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!
​

 

[lkj]

That's correct. The iOS version is ready to go. Web and Android need some refinement on the interface, but the rules are about 90% there.

As far as how related releasing it is to the outcome of the kickstarter...I'm being honest when I say I have no idea. I don't know what January looks like, yet.

Thanks for the reply. And I very much understand that you don't know. I've got my fingers crossed that an OGL will allow you to release a useful 5e tool. It's always good to have options.

AD

 

[turkeygiant]

You are correct. Lone Wolf never had any license for 4e, what they have is exactly what you described.

I always assumed they had some sort of agreement considering the 4e application on the front page of Herolab (yeah I just loaded it up and even without scraping from Insider is hase basic 4e content). If it was all unofficial I would have thought WotC would have cease and desisted Lonewolf into oblivion.

 

[Tyranthraxus]

Didnt I read something late last year about a deal between Lonewolf and WOTC for Software support re 5e falling through?

 

[Olaf the Stout]

I'm glad to hear that they're heading in this direction. I've owned the 3.5E Hero Lab version for a while. However, it hasn't been until recently, when I started playing, rather than DM'ing, that I've made good use of it. It's made creating a character a lot easier as I don't have to worry about remembering the synergy bonuses and all the other stuff. It just does it all for me. Levelling up is super quick now.

Hopefully by the time our current 3.5E campaign is over we'll be moving on to 5E around the time that the OGL or similar licence is sorted out and Hero Lab 5E won't be far away.

 

[MagicSN]

I always assumed they had some sort of agreement considering the 4e application on the front page of Herolab (yeah I just loaded it up and even without scraping from Insider is hase basic 4e content). If it was all unofficial I would have thought WotC would have cease and desisted Lonewolf into oblivion.

All actual content (classes , sprlls, feats, items,...) was autogenerated code done by the extraction
tool. I wrote all those bugreports with suggested fixes to the autogen code and they basically
answered me they had no license and could not include this fixes
with hl. Flawed as the autogen-approach was
i found it pretty awesome to which length lone wolf went to support the dnd players.

MagicSN

 

[MagicSN]

Hopefully by the time our current 3.5E campaign is over we'll be moving on to 5E around the time that the OGL or similar licence is sorted out and Hero Lab 5E won't be far away.

Assuming the license does not require code changes at least I could release
my 5e datafiles on the same day the ogl arrives. Might of course be lone wolf
later release spmething more sophisticated especially as far as the gui goes.
the gui of my datafiles is basically the gui of the authoring kit modified for
4e. As to rule support for 5e i doubt it can be done much better (well
actually ui understandability for tool prof, showing which spell comes
from which spec of multiclass character and choosing dmg optional rules
they could and probably will design to look nicer on theirdatafiles, but
asides from that )

anyways good to hear many options for dnd players (hl, pcgen, morningstar)
could arrive with the ogl.

MagicSN

 

[LWDLiz]

Didnt I read something late last year about a deal between Lonewolf and WOTC for Software support re 5e falling through?

I'm not sure who that would have been, but that wasn't Lone Wolf. We shared on our public forums that we have been in talks with Wizards at various times last year and this year, but we don't currently have a license. This is our first D&D 5e announcement for our products.

 

[Warunsun]

This is our first D&D 5e announcement for our products.

May the Schwartz be with you.

 

[Nikosandros]

I wrote all those bugreports with suggested fixes to the autogen code and they basically
answered me they had no license and could not include this fixes with hl.

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.

 

[Warunsun]

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?