[DaFranker]

Originally Posted by eponette

I'm not sure to catch the subtle difference between storyline (in the event group) and plot hooks (in the Other group). Someone can help me?

Originally Posted by rob

This is my perspective on it...

Plot hooks are envisioned as more of a collection of story fragments that represent pending ideas you may want to include in your campaign. Storylines are envisioned as @MNBlockhead described them above. So a storyline is something concretely integrated into your campaign, usually woven across lots of different aspects of the campaign and encompassing many scenes, while plot hooks are isolated ideas that are not yet officially part of the campaign but may ultimately be pulled from to create storylines.

Hope this helps!

What rob said is pretty much the use that feels most natural to me in practice. I mostly use RealmWorks for Shadowrun, and whenever I come across, say, a little tidbit in a document, in a sourcebook, or online that acts as a small "plot hook" from which you can take inspiration to build a shadowrun (a "quest" or "mission", if you're not familiar with SR), I create a new Plot Hook topic and dump the info there, and that's it, I'm done.

A Storyline, on the other hand, is this big connected thing that is actually the story arc, whether it's what actually happened or what I'm planning for the next arc / rest of the arc.

Here's an example of what my Navigation panel would look like:

• Storyline: G.R.I.M. 2.0
  • First run ("Quest" type topic)
    • Scene 1
    • Scene 2
  • Second run
    • Etc.

• Plot Hooks
  • Job offer from a dead man
  • Humanis traitor

In this example, the plot hooks are each just a blurb I copy-pasted from a sourcebook or a couple ideas I jotted down that I could use to maybe come up with a quest or possibly a story arc later on, but "G.R.I.M. 2.0" is an entire story arc with multiple missions inside it (not necessarily with a preset chronological order, but definitely with a timeline that evolves and updates as the campaign moves along).

Eventually those plot hooks either get discarded, or turned into a 'run, or I integrate the idea into a plot of some kind. When that happens, I mark off the plot hook and move on (it stays there, for future reference, but I know not to pull the same hook on my players).