I've sent emails about this and never hear anything back so I thought maybe they might respond to a petition? Never know till you try...

Sign this and share it far and wide, lets see if this gets us anywhere!

Petition for FFG for Character Creation Software

 Yeah, this strikes me as more something you want the community to do, not FFG themselves. Either that, or get the developers of HeroLab (I forget their name, though I have the program too) to work on it.

 Lone Wolf (the makers of Hero Lab) cannot work on it without FFG's permission, they have approached them on it before. I have emailed them numerous times requesting that they at least respond to Lone Wolf and have never had a reply back. 

So... as a fan of products from both companies I thought I'd try this route. I don't work for Lone Wolf and am not affiliated with Lone Wolf, In fact I don't even own Hero Lab since it doesn't have support for the games that I play. I have friends who use it all the time for their games though and they love it. I really think it could be useful to us GM's and players if FFG would work with them to put something out. 

As for having someone in the community do it, sure thing, there is a generic version of Hero Lab with an authoring kit to create files for any game. The caveat there is that its a lot of code and nobody is stepping up to the plate to do it. I don't know how and frankly don't have the time to work on a project like that. 

All in all the way I see it, it's FFG's loss.

I would buy it for sure

Hm. Would only make sense if they kept track of all the published supplements and the crunch. Not sure if that's realistic.

Actually, if you take a look at the way that LW supports Pathfinder, it shouldn't be much of a problem at all.  "IF" this were to go ahead, I would suspect that the sales model would be price adders for each of the supplements.  However, I suspect the biggest challenge is getting GW to sign off on it.

AJC

 Perhaps so but some pressure from fans on FFG to get GW to give a go ahead can't be a bad thing. FFG has yet to respond to anyone at all about this so maybe GW is blocking it, maybe not, at the very least I'd like to get some official reply one way or the other. 

And I was thinking of pathfinder too as you mentioned as far as keeping track of updates and supplements. I know its not everyone's cup o' tea purchasing stuff like this but for those of us that WOULD buy I fail to see the harm in asking for a product!!!

Sorry, wasn't trying to sound negative...I would love to see this line supported by Hero Lab.  That being said, suspect that the challenges are...significant... ;)

AJC

 The thing is trying to find the bigger hurdle to cross. Licensing fees, the code required, The HeroLab developers or Games Workshop's packs of rabid lawyers...

Out of curiosity would people be interested in an Excel based character generator? I have been working on one on and off for personal use but haven't really put a huge amount of effort in as of late due to IRL issues. But I need to brush up on my Excel VBA (cause formulas are easy-mode) skills again so it might be time to dig it up and use that as an excuse.

A few key questions on the matter;

1. If entirely Macro based (to help our friends who haven't upgraded to an Excel that can use COUNTIFS, note not COUNTIFs, the S is capitalised for a reason) would people feel security is an issue?

2. If formula based would people be willing to accept that not all the functionality would be possible, and ease of use would suffer? 

3. How important do you feel graphics would be to dress it up? Or would just pretty formatting be acceptable?

4. What do you feel would be a reasonable turn around time for an Alpha without losing interest?

5. What functionality do you feel would be key to such a 'program'?

Thanks for any answers that are provided. And if there are any other Excel gurus out there that might be interested in making this a community project just let me know. At the very least I would feel like less of a freak knowing there are others like me out there. ;)

Stay classy bros.

Atma01

I've already begun such a project but no longer have the time to continue. Feel free to see what I've already put together and salvage what you can.

I've saved a copy here: cid-7bc6fd6adf10c0b1.office.live.com/self.aspx/Public

There's a discussion here: www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp

  Thanks to everyone who has signed this already!! However, this petition is scheduled to end soon and we are still only a third of the way to the goal. Please do what you can to spread the word on this and post it anywhere you can think it might do good. If each of you could get two to three more people to sign then we'd be set!!!

 You are aware of the most Excellent WH40 Excel Character Sheet, yes?

It handles Deathwatch just fine :)

to be honest i dont think that deathwatch and the likes have bad character creation

had to gen a few characters recently due to constant death in a number of games and found it took hour tops

fair enough if youve got a lot of players but you could always get them to do it

  Thanks to everyone who has signed so far!

Now… it's down to one more signature. One more and it meets the goal! If you haven't signed yet please do so.

http://www.change.org/petitions/40k-rpg-s-in-hero-lab#