#SHADOWRUN FREE STUFF SOFTWARE#

I've known you could do that, but I never thought to try. If we just played missions at a home game, I think that would rock for the GM (we rotate that around) I've gotten several friends to pick it up. Mostly I use it for my missions characters. If I ran a home game it would probably work better. I honestly never though of using it as a GM tool like that. I no longer want to look at my handwriting from last week and pencil and pen marks and whatnot on a hand maintained sheet. I'm personally at the point where if I maintain characters for an RPG, they must be maintained digitally. I have since purchased the data compilation package.ĭo I think it's worth it as a player? Oh god yes. In January I did a little freelance for Lone Wolf and added some of the Arsenal content. I bought SR4 for HL when it was released and posted my post about it here that started this thread. I still pay for my insider account, but the character count limit with the online model wasn't enough for me, and I needed something that works when I'm not on the internet too. I bought HL for D&D 4e because Character Builder went online only. Not bad in my opinion, but I'm not sure if I'd buy it if I was only a Player and not a GM. It's $30 for Hero Lab and $35 for the bundle of all the supplement books. Like you can't have a Spirit possess someone, etc.

So far the new supplement books are really well implemented, but some of the more advanced things that you could do aren't there. This is GREAT for keeping track of how much Edge my players have used, and their ammunition and injuries between playing sessions. Then I can save that Master Portfolio, and the stats are all saved up for next playing session. If the players start trouble, I can import the combat participants from the Bar portfolio into the Master portfolio, and use Hero Lab's combat tracker to track injuries and ammunition for the fight. Johnson's security detail, along with anyone else important at the location I think the players will run into. I'll create a Portfolio for the bar which contains the Bartender, the Bouncers at the door, Mr. Then, I create secondary Portfolios for every major 'Scene' that the Heroes are going to be in.įor example, there might be a planned scene that takes place in a bar with a Mr. So what I've done is develop a 'Master' Portfolio for my game which contains the Heroes for all my characters. Hero Lab lets you work out of 'Portfolios' which store multiple 'Heroes' including those Heroes' minions, vehicles, etc. I'm using this more than any other game supplement. If you were running this business, which option would be most appealing to you?Īs a GM, I just have to say that Hero Lab for Shadowrun is EXTREMELY useful. In this scenario, regardless of whether the licensee makes money or not, the publisher gets paid.

#SHADOWRUN FREE STUFF SOFTWARE#

The third alternative is for the publisher to just allow a third party purchase a license, letting them develop the software as a separate product. Therefore, not enough incentive to include such a freebie. The small number of purchasers of this brand would mostly buy with or without the software. Simple fact is that Shadowrun is a tiny market. In the case of Shadowrun, I would strongly think that including free software with the books would NOT increase sales enough to cover the cost of developing the software. It's a calculated risk - the business is betting that the increased sales from the bonus stuff will more than compensate for the added production cost. Even when you see 'free' stuff being added to an offer, it's not really free. No business will do something for nothing. Or they have to raise the price of the books. Either the publisher takes a profit hit, quite possibly to the point where they are LOSING money on each sale. So, to provide the software with the books, one of two things must happen: I don't know if you realize this, but publishing, especially RPGs, is NOT a very profitable business. That would require that Catalyst provide significant compensation to the software developer, as nobody works for free.

Shadowrun free stuff