Do you use all the minutia
 

The first time I used RW to actually run an adventure was when I was running RotRL. Do to player changes and other things, that didn't last too long, and I handed off GMing for a while.

Now, I'll be taking my turn again, and this is the first time I'm using RW for a home brew. And this is my deepest dive into a home brew, even since before RW.

I wrote up the bulk of it in Word or on paper, and now I'm doing data entry. I find all the minutia distracting. Don't get me wrong, though. I'm glad it's there. But I just don't use it. I've just been using the text snippet under the Overview section to write up whatever topic.

One of the reasons for this, is that there's a lot of overlap with the detailed snippets.

With a group, for example:
Overview
Profile
Story
Philosophy
Relationships
Methods
Background
Additional Details

The distinctions between some of those become vague and arbitrary, so rather than letting myself become obsessed about how to section my write-ups, I just dump it in Overview.

Again, I'm not complaining. Just asking people to share their thoughts. How do you do things?

You can and should totally do that, the topcis provided are just a suggestion, I think the user is meant to auto-hide some / all of it or decide to use different categories.

Ctrl Shift ~

This is a combination you must learn to use. It removes everything you don't need to fill in and if you do it as soon as you complete your data entry you barely even give all the minutia a second thought.

My question is philosophical, not technical. :-)

Ok, eight I think this is something you do in stages in my view. I wouldn’t delete the sections unless I am certain the organization won’t enter the campaign more than just a name. On the first pass through, I dump it all in overview unless one of the players or first baddies is a member.

Once I need more detail I go back in and fill it in.

That is ideal world. Unfortunately, I am somewhat obsessive and find myself putting in too much detail — even though I know I will probably never need it.

What I described is what I try to discipline myself to do.

I came up with my own snippets for my homebrew due to the vagueness and overlapp.

In this direction I have rewritten almost every major category to suit my organizational structure and style. So I have as an example; "Individual" hidden and use "My Individual".

By the time I had completed my first major entry I had done this, and just update it as I go. I also created a bunch of my own too, utilizing unique structures for many categories as well as unique identifying icons. This may seem like a lot of work, it was, but now it is all done and it saves me work. I am despite my being on the forefront of electronic gaming, I am rather old school in my organization and style, so the default did not suit me well. But Rob being a gamer, knew there was no such things as "the style" and left us room to evolve RW to each of our own styles.

By using my own and leaving the base structure alone I have essentially ensure compatibility and functionality. These days it is hard to feel "good" about RWs state of affairs, one can only handle failure for so long, however this ability to creature your own structure, export it, and import it at will? Money.

I use some of the snippets, hardly ever all of them. For example when it comes to scenes, probably my most used category, I generally fill out Overviews, Setup and Participant, add a map or a few pictures and if it's a combat encounter I also fill out the Challenge seciont (tactics) and the rewards if there's loot to be had.

Sometimes Story, Obstacles or Background may be used but generally I use the existing sections as a basic structure of which I use what I need or feel like filling out.

Overall my realm, while large, consists of a lot of white space. I just fill what I absolutely need, want to remember or just feel like putting in there. For the rest I'll just wing it. But that also comes down to GMing style.

This was my biggest problem using RW at first. This urge to fill in all the blanks.

Don't worry about it. Put you data in however you want. I do urge you to break text down into the smallest chunk you will reasonably reveal or read to the players at once.

If the blank stuff bothers you, you can collapse it all or even use bulk pruning to remove all of it.

Btw it's no issue to delete unused snippets, you can get them back with restructure to category (or however that feature is called) :D