Hero designer and core rulebooks: sharing with your game group?

[Surgo]

I am running a Fantasy Hero game with some friends, some of whom have never played a game of Hero before. As a result, I'd like to buy a license for Hero Designer and let them use that to build their character instead of a text file. Also, I'd like to share my copy of Ultimate Base with them for use as the first adventure arc finishes and they build their Big Ship of Awesomeness together.

Normally, this would be pretty straightforward. But here's the catch: we're all old college buddies, and we've all moved hours apart. The game is played over Skype.

Is there some way I could accomplish doing this for Hero Designer without violating the license? What about the second part? I own the book on PDF, is there some sort of DRM solution that could work here?

[Egyptoid]

from what I've seen, that would be a non-starter in DOJ's eyes.

but if the product isnt supported any more... YMMV.

[gojira]

I agree what you're suggesting would be a sketchy way of sharing.

I was involved in a game at Hero Central (Dan's site) a long time ago. The GM took text copy from me and entered it into his copy of Hero Designer. It didn't seem like a lot of work on his part. Turn around was always really fast. He was just copying what I was doing, and then he'd check the point totals and campaign limits. He wouldn't adjust anything, just send me the HTML or PDF file back, and tell me what I needed to change.

The Ultimate Base thing is harder. Ask your friends to buy their own copy. Either PDF if it's still available, or go hunt on Ebay for an old copy, or ask various retailers who do online sales if they have a copy still in stock. I'd imagine the forums could help you out locating some brick and mortar shops that carry Hero and do internet sales.

[Surgo]

I was involved in a game at Hero Central (Dan's site) a long time ago. The GM took text copy from me and entered it into his copy of Hero Designer. It didn't seem like a lot of work on his part. Turn around was always really fast. He was just copying what I was doing, and then he'd check the point totals and campaign limits. He wouldn't adjust anything, just send me the HTML or PDF file back, and tell me what I needed to change.
I was kind of looking for something the other way around. Hero Designer seems to be a lot easier for new players to use than having them remember all the powers and their options, and the math, from the beginning -- making character generation a lot easier for them. I don't use it myself, but I have a pretty good memory and a head for numbers.


The Ultimate Base thing is harder. Ask your friends to buy their own copy. Either PDF if it's still available, or go hunt on Ebay for an old copy, or ask various retailers who do online sales if they have a copy still in stock. I'd imagine the forums could help you out locating some brick and mortar shops that carry Hero and do internet sales.
Well, I just find it mildly annoying because if this was a B&M game, we'd have a dead tree copy that we could pass around when developing the base. Going electronic has kind of pulled that rug out from under us. I certainly don't want to share it freely, as these kind of things have a tendency to linger on hard drives and then make their way out into the world, but it would be nice to find some DRM solution for this problem.

[Steve Long]

Generally speaking, we expect you to approach the issue of sharing books with both common sense and some courtesy and respect for us as publishers and owners of the IP. Obviously most gaming groups share books to some extent, and we certainly can't stop you if you want to do the same. This becomes even easier with PDFs. At the same time, if you're going to make frequent use of a book we think it's only fair and proper that you pay for your own copy. If you like and use our products that much, you ought to compensate us for them, and thus encourage us to make more that you can buy and use. ;)

(By way of illustration, a former industry colleague of mine was running D&D 3.0 some years ago. He owned all the books he needed, and found that his players were often borrowing them, sometimes for the entire week between game sessions so they could study them. He finally said, "No more book borrowing. If you want it that much, you should buy a book and support the company that's helping us have so much fun." Lo and behold, next week every player showed up with at least one new book... and the books no one bought they soon decided weren't really crucial for the game they were running, so he didn't need to keep bringing them. Everyone came out ahead.)

As for Hero Designer, we're strongly against any such "sharing." It's a very useful program and not at all expensive. It's one thing if you want to let a friend sit down at your computer and try it out to see if he likes it. But if you let someone do that frequently, they ought to buy their own copy.

[Surgo]

Thanks for the reply Steve. Given the lack of good options for sharing PDFs without assuring that they're going to multiply like rabbits, I think I'll just have everyone give me qualitative descriptions of what they want in a base and generate it myself.

(And then, when they're completely dissatisfied with the result, bug them to buy the book :-P)