. It is not perfect, of course, and the longer time goes by, the more expensive the "buy in" to get everything for a game system becomes.

HeroLab can make running games easier.. but it is not going to be the right answer for everyone.

Honestly, for me, the HeroLab character sheet is irrelevant. HeroLab IS a character sheet.. a live, interactive one that can be used to apply and remove spell adjustments, skill adjustments, and other ability effects to the PC in real-time.

My experience is mostly Pathfinder, with some D&D 3.5 and Mutants & Masterminds thrown in.

HeroLab's Tactical Console does some useful things, but not enough to suit me. There is an active thread in the Pathfinder forum discussing desired improvements right now.

Returning to Realm Works, if HeroLab is useful for you then Realm Works aynergizes with it for campaign management. Realm Works itself is still "growing" into its promised features, and has a ways to go.

Realm Works is more about managing what your characters know about the campaign and the world setting.. what clues have been found, which ones are still out there to find, who knows whom, who works for whom, who lives where, who works where, and so on. None of that is in HeroLab, or requires HeroLab.

If you are not using HeroLab, the only thing you really miss out on in Realm Works is the ability to place HeroLab encounter portfolios in the encounters for easy access during play.

[kbs666]

As Silveras says Herolab isn't required for Realm Works.

Josh and I make videos including Hero Lab because at least initially that was what was requested. For me at least it is how I do things in my campaign.

Pathfinder can be a very mechanically complex game and Hero Lab handles all of it automatically for you. When I logged in tonight I wanted to build an NPC, a 12th level vampire fighter that stands to be a major villain I'll be introducing to my players soon, building such a character without HL would have taken me hours or days with much cross referencing different books. With HL it took me less than an hour. The HL portfolio is now safely stored in the NPC's topic in Realm Works ready for when I need it. That alone makes HL worth the price.

As to the printed character sheet, if you dislike it that much, I know people have said there is a way to get it to be the same as the official PF character sheet. Although as a GM what do you care about the printed sheets for?

BTW I'm well over 40 and I really couldn't imagine playing pathfinder without HeroLab. Who wants to track buffs, debuffs and all that stuff by hand?

[daplunk]

Welcome to the forums Conandy.

As mentioned above I focus on the integration because it the more technically difficult way to use the tool and also the way I do it.

I have taken a screenshot below of what you can do in Realm Works. It would do with a picture and the Hero Lab snippet is optional. Actually all of the information is optional and you could add anything further that you wanted also.

That's the power of Realm Works

The primary reason for me to use Hero Lab is for the automation around combat management. Player use is optional at my table.

[Swingwombat]

I am running a 7th Sea Second Edition game and don't have Hero lab

I don't need much info for my NPC's so having just a few notes is fine for the game, I could see if I was having to manage a more complex character set up or combat management system it would become useful but not needed for 7th sea.

The main thing my players love is to keep track of all the people they meet and information they know (The current story is a mystery style, lower on combat high on puzzles)

It works really well for me too as it can be a few weeks between sessions and it's much easier to get everyone up to speed when We can all see what we know

[Conandy]

Thanks, guys. And daplunk that is pretty much what I thought an NPC or monster would look like. Basically just using the RW infrastructure to paste in all the stats. Better than nothing, for sure. That is about what I would end up doing in Scrivener. But not as powerful as integrating with HeroLab, by a long shot, I can tell.

My main concern with the character sheet is that I just don't see my players having a device at the table to use HeroLab. If it made a sweet printed character sheet, at least a couple of them might invest the $30 to keep track of their characters, but they would probably bring the printed sheet to the game. We are pretty old school at the moment. I guess I could take the initiative (pun intended) and just store all my players' characters in my own version of Hero Lab in order to help automate the process at the table.

To the topic of automating things: we use the "speed factor initiative" option from the 5e DM's guide (tweaked a bit), and have a few house rules that, if I could incorporate into the tool, would make it awesome. Other than just having my players roll their own initiative and calling it out to me to put into the encounter tool (right now I don't even have to write it down, I just start counting down from 30 and players or monsters jump in and take their turn on their initiative count), would there be a way to mod Hero Lab to figure in weapon speed factors to the initiative rolling and encounter ordering process? I know it is advertised to allow for customizing and home-brewing.

Another example is that I use some alternative "medicine" skill rules and allow the medicine skill to operate off of INT or WIS and use a modified "Advanced Healer" feat. I also have incorporated some of the community home-brew content for some available feats, class options, etc. I have downloaded and installed the community 5e pack from these forums, so I know lot of this is possible.

Thanks again for the help. This community seems to be very supportive and helpful, and the tool(s) have some awesome potential.

PS: It is mind-boggling how much content daplunk has put into RW. One wonders if you have a day job. Here's hoping that the content sharing and marketplace will be up soon. That might swing me right there.

[daplunk]

Originally Posted by Conandy

My main concern with the character sheet is that I just don't see my players having a device at the table to use HeroLab. If it made a sweet printed character sheet, at least a couple of them might invest the $30 to keep track of their characters, but they would probably bring the printed sheet to the game. We are pretty old school at the moment. I guess I could take the initiative (pun intended) and just store all my players' characters in my own version of Hero Lab in order to help automate the process at the table.

My recommendation would be to pick it up yourself. You create the PCs in the software and then import monsters in to enable the combat automation. This gives you the benefits of the software without forcing the cost on the players. If the player's want a print-off from Hero Lab then that is absolutely possible and gives the benefits of having all the spell and ability descriptions printed. Or perhaps just print of the spell and ability descriptions and let them print everything else manually.

Originally Posted by Conandy

To the topic of automating things: we use the "speed factor initiative" option from the 5e DM's guide (tweaked a bit), and have a few house rules that, if I could incorporate into the tool, would make it awesome. Other than just having my players roll their own initiative and calling it out to me to put into the encounter tool (right now I don't even have to write it down, I just start counting down from 30 and players or monsters jump in and take their turn on their initiative count), would there be a way to mod Hero Lab to figure in weapon speed factors to the initiative rolling and encounter ordering process? I know it is advertised to allow for customizing and home-brewing.

It's most likely possible but well beyond the coding capabilities of many. With something like this my usual approach is to raise a support request to LWD, direct them to the book and page number that the alternative rules exists on an in my experience the next update usually has the requested feature.

Originally Posted by Conandy

Another example is that I use some alternative "medicine" skill rules and allow the medicine skill to operate off of INT or WIS and use a modified "Advanced Healer" feat. I also have incorporated some of the community home-brew content for some available feats, class options, etc. I have downloaded and installed the community 5e pack from these forums, so I know lot of this is possible.

Creating custom feats is absolutely possible. How far you can go on the coding comes down to your ability to script. I personally suck at scripting and simply copy existing code that does what I need to do.

Originally Posted by Conandy

PS: It is mind-boggling how much content daplunk has put into RW. One wonders if you have a day job. Here's hoping that the content sharing and marketplace will be up soon. That might swing me right there.

Sure do. I'm an IT Project Manager. This means my free time goes up and down like a yo yo. I could tell you how I get so much content into the tool but then I would need to kill you... no seriously

There's some seriously cool stuff coming for both Realm Works and Hero Lab. We do know that a price rise is coming to Hero Lab in the near future, so my recommendation is get it asap because once everything launches you will want to just buy it all anyway

[Conandy]

Ironically, daplunk, I was just watching your Hero Lab D&D 5e Player Tour video while you replied.

I think I am sold. At least for myself. If I can use these tools to make my job easier at the table and for developing and managing 2 campaigns, then all is great. I'm DM'ing one campaign for my kids and their friends, and one for some adult friends that just got started.

We started with canned content (D&D 5e starter set), but now I am working on a story line to tie all of their character backgrounds together in a grand overarching story with a BBEG very closely tied to one of the PC's (even though he doesn't know it yet). That took my DM'ing involvement from level 1 to level 10 rather quickly. I am finding it hard to keep track of all the NPC's and backstory stuff in my head....thus the search for a tool just like this!

Thanks again.

[zandraxon]

Conandy - You are where I was about a year ago. I saw RW at GenCon 2015 and got totally sucked into the power I saw for campaign management, and picked it up ASAP when I got home. Haven't regretted it once since. I already was creating Access databases for tracking all sorts of things, and RW took it to the next level.

My group is also "40+" (at least, we WERE until a couple years ago... ); we are old school enough that we haven't moved from 3.5, and we probably won't. Which leads me to Hero Labs. We had been using e-tools for many years, but when I saw Daplunk's videos combining the two, I checked into it. Sadly, although there is a ton of effort out there to import 3.5 stuff, it doesn't quite compare to the volumes of stuff for 5e and Pathfinder. That being said, I decided to pick it up just for the combat management, which is pretty slick. I keep all our group's PCs in one portfolio and update as things change. Then I print out sheets for them.

Plus, I added a 2nd monitor to display things; they love when I put up pictures of the NPCs or remove "fog of war" on maps, or when the sound from a creepy monster filters out across the room.

I promise that RW will solve all your "keeping track of NPCs and backstory stuff in my head" issues...

[gaffneyks]

Just my opinion and some of the posters here have more experience than I...

But if you are focusing on the Hero Lab/encounter part of Realm Works, you are looking at the wrong thing. The very last thing i try and fill in in the Mechanics Reference section(but I also use Hero Lab to build the encounters).

Where realm works shines is the campaign management piece. Nothing else equals it.

Are your players having issues keeping track of a complicated plot line? See the videos on Storyboards. Problem Solved

Are you sick of numerous maps, handouts? Problem Solved, Look at all the videos on Maps and fog of war.

Is the player character who keeps the journal always having to ask, "How do you spell King Whatshisname from where? Add NPCS in Realm Works and with the players version. Problem solved.

Just my thoughts, but really helped with Role playing especially for the guy who had to worry about keeping the journal, now he just keeps smalls notes and used the Players version after the session to do a journal and everyone can view plot lines that are revealed between games and plan.