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-   -   How has your work with RW evolved? (http://forums.wolflair.com/showthread.php?t=54536)

AEIOU December 24th, 2015 08:03 AM

How has your work with RW evolved?
 
MNBlockHead and King Chicken were commenting in another thread that their styles have changed over time. And this has been mentioned by others in the past. What are you doing differently now? How much work was it to change your process?

I still chop articles up more than I need to.... But not every sentence like I did for the first several months. This is one of the most common changes I've seen from people as they become more familiar with RW. They start keeping paragraphs and pages together because it just reads better. Especially for reference materials.

I have separate topics for many NPCs or monster bosses. But in the areas they are encountered I now include stat blocks and herolab portfolios as a quick reference with a link back to their full topic if I need the bigger picture.

I've added a tag to everything for source which wasn't there at the start. That's over 1500 entries that I updated which would have been an auto-fill if I had done it from the start. But now I can create views of modules or regions easily so I can home in on the content around the characters quickly.

After countless changes, I've settled on a standard stat block look using RW tables that doesn't require cutting/pasting from Excel and is easier to modify in RW.

When I add a mob to an encounter or a module, I add it to my bestiary. Sure I could wait (and wait and wait) for the official ones from the Marketplace, but the reality is I only need immediate access to those that are in play.

I've given myself permission to create skeletons and to bounce around. Add all the areas for the dungeon/town/encounter, then flesh out each area with sidetracking for NPCs, mobs, traps, items, etc. I used to focus on one thing like doing all of the rooms, but the other things never caught up....

adzling December 24th, 2015 08:25 AM

I'm cutting and pasting a lot of stuff into realmworks and mostly the existing snippet setups in the various categories just don't work for our game system (Shadowrun).

So I created some custom category definitions for Scenes and Characters and such and use them when entering data.

That in itself has been helpful.

I first tried to use the storyboard area to setup "runs" but that proved mostly useless so I have ditched that (sigh, wish it worked) and just started using the categories to manage campaign arcs (cumbersome and not possible to create cross-run links between scenes).

I have also taken to numbering scenes 1.0, 1.1 preceding the scene title so that they are organized correctly in the interface from beginning to end (would be nice to have the ability to drag them into an order that the interface remembers rather than having to use this workaround).

Scouring the google for relevant maps and plans I am able to almost alway find helpful imagery and floorplans for missions that I can embed in realmworks without having to resort to creating them myself.
Yay!

I've recently started to add game rules info for particular scenes directly into the relevant items. This is helpful when dealing with such a sprawling and poorly edited rules system that Srun 5e is.

EightBitz December 24th, 2015 10:31 AM

My group has the most fun with a no-tech gaming experience at the table. With all the features RealmWorks offers, I would welcome the ability to use it once it includes a feature to print so I can present a more consistent gaming experience to my group. When that happens, I would be eager to see how my experience with RealmWorks evolves. My copy of RealmWorks sits on my computer in heated anticipation of that day, when I can (he says with his tongue firmly in his cheek) rescue it from the Island of misfit toys.

(It's Christmas. It's meant to be a humorous, nostalgic reference.)

(This post has been rewritten to be more constructive.)

kbs666 December 24th, 2015 01:11 PM

I find that in my initial realm I worked in mostly a geographic manner which established the basic setting. More and more I do things in scenes and storylines tying together pieces I've already created.

Vargr December 24th, 2015 11:40 PM

I now utilize more of the options and features in RW than I did in the beginning.
I also utilize them much better (or so I like to believe), having figured out how the cogs in the machine fit into one another.

The more I use RW the more I like it.

Apart from that, I tend to do my entries in three parts:

1: Strictly plot related and centering around the saga the players are taking part in.

2: Technical information (what herbs do what how, the various weapons available in which period, their damage, etc.)

3: World building, adding content that 1 and 2 has to be based on. This also involves including information and details that the party might never notice or see and which might have no impact on their experience.

I use the story board to a great extent - it really helps me keep an overview. I even used it to map out how languages developed in the world (though, to be honest - that storyboard is mayhaps a tad too complicated).

rob December 25th, 2015 12:43 AM

Ahem...

Reminder: The forum rules require posts to be constructive. Please be mindful of those rules. You'll find them here for reference: http://forums.wolflair.com/showthread.php?t=5528

We now return to the discussion...

rob December 25th, 2015 12:52 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by adzling (Post 221026)
I first tried to use the storyboard area to setup "runs" but that proved mostly useless so I have ditched that (sigh, wish it worked) and just started using the categories to manage campaign arcs (cumbersome and not possible to create cross-run links between scenes).

Could you please elaborate on what you were trying to accomplish with plots and how they didn't work? There are a zillion different ways that GMs think and operate, and I'm always curious to understand how users are trying to leverage RW, especially when it doesn't do the job for them.

Quote:

Originally Posted by adzling (Post 221026)
I have also taken to numbering scenes 1.0, 1.1 preceding the scene title so that they are organized correctly in the interface from beginning to end (would be nice to have the ability to drag them into an order that the interface remembers rather than having to use this workaround).

In general, the prefix is the optimal mechanism to utilize for this purpose. You can then sort the navigation pane based on the prefix and get everything to show up in the order you want very easily. You can even sort based on the prefix without having it displayed prior to the topic names. This approach also ensures that the name (sans prefix) will work well for automatic link detection.

Since it seems you elected to put the numbering directly into the title, I'm very curious what prompted that approach. What use-case have we overlooked that we potentially need to re-think?

Thanks!

adzling December 25th, 2015 07:58 AM

Hey Rob, merry Xmas! I hope you and yours are having a relaxing and festive day.

In response to 1:
One of my main hopes for Realmworks is that it would enable me to plot, plan and track cross adventure story arcs.
Example: in adventure 1 a minor character is encountered who seems only tangentially relevant to the plot but has some important information that becomes relevant in a later adventure in the campaign.

I was hoping that the Storyboard feature would let me plot out all these interconnections in a visual manner (the only real way to track these "webs" of interactions that are non-linear).

Unfortunately because the storyboard feature is not an integral part of the Events category items (i.e. Storyboard Plot Points cannot also be Events or "scenes") it is mostly useless in this regard (they have no relevance to each other).

Essentially I believe the Storyboard feature should be able to have the Plot Points live in both Storyboard land and in Event land.

This would allow you to very quickly create visually mapped out non-linear adventures and campaigns as well as cross-adventure campaign arcs. Something that is just not very possible to do with the current Event setup.

Regarding your second question I guess I hadn't thought about using the prefix that way. I'll have to look into that.

thanks and all the best ;-)

kbs666 December 25th, 2015 09:02 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by adzling (Post 221063)
Hey Rob, merry Xmas! I hope you and yours are having a relaxing and festive day.

In response to 1:
One of my main hopes for Realmworks is that it would enable me to plot, plan and track cross adventure story arcs.
Example: in adventure 1 a minor character is encountered who seems only tangentially relevant to the plot but has some important information that becomes relevant in a later adventure in the campaign.

I was hoping that the Storyboard feature would let me plot out all these interconnections in a visual manner (the only real way to track these "webs" of interactions that are non-linear).

Unfortunately because the storyboard feature is not an integral part of the Events category items (i.e. Storyboard Plot Points cannot also be Events or "scenes") it is mostly useless in this regard (they have no relevance to each other).

Essentially I believe the Storyboard feature should be able to have the Plot Points live in both Storyboard land and in Event land.

This would allow you to very quickly create visually mapped out non-linear adventures and campaigns as well as cross-adventure campaign arcs. Something that is just not very possible to do with the current Event setup.

You know that plot points can have any topic or plot associated with them, right?

I have non linear plots doing what you describe, I think, built using the storyboard.

AEIOU December 25th, 2015 09:33 AM

@kbs666 Screenshots or it didn't happen. :)

More seriously, I think a storyboard message thread here would be great to share how we each use that function as I don't think most of us use it to its fullest. Let's explore what works well with it and what we wish it could do.


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