Lone Wolf Prepping to bring D&D 5th Edition to HEROLAB!

Lone Wolf Development, the makers of the popular Hero Lab character generation software which already covers a wide range of games, has just announced that it is already preparing its software for D&D 5th Edition. While no license exists, their statement (below) indicates that they are fully expecting one and that they are confident enough that they have already started work.

[lq]Proceeding under the assumption that a license will allow us to support D&D 5th Edition, we’ve been making significant preparations within our products.[/lq]

Since the release of Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition this past summer, users have been asking if we will be supporting this new edition in our products. To clear up any speculation, we wanted to clarify our official position.

Supporting D&D 5th Edition will require a license of some sort from Wizards of the Coast. While we haven’t signed a license at this time, indications are that Wizards of the Coast will soon release an “open” (OGL or SRD) license for D&D 5th Edition, just like they did a decade ago for D&D 3rd edition. An open license like this would allow other publishers to use selected content from the new edition in their products. If that occurs, we will fully support D&D 5th Edition within both Hero Lab and Realm Works, to the extent that any license allows.

How likely is it that Wizards of the Coast will release an OGL or SRD license for D&D 5th Edition? No formal announcement has been made. However, multiple public statements from members of the D&D design team have indicated plans for portions of D&D 5th Edition to be made available under the OGL in some form.

Proceeding under the assumption that a license will allow us to support D&D 5th Edition, we’ve been making significant preparations within our products. If an OGL license is announced, we’ll be as ready as possible to get the OGL content to our users. Obviously, it will take some time after any formal announcement to finish up our work and make sure everything we have is in compliance with any license, but we’ll be working as quickly as possible to get everything into our users’ hands.

When we have more information about 5th Edition support, we’ll let you know!
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[Nylanfs]

Realm Works is, and Liz correct me if I'm wrong, largely a electronic replacement for the three ring binder holding your current campaign, except WAY more organized. And players can also interact with it. But it is most useful outside of the game trying to organize your next game/storyline.

 

[nerfherder]

Realm Works is, and Liz correct me if I'm wrong, largely a electronic replacement for the three ring binder holding your current campaign, except WAY more organized. And players can also interact with it. But it is most useful outside of the game trying to organize your next game/storyline.

Sounds interesting. I replaced my physical binder with Microsoft OneNote, meaning I can do prep on my desktop, and access it in-game on my tablet, or my phone at a pinch. I'd be curious to hear from anyone who has experience of both OneNote and Realm Works.

 

[LWDLiz]

Realm Works. I don't have this. It seems to be described as a DM preparation thing. Is this mainly aimed for online gaming? How much utility is there in this program for someone that plays at a game table and not even in the same building as my computer? Can it do reports or output outside of the program in HTML or RTF?

Nylanfs explained it pretty well, but let me expand on their answer. We actually designed Realm Works for use at the table (though users have used it virtually as well). You can get an idea of some of the stuff it can do in our Virtual Tour, narrated beautifully by yours truly. We also have some Tutorial Videos on our YouTube Channel, which are intended for users, but will allow you to see how some basic concepts work.

Currently, Realm Works doesn't have export capabilities. However, it is a highly requested feature by our users, and one we'd like to tackle. We currently have a Feature Survey that our users (and prospective users) can participate in to help gauge user demand in the hundreds of features we could tackle next. Export is one of the Major Features that our users can rate.

To use Realm Works at the table right now, you would need a computer (many users use a laptop). That being said, Realm Works can be incredibly useful at the table. It's actually one of my favorite parts of the software. People are visual creatures, especially the people I play with. That's why so many of us play with terrain and miniatures. It allows use to better imagine the story we're playing in. So I use Realm Works to show them the people they're meeting (pictures of the NPCs), the places they're going (maps and pictures of the cities/adventuring areas), and the monsters they're fighting (pictures of the monsters). You can even play audio and video files. There are also some features that make it easier for me to run at the table, like the automatic links that Realm Works generates. For example, if my players are talking to an NPC that mentions a pirate named "Blackbeard", my players might wan to learn more about Blackbeard. I can just click the "Blackbeard" link and it brings me to all of the information on that character. Printing pages from Realm Works wouldn't allow the user to take advantage of the linking at the table. The "Fog of World" feature is also really popular with our users at the table, because Realm Works only reveals what the players have learned and encountered.

So while Nylfas is right in that Realm Works is useful when preparing your adventure/campaign outside of the game, it's also incredibly powerful at the table. I hope that clarifies things a bit. If anyone has additional questions about Realm Works, don't hesitate to ask!

 

[MagicSN]

This is something that puzzles me. It was OK to offer the extraction tool, but not to correct some bugs on it? Surely, if correcting the tool was a violation of WotC's IP, so must have been the tool itself in the first place.

The way it was done is it could not have been fixed in the automatic conversion tool. It would needed to be fixed in the OUTPUT of the conversion tool (the things which were at issue were hard to interpret by an automatic tool - which resulted in stuff like that when certain Paladin abilities arrived from Strength OR Charisma the automatic conversion only showed one of them). My "fix" which I did locally was to change the code output. But releasing the actual code output would have obviously violate the
IP, so they could not release that.

Might be they could have improved the automatic code generation with enough work on it I cannot judge that. But I suspect in the very least this would be very hard to do. I never looked into the code generator source code, I only locally fixed the actual code output.

MagicSN

 

[Nikosandros]

OK, I think that I understand the issue. Thanks for the explanation.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Nylanfs explained it pretty well, but let me expand on their answer. We actually designed Realm Works for use at the table (though users have used it virtually as well). You can get an idea of some of the stuff it can do in our Virtual Tour, narrated beautifully by yours truly. We also have some Tutorial Videos on our YouTube Channel, which are intended for users, but will allow you to see how some basic concepts work.

ok, I am going to take a look at that. I do have some basic quastions...

1) if I buy it can I use it with no internet access (about 1-2 times a month we game at out local comic/flgs with no wifi)
2) will it work on a tablet/nook/phone that gets web access?
3) are the maps pictured made by the program or are they made else were an imported?

 

[LWDLiz]

ok, I am going to take a look at that. I do have some basic quastions...


1) if I buy it can I use it with no internet access (about 1-2 times a month we game at out local comic/flgs with no wifi)

Yes, you can use Realm Works without internet access. There's a work offline option just for that purpose. However, you will need internet access whenever you create a new realm (a realm is an instance of a game world), or if you want to sync your content to our web server using our cloud service.

2) will it work on a tablet/nook/phone that gets web access?

Not currently. We do plan to expand Realm Works to the web. Once that's available, you'll be able to use Realm Works on other devices with internet access.

3) are the maps pictured made by the program or are they made else were an imported?

The maps are not provided in the program, and Realm Works is not a map creator. The maps in the screenshots on our website and in many of our videos have been provided by the awesome folks at Adventure A Week.

Let me know if you have any other questions!