Organizing APs
 

Hi there,

Newb RW GM building out a realm for Giantslayer (Pathfinder Adventure Path), looking for a little help in regards to best practices. I just figured out the use of Prefixes in creating Map/Event locations, and how to sort the order within the Story Almanac based on that. Thankfully, the way that Paizo letters their locations within an AP, it will give a good flow to the AP story from top to bottom.

However, it occurred to me that when I start the next Chapter of the AP, the lettering of the prefixes will begin with A again, which will then jumble all the events up, and make navigation a nightmare.

So how are other users organizing different components of a larger AP? Or even grouping "Part 1" of an AP vs. "Part 2". Is that the purpose of the Topic Views? Or do you create custom tags to indicate which part or AP it is, and then just filter on the tag component? Is there a way to link all the various topics to one Source Topic (which seemed to be the purpose of the Sources group)?

And lastly, what is the difference between the World Almanac and the Story Almanac. If I create separate topic views, is the Story Almanac just a default starting view? Or is it intended to bring other views together?

I have added a custom tag of "Source" to all of the material I enter. Using this, I can create custom views of just the material I need for a given module, AP, sourcebook, etc.

My advice is nested topics with liberal use of suffix and prefix.

So the top topic is simple "Giant Slayer Adventure path"
Then you have 6 chapter topics "I - VI "What ever each is called"
Then break it down under each chapter topic

Use Prefix for numbering, use the suffice for chapter identification "Ch I - VI"

So you may see this for a same room and number in two different chapters:

A1 - The Storeroom (Ch I)
A1 - The Storeroom (ChIII)

How ever if you use topics with nested subtopics there should be no nightmare. Think of it as a branch from a tree. The trunk is the first topic, each branch off the trunk is a chapter. Each chapter will see its own unique smaller topics, but the information is clear, organized and will not get mixed up.


You can use the Suffix to help "ID" things that me be the same in name, but they will all be in their own topic branch, off the tree called Giant slayer.

Now the story almanac is a "view", it used to be its own entity, but now it is simply a view, and you can create many.

So use it to create the "chapter views" create six story almanacs named "GS Chapter I to VI", and copy each respective chapter into that view. Now you have your AP divided into easy to manage chapters, when they complete a chapter you can delete the story almanac view, as it is no longer needed.

Makes sense, thanks!

As far as the nesting, do you do that with the "Containing Topic" section off to the right?

Nevermind, I think I figured it out.. you create it's own topic for the category or list, and then use the Containing Topic to nest the others below it.

I have been using B1 - B6 as the first part of the prefix, so "B1 A5" for location A5 in book 1 of the adventure path.

I have been doing exactly this in my Kingmaker campaign, and it has been working beautifully. I also second custom views per book.

I only have one custom view, which is the topics relevant to the current arc of the story that the players are on.

My books are organised using the topic category hierarchy.

Right, I think that was really the tool I was looking for... the containing topic function, to have events nested under larger categories.

One last question - when do you organize locations under the Places group, as opposed to the Events group?

For example, if you build out a dungeon (with a different topic for each relevant room), would you have that nested under Events, or under Places? The AP flow would seem to dictate that it would be under events, and as a scene you get the default snippets used often in a dungeon room (CR, HL file, Rewards or Development). But the dungeon is a location, and the description of "Adventure Area" would seem to fit... but then the flow of the AP isn't as great, or you'd have to create both a scene and a location topic for each room (which seems redundant).