Character sheets used at Dragon*Con

[AncientOne]

So, while I was at Dragon*Con, I decided to do some really, really unscientific market research. Basically, I just wandered through the gaming area (both PFS and regular Pathfinder) during different sessions and tried to notice what styles of character sheets were in use.

I'd guesstimate that 80% of the character sheets were the standard Pathfinder sheet, just filled in by hand with pen or pencil.

A small number (maybe 5%-10%) were personally-created documents (e.g., excel spreadsheets, etc).

The remainder were Hero Lab sheets (the standard output). FWIW, I saw one person using my custom sheet.

These numbers suggest to me that there is still a lot of "market share" available for Hero Lab to capture.

 

[David Haller]

So, while I was at Dragon*Con, I decided to do some really, really unscientific market research. Basically, I just wandered through the gaming area (both PFS and regular Pathfinder) during different sessions and tried to notice what styles of character sheets were in use.

I'd guesstimate that 80% of the character sheets were the standard Pathfinder sheet, just filled in by hand with pen or pencil.

A small number (maybe 5%-10%) were personally-created documents (e.g., excel spreadsheets, etc).

The remainder were Hero Lab sheets (the standard output). FWIW, I saw one person using my custom sheet.

These numbers suggest to me that there is still a lot of "market share" available for Hero Lab to capture.

In my experience with PFS (2-star GM, 41 levels worth of various characters), at least in the Atlanta area, I find that many PFS players are fairly *new* to P&P roleplaying - I'll even speculate that the average PFS player is probably less "sophisticated" as a gamer than the average player of, say, Pathfinder home campaigns, APs and so on.

It's especially noticeable when compared with players of LFR (most of whom were legacy players of Living Greyhawk and even Living City), who were generally both older and had enjoyed a longer tenure as P&P gamers - and who were more familiar with 3rd party tools (there were a lot of PCGen users in LG, and of course Wizards had its own proprietary character management tools for LFR, which many players used).

There's definitely a big share of gamers not using *something* (like HL), and it would be great to have an HL presence at some of the big cons (SCARAB, for example, upcoming in January, will run 120+ tables of PFS); HL in particular is perfect for PFS, since you can select that as a condition for character generation. I expect the rise in use of tablets in gaming will greatly accelerate the acceptance of such tools, though.

 

[Aaron]

At both PaizoCon and GenCon we had character creation stations set up nearby or inside the PFS rooms, as a service and advertisement type thing. I've heard that some Venture Cap/Lts have been talking about organizing something similar for smaller Cons where we can't make an appearance.

 

[dballing]

As a former PCGen user, I'm *really* surprised that it doesn't have a higher usage rate in your survey results. Maybe it's just because now PCGen is limited essentially to (defunct) OGL/3.5 and (current) Pathfinder, but I would have thought it would have a little bit more use.

 

[Enforcer84]

At both PaizoCon and GenCon we had character creation stations set up nearby or inside the PFS rooms, as a service and advertisement type thing. I've heard that some Venture Cap/Lts have been talking about organizing something similar for smaller Cons where we can't make an appearance.

I saw the character creation center at GenCon, it was a pretty sweet setup. I was geeking to my buddy about it.

 

[rob]

These numbers suggest to me that there is still a lot of "market share" available for Hero Lab to capture.

The number of Hero Lab users is well into the five-figures range and climbing quickly. However, there are a *lot* of Pathfinder players out there, and your informal survey is in the ballpark of our own estimates regarding Hero Lab's total market penetration.

Once Hero Lab becomes the official in-house tool used by Paizo over the next few months, we expect our rate of market penetration to increase further, but there are still a lot of players we need to reach....

 

[rob]

There's definitely a big share of gamers not using *something* (like HL), and it would be great to have an HL presence at some of the big cons (SCARAB, for example, upcoming in January, will run 120+ tables of PFS); HL in particular is perfect for PFS, since you can select that as a condition for character generation.

Any Venture Captains that want to setup their own Character Creation Stations at a local Con are encouraged to contact John Ryan about it. We're working on ways we can support local Cons that we can't attend ourselves, so talk to John about how we can help out!

 

[Unseelie]

Once Hero Lab becomes the official in-house tool used by Paizo over the next few months, we expect our rate of market penetration to increase further, but there are still a lot of players we need to reach....

Ooh! Is there more you can say about that?

 

[rob]

Ooh! Is there more you can say about that?

There is no formal announcement yet, although Sean K. Reynolds spilled the beans a few months ago on the Paizo.com forums, so it's been talked about publicly. You can expect a formal announcement in the next couple of months, along with lots more details. There are also some very nifty things being added to HL right now for Paizo that users will be able to leverage as well.

So stay tuned and all will be revealed soon.

 

[ShadowChemosh]

There is no formal announcement yet, although Sean K. Reynolds spilled the beans a few months ago on the Paizo.com forums, so it's been talked about publicly. You can expect a formal announcement in the next couple of months, along with lots more details. There are also some very nifty things being added to HL right now for Paizo that users will be able to leverage as well.

So stay tuned and all will be revealed soon.

Been very excited about this sense I read SKR's comment. Especially hopeful with the fact that the Statblock generator gets closer to paizo's standards. I know I read their was some changes in the last patch but have not had time to test yet. Here's hoping.

Also very interested to hear about "new" stuff for HL.

 

[Dragnmoon]

Any Venture Captains that want to setup their own Character Creation Stations at a local Con are encouraged to contact John Ryan about it. We're working on ways we can support local Cons that we can't attend ourselves, so talk to John about how we can help out!

Contact Info?

 

[rob]

If you're a VC or VL, you should already have been in contact with John at least once, when he set you up with your goodies for being a VC/VL, which is why I didn't bother including his contact info. For the sake of completeness, his email address is john <at> wolflair <dot> com.

 

[spartanx]

Will there be an effort to use the character portfolio that paizo put out for pathfinder within herolab as an output?

 

[Aaron]

Not at this time. At least not officially. Perhaps you'd like to look at some of the fan created character sheets.

 

[ShadowChemosh]

Will there be an effort to use the character portfolio that paizo put out for pathfinder within herolab as an output?

Armidale's Custom Sheet is suppose to be super close to the Pathfinder sheet.

I know AncientOne's sheet is the most customizable and what all my players use and love. Also worth checking out and this is sheet is totally supported with new updates constantly.

 

[AncientOne]

I haven't had a chance to look at the character portfolio yet -- first I need to polish the support that I've added for the "standard" character sheet a bit more.

That said... I do intend to at least evaluate the character portfolio and see what it would take to support it.

(Is that non-commital enough? )

 

[dafrca]

I have found that the sheet I like the best is AncientOne's.