Scaling content?
 

I haven't read the manuals in-depth yet, but I've skimmed through them. These are some questions I've been wondering about that I think are more philosophical than technical.

It appears, from previous discussions here and from the layout of the software, that if one is going to build a world, with its own histories and timelines, its own cultures and conflicts, that the "Realm" would be the entire world, not a specific nation or empire or kingdom, etc.

One would build the entire world (either all at once, or as the game plays out) as a single "Realm". As elements are needed for a given adventure, they can be moved from the World Almanac to the Story Almanac, and when the Story Almanac becomes too cluttered, elements that are no longer needed can be moved back to the World Almanac.

Is that basically how you early access folk have been doing things?

Also . . .

If I have major eras of history, I can create that under events. For example: The Great Depression. Then I can create other events (The election of FDR, the formation of the WPA, the reelection of FDR, etc), then, I can assign those items to "The Great Depression" as their container. Yes?

Finally (for now) . . .

For one-off adventures, I could create a Realm just for that adventure, as its not necessarily related to anything else.

Or for episodic adventures where the setting is going to keep changing (Doctor Who, for example), I could create a single Realm for that entire universe, and add locations, events, people, etc as I build each adventure.

Does all that sound right?

Just trying to get a handle on how to scale things.

Yes, yes and, pretty much yes. :) The last one is kind of dependent on how you want to work with it as a GM, really. I do have a one-off adventure that is it's own realm, for everything else they are more fleshed-out more. I have a Realm for an entire campaign book, for example, and another that is for an entire, very large, regional setting. It really depends on what you want to focus on but arguably you could go as large as you want in any given realm just keeping reference stuff in the World Almanac and things you need for the current adventure in Story. It's a snap to move them between the two to keep Story as neat or as messy as you like.

I am using RealmWorks for a Star Wars campaign.

Anything that is "canon", i.e. anything with a Wookieepedia entry, goes into the World Almanac. It's the core world that my players get to play in.

Anything that is created for the game, NPCs, named ships, plot threads, encounters, goes into the Story Almanac.

Stuff like stat blocks from the rule book goes into World, and then duped into the Story Almanac when I apply it to an NPC.

This is how I use it, your mileage may vary. Hope this helps wrapping your head around things.

I started with a test realm that only contains things that I wanted to experiment with.

This is still in effect as I worked and still work through the nuances of the ever changing software features.

I then took what I'd learned from the test realm and started to create my actual campaign realm FYI "Carrion Crown" I began to input the bulk of information that I thought would be useful for the very first gaming session. Maintaining a standard formatting throughout, ie places, encounters, npc's etc.

Then as an experiment I created a third realm which only consisted of the numerically sorted illustrations for the Tomb of Horrors V3.5 conversion as a player aid. This was successful for a one shot adventure as each picture could be displayed on the player view monitor as and when required.

It doesn't matter how you use realm works as it is very versatile in its approach.
Enjoy and have fun there is no right or wrong way to using this software.:D

Yeah, that's what I'm doing, too. Test realms. As to your other point, that's why I said it's a philosophical question. :-)

@EightBitz: You seem to have a pretty good grasp of how WE intended Realm Works to be used. If the one-off adventure is part of the overall campaign, then it should probably be part of the larger realm. However, if it's just a one-off throwaway game, then it should probably be a completely separate realm.

Just because it's how we designed the product to be used does NOT make it the "right" way of using the product. The one advantage (and drawback) of a massive and flexible product like this is that you can leverage it in so many different ways. The real question is what works best for how you operate as a GM. To that end, I recommend the test realms approach that you've already begun and some experimentation with different approaches. :)