Topics vs Articles vs Mechanics

I've used Realm Works since it released and have created and deleted realms, and tried numerous ways of organizing content. One thing I keep coming back to is the separation between the core (topics) from the Mechanics (articles). Flipping back and forth between the two seems like a waste of time and I really don't see any benefit to setting up my data this way.

Is there any serious draw back of just making copies of all of the mechanical articles and then moving it all to the World side? As far as I can see, all of the original setup stays in tact in order to facilitate importing new content.

Once the content market is released this approach will cause you alot of rework if you use pre made content. Youre the first person I've heard of not wanting to use the mechanics section so I don't see any authors structuring content like this meaning you will have to migrate everything that is entered.

I would suggest waiting for LW to release the free content as it will show you how they think it should be setup and give you insight into whether you like what they have done before proceeding with such a significant change.

daplunk said:

Once the content market is released this approach will cause you alot of rework if you use pre made content. Youre the first person I've heard of not wanting to use the mechanics section so I don't see any authors structuring content like this meaning you will have to migrate everything that is entered.

I would suggest waiting for LW to release the free content as it will show you how they think it should be setup and give you insight into whether you like what they have done before proceeding with such a significant change.

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Fair enough; however, that essentially means that when you input the data from a sourcebook, you have to create an entry for the book on both sides and split the chapters putting all of the adventure (places, people, things, scenes) on the world side and the mechanics (monsters, treasure, etc..) on the mechanics side. Seems counterintuitive. I think I would rather see it all in one and organize it in its original book form pretty much as you suggest in your videos.

Affirmative on waiting for the next build; but since we have no clue or word when that will be.....

that's how i do it Strategon (everything in one place).

I reserve the "Mechanic"s section for core game mechanics and other things that fall into mechanics but ARE NOT part of an adventure or such.

This works very well for me, keeping the relevant monsters et al in the same section of the adventure that references them.

Strategon said:

Fair enough; however, that essentially means that when you input the data from a sourcebook, you have to create an entry for the book on both sides and split the chapters putting all of the adventure (places, people, things, scenes) on the world side and the mechanics (monsters, treasure, etc..) on the mechanics side. Seems counterintuitive. I think I would rather see it all in one and organize it in its original book form pretty much as you suggest in your videos.

Affirmative on waiting for the next build; but since we have no clue or word when that will be.....

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One of the advertised features of the cloud service, after the content market is released, will be that you can share realms. So you can create (or buy) a realm just for whatever book you want, then you can have a different realm for your adventure. You can share the realm for your book with the realm for your adventure. So you can still have an all-in-one realm for the book and an all-in-one realm for your adventure.

This will also allow you to enter (or buy) the book content just once, then share it multiple times with whatever other realms use it.

daplunk said:

Youre the first person I've heard of not wanting to use the mechanics section

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I am not a big fan of it either. All my original campaign realms never used it as it really does not provide any "benefit". The only reason I use it now is that for Pathfinder realms the monster, spells, magic item stuff is all setup for me making data entry easier.

If not for "pre-built" categories I would have left it all in the Story area of RW. Actually thinking back I don't think Mechanic section even existed when I started to use RW.

Strategon said:

Fair enough; however, that essentially means that when you input the data from a sourcebook, you have to create an entry for the book on both sides and split the chapters putting all of the adventure (places, people, things, scenes) on the world side and the mechanics (monsters, treasure, etc..) on the mechanics side. Seems counterintuitive. I think I would rather see it all in one and organize it in its original book form pretty much as you suggest in your videos.

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No i'm saying the content will already be organised into the world/story and mechanics sections. You won't need to manually arrange it if you plan on using it as intended or you decide to import it in a special way because you chose to manually sort it.

What you are talking about however will require a significant amount of re-work as its not native to just move content from one to the other.

EightBitz said:

One of the advertised features of the cloud service, after the content market is released, will be that you can share realms. So you can create (or buy) a realm just for whatever book you want, then you can have a different realm for your adventure. You can share the realm for your book with the realm for your adventure. So you can still have an all-in-one realm for the book and an all-in-one realm for your adventure.

This will also allow you to enter (or buy) the book content just once, then share it multiple times with whatever other realms use it.

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I missed there "sharing" part somewhere, that is good to know. For some reason I was under the impression you couldn't link realms or share them out; but rather you would import said purchased resource, into an existing realm.

Strategon said:

I've used Realm Works since it released and have created and deleted realms, and tried numerous ways of organizing content. One thing I keep coming back to is the separation between the core (topics) from the Mechanics (articles). Flipping back and forth between the two seems like a waste of time and I really don't see any benefit to setting up my data this way.

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Just to be clear you do know that an Article and a Mechanic topic can link to each other without issue. Story stuff is not separated by a wall from Mechanic stuff.

So if in your story article it references a monster from the mechanic section you can just click the link to go it. Really Mechanic vs Story is just like a different "view" is all.

I see it as having my PHB, DMG and MM in one view and module / adventure books on the other.

ShadowChemosh said:

Just to be clear you do know that an Article and a Mechanic topic can link to each other without issue. Story stuff is not separated by a wall from Mechanic stuff.

So if in your story article it references a monster from the mechanic section you can just click the link to go it. Really Mechanic vs Story is just like a different "view" is all.

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Yup. I think this approach really hinders continuity, more than anything. When manually entering a source (pre-written adventure, core rule book, etc.) you can't see it all in one view and actually enter it exactly as it is in the book. Essentially you have to create the source in both views then split out the mechanics to its view and the story to its view. I would have preferred this to have been an option that you turn on or off (splitting the view).

I really feel the pain of this when improv dm'ing alot; I have to make a toggle back and forth between each "view".

I realize this is the nature of the beast, so to speak; however, it has been fruitful conversation and linking realms sounds interesting. Does this mean you can see the linked realm inside of the realm you have loaded?

Don't think of it as linking one realm to another. Its more you put a copy of one realm into another allowing you to work with it anyway you like.

To expand on what ShadowChemosh said... right click on a link in the Story Topic that connects to the relevant Mechanics Article... select "View in new Tab" .. and now you have both readily available.

Otherwise ...

I found as I went on that having multiple tabs opened...drilling down from, say, the location map into the individual areas, then closing them as the party moved on, became standard practice.

The other part of this is that, when the content market is available, it is likely that the mechanics and story content will be sold separately as well as in mixtures. For example, using Pathfinder, the Core Rulebook content is likely to be 100% mechanics -- there is no Story content in it. When that is sold as a Realm, it will be all Mechanics Articles. On the other hand, adventures will likely be mostly Story Topic content with relatively small amounts of Mechanics.

The value of this separation comes from being able to merge them. The "vision" is that you would buy (or enter) the Mechanics and Story materials you want separately. When it comes time to run a game, you would create a new Realm for that game, and mix in the Mechanics and Story parts you want.

Example 1: You want to run a Pathfinder Adventure Path. You have the Pathfinder Core Rulebook and the six parts of the AP (however they're sold.. or you entered them yourself). Your gaming group A wants to play Core-only, so you create a new Realm and add the Core Rulebook mechanics and the AP adventures.

Example 2: You want to run a Pathfinder Adventure Path with 5E D&D rules. You've obtained the 5E Mechanics and the six parts of the AP. You create a new Realm with the 5E Mechanics and the Pathfinder AP. You will need to adjust things here and there, but this Realm is separate from the one you made for Group A. Group B's Realm is happily 5E and you can go on as you like.

When you're limited to one Realm to enter everything into, the value of the Mechanics not being literally just a different View seems harder to justify. I do so this way... there are world details that are separate from the Mechanics. I had a discussion with Rob from LWD about Races in Pathfinder. I am creating my own Race Category and Topics in the World Almanac because there is separate information of a different nature there than what is in the Race Articles in Mechanics. What the race calls itself in the world.. how its members view their role in the world, their psychology, their history in the world.. none of those are Mechanics ... Mechanics is what stat modifiers apply, and what special game-rule abilities the Race receives. I am also considering using the Inhabitants topics for the "player knowledge" of various Bestiary monsters, rather than the Monster entries in the Mechanics (where I would have the full write-ups).

Strategon said:

Yup. I think this approach really hinders continuity, more than anything. When manually entering a source (pre-written adventure, core rule book, etc.) you can't see it all in one view and actually enter it exactly as it is in the book. Essentially you have to create the source in both views then split out the mechanics to its view and the story to its view. I would have preferred this to have been an option that you turn on or off (splitting the view).

I really feel the pain of this when improv dm'ing alot; I have to make a toggle back and forth between each "view".

I realize this is the nature of the beast, so to speak; however, it has been fruitful conversation and linking realms sounds interesting. Does this mean you can see the linked realm inside of the realm you have loaded?

Click to expand...

I think this is part of the "growing pains" of Realm Works. It is a new and different publishing medium, and will be used differently than books or PDFs.. .it is more suited to a "living document" view (where you will alter the content as time goes by) rather than as a static thing.

It is not as passive as a book or PDF.. once copied to a new realm, you won't be adding notes on a separate page as much as adding a new snippet to the topic and putting a GM Note right there.. or altering the existing text to reflect what's changed.

As NPCs are killed, for example, you won't just add a note to that effect.. you will change the NPC's status snippet to "Dead", and set the "Date of Death" snippet to the in-game date of death (and maybe note there "Killed by PC 1" or something like that).

I personally really prefer the separation.

The World/Story side is for me. I build my worlds there. The Mechanics reference is just that, a reference to the rules. I like having it around and will like it even more when I can buy the CRB and other books so I get all the spells/feats and monsters rather than having to type all that stuff in myself. But the mechanics stuff isn't why I am such a fan of RW.

Having the two mixed together wouldn't make any sense organizationally to me. But if it bugs someone just keep two tabs open or copy the mechanics articles into categories and put it all on the world side just get used to everyone else doing it differently.

I'm the same, mechanics is my reference only material. There's no uniqueness there. It is literally stuff i want to refer to via links.

There are situations where I want a unique thing in the story list though. For example I have created a unique monster category in the story almanac section so I can have unique monsters use the same icon and structure as the mechanics monsters.

I do hate tabs in RW though. Not because it's a bad idea but because they don't work very well in a realm my size. There is a notable delay for me to change tabs. I fear having to open the mechanics section from a fresh tab when I'm at the table as it generally causes my players to have to wait for me.

A lot of GMs focus on story and don't even care about the mechanics/rules side of stuff within Realm Works. They have it mostly memorized, or have someone in the gaming group that is the resident rules quoter. You know, the guy who proclaims "If you look on page XX of rulebook YY, you'll see in the third paragraph that blah blah blah."

A lot of GMs focus on the story and only want the rules when they truly need it. So they don't want the rules cluttering everything up all the time. It's just like running the game. Focus on the story, then go pull out the book (or check the rules entry in RW) when it's actually needed. There are a few folks above that advocate this approach.

A lot of GMs use story content with different game systems than it was originally written for. There are lots of D&D adventures being used with Pathfinder and different versions of D&D. There are lots of Pathfinder adventures being used with D&D5E. So keeping the rules distinct from the story is of critical importance here.

It's our expectation that lots of content will be published/shared for RW that will be game system neutral, plus a lot more will be published for one game system and used with other game systems. The ability to do this will be greatly enhanced by having a clean separation between the story and the rules, which will encourage more users to do this. So it will become a self-fueling model.

When we thought about the optimal long-term approach, as opposed to how everyone does stuff today, making the separation was clearly better for the majority of users. So that's the approach we took. It's something we adopted from the very early days, but I honestly can't remember whether it was in the first Beta that @ShadowChemosh got his hands on.

So that's why we did it. The good thing is that, if you don't like it, RW gives you the flexibility to do whatever you want instead. If you want to move everything over to the Story side, go for it. You can copy the categories, move them to the story side, and be off and running. Or you can roll everything custom for exactly what you want. It's entirely your call.

I never need the mechanics side for rules. I have not only one but three 'resident rules quoters' who know exactly what we do. A lot better than I know.

The mechanics section is despite that far from useless for me. I keep my extensions here, e.g. special monsters which don't appear in any book (and I need them to surprise the quoters). Here are the deadly poisons that the rules don't have, and so on.

I don't need rules quoters, I am that guy! I have an almost eidetic memory and have been playing RPGs since 1977. My problem is not remembering rules, but rather remembering which ones are still relevant.

Personally I'm not the biggest fan of the mechanics section either.

I can see the benefits for rules and spells and the like, but other stuff is kind of strange. Especially monsters. I created some monsters of my own, that only live in certain areas. But as they are mechanics article and not story topics, I could not have them sorted under a geographical area in my hirarchy. I had to re-create them as inhabitants. Which again is a strange kind of doing things double in two places.
Same goes for named objects and equipment. I'm never sure where to put a magic item.