Best Practices: Rise of the Runelords/ Inner Sea
 

It appears that a sizable chunk of RW users are explicitly using the software for the Golarion/ Inner Sea setting, if not explicitly Rise of the Runelords.

I have ... so much dead-tree printed material, and I would love to pay Lone Wolf to license it into RW by yesterday. Unfortunately, until they do, they din't.

I entered in "Alignment" as a tag on the 9 point scale as suggested by the Ultimate Campaign book. That wasn't such a bad task, and it lets me tag anything "somewhere along alignment" while allowing for PCs and NPCs to identify as changing their alignment. That's happy.

Next, I started entering in the core deities of Golarion. I started with religious groups, I set up domain tags, and so on, and I quickly got bogged down.

Would it be possible to exchange "open template" suggestions on how to set up for a Rise of the Runelords campaign without using copyright material, and do this within the forum? Just advice on how to plan for things specific to RotRL and get the software to where I can make basic use of it and fill things out later. Desna is an "entity", but I have her as a "religion". I think She is rather important. What about Her is *crucial* to RotRL? How best to I organize that crucial information? Lamashtu is roughly on par. Others, less so, but I would dearly love to take the pile of books I have on the core and simply fill out the table and forget it if I can get it all done in one sitting.

Golarion. Planes, the Inner Sea region, Avistan, Varisia, Sandpoint... I started adding tags for continents vs. political regions, and so on. I can see that very quickly getting out of hand if I try to shove in my entire Inner Sea World Guide, though eventually I do dearly freakin' hope I can just pay Lone Wolf to make the pain go away.

Until we can legally share or purchase a license for this specific content, what are some "best practices"? What do I do without re-inventing solutions to problems Beta you guys have already worked out six months ago for this specific campaign setting?

I suspect that there will be a standard category layout which will be used for all published Pathfinder content.

It may, or may not, match the standard RW categories (there are some ways in which the standard Pathfinder layout/information doesn't map so easily onto the RW "generic" category structure).

"... May or may not match..." indeed. While entering a few places, the generic approach seemed wonky. I look forward to seeing what approach works out as a "best practice" for ISWG material. I do plan to annoy Paizo about licensing material for RW at PaizoCon.

Yes, that's exactly what I expect as well. This also holds true for the mechanics, as well.

Since I want any new mechanics I add to mesh as well as possible with any published versions, I am not entering any mechanics at the moment. I will wait to see what the official version looks like, first.

As for the Golarion information, and the AP-specific information, I have been entering Second Darkness, and have some thoughts.

1) I created a new Category for the Players Guide with sections and snippets that match the published one. All content is revealed at the start. I've added place-holder snippets for advice on new classes that was not in the original Second Darkness Players' Guide, and will add what I think is the appropriate advice later.

2) Focus on the Story elements. Enter only as much of the World details as you need. That includes deities, nations, geography, and so on. Even if you later decide that you don't want to pay for the official version, you will probably want to enter this information yourself once and re-use it (which the Repository/Marketplace is expected to allow you to do); that will probably not be in the same Realm as you are using to run the AP now.

3) Be prepared to re-organize the information. Some information is presented in encounters, but it is really about other NPCs, places, items, events, etc. Be prepared to go back to the relevant topic and add the information there... while the encounter may have a GM Note that the information can now be revealed.

4) I have created "Adventure" and "Adventure Section" topics to correspond to the 6 volunes of an AP. I use the Identifier with a code to track things like "AP13.6 A1" for "AP volume 13 Part 6 location A1". Think about how you may need to re-use Locations and Individuals.. and maybe put the "permanent" Location/Individual information in the appropriate Location/Individual topic, but anything that is encounter-specific (such as Tactics for an Individual) into a Scene topic for that encounter, which I then make a child of the Adventure Section.

I've got a situation that is likely unique.

I am entering Rise of the Runelords and Golarion / Inner Sea information into the World and Story almanac as many are, however, I'm holding off on the mechanics for now.

I've actually created a second realm just for mechanics. My reason is that I'm actually NOT using the Pathfinder game system itself. I'm using Fantasy Craft, a Mastercraft product from Crafty Games.

Once I figure out how I want to organize the mechanics, then I'll enter them for real.


Right now, I'm still in the process of entering the basic information: shops, owners, NPCs, etc. And I find the ideas and suggestions here to be useful.

Why create a Category for Player's Guide? That seems counterproductive to me. Instead, enter the locales, NPC's, lore from the Player's Guide and mark just the snippets from the Player's guide as "player revealed". Add more snippets to really flesh the locales, NPC's, lore out and don't reveal that. That way all the information on Ashwood or Celwynvian or Hook Mountain is in one place.

As for mechanics, I'd reckon most people are skipping that for now. For Pathfinder, it's a guaranteed add-on package I would reckon. The only reason to add mechanics is if you are playing a less-supported game system or you don't want to spend the money for the official version. That said, most companies will want to encourage people to use their system so maybe they'll all be free or not contested when users produce community versions.

I found a category for Players Guide necessary because it contains information that does not fit under other topics. Speaking for Second Darkness specifically, the material on the city of Riddleport can go into a Community and various Merchant, Location, Individual, etc. topics. However, advice like "X would be a good choice of Favored Enemy for Rangers early in the campaign, while Y and Z will become more common later" does not really fit into other topics.

I'd put that in the Realm Starting Point. It's a little blue house icon to the left of the back button. But your method works quite well as well. I was thinking of the world content as the meat of a Player's Guide but the mechanics, world flavor and character suggestions are really useful too.

I love that there isn't one way to do things.

That, of course, would be the point of a "best practices" discussion. B-)

I am working on Wrath of the Righteous, but the same issues. I actually would love to have access to the Core Rulebook in the Mechanics section so that I could link to a spell, skill, condition, etc. I would be glad to help with creating this content for Lone Wolf, or figure out what the standard template for it all should be.