reveal alias

[jkthomsen9]

What dose the reveal alias do? It dose not reveal anything in player view. Also is there a way to reveal a topic and alias but not the name of the topic? This would be helpful for when PC's encounter someone but do not know who they are.

For example: Say my party encounters Sam "the masked bandit" and he gets away. The party now needs to figure out who he is and find him. As Sam is going to be a part of the story for a while I would rather not has the topic be "the masked bandit" with an alias of Sam. Nor do I think this reveal is so great as to require two people topics. One for Sam, and one for The Masked Bandit with a equivalent relationship.

So I guess my question is, Is there anything to revealing aliases or are they purely for hypertext linking to a topic.

[Silveras]

Revealing the alias lets the players know the main topic HAS an alias and what it is.

Let's say you have a character who the PCs know as "The Count of Monte Cristo". The topic "Count of Monte Cristo" is revealed, and the snippets for some of the appearance information appear (Gender, Description, Picture, etc.)

Secretly, though, he has also has unrevealed Alias "Edmund Dantes". This is information that the PCs do not know yet. When they learn it, you can reveal the alias, and the will now see that the Count of Monte Cristo has the alias Edmund Dantes.

For some "secret identity" situations, it might be better to use two separate topics (such as "Superman" and "Clark Kent") where you can reveal the information about each separately. In such cases, I would add a relationship with a note of "Secret Identity" or the like.

For other situations, where the PCs know about the main topic but something cryptic mentions it in another way, the alias is more useful. For example, if a place commonly known as "Cathedral of the Stars" has a topic page, but it is referenced in an obscure book as "The Place Where Hope Died".. that would make a good alias.

[jkthomsen9]

Thats how I understood it to work also. But as I just tested it, it doesn't appear to work that way. As far as I can see, no snippet is revealed when you reveal an alias.

[Silveras]

I am not sure what you mean by "no snippet is revealed when you reveal an alias". I would not expect any to be.

An alias is a special kind of snippet itself, is one way to look at it. It is a data point attached to a topic, not a topic itself. I don't think anything is revealed unless the main topic is revealed. Revealing an alias is like revealing a snippet in that sense.. if the main topic is hidden, the revealed snippets can't be accessed. Once the topic is revealed, any pre-revealed snippets will be revealed, too. I'm not sure how different aliases are from that, but I would expect them to follow the same pattern.. they would not be visible if the main topic is not revealed.

Is that what you're getting at?

If that is it, then you can probably get more use out of what I described for "secret identities"... multiple topics that are connected by a relationship.

[jkthomsen9]

If you create person "W" and give it aliases "X", "Y", and "Z". Reveal all three aliases and the topic, Then show it in player view. The only thing you will see is "W". So my question is....What are you revealing when you reveal an alias? Is there a mechanics I am missing?

[jkthomsen9]

Ok I answered my own question. If you have a person "Queen Ann Smith" with an alias of "Queen Smith" as you don't want to write the whole name all the time. It will hypertext for the DM each time Queen Smith comes up. That hypertext will not be seen in player view unless you reveal it. But it dose not show "Queen Smith" as an alias for "Queen Ann Smith" on her player profile page.

[rob]

You can also toggle the display of aliases on/off within the navigation pane. If you use a limited number of aliases, this can be extremely helpful for quickly finding things. If you use lots of aliases, it will probably be more clutter than useful.

[kad]

Originally Posted by rob

You can also toggle the display of aliases on/off within the navigation pane.

Rob,
How do you do this? I've searched the software and the user manual and I can't find anything on toggling Alias display.

-K

[Parody]

Click on the Hammer and Wrench icon in the tab for the Navigation Pane (or press F6) and select Show Aliases.

[kad]

Originally Posted by Parody

Click on the Hammer and Wrench icon in the tab for the Navigation Pane (or press F6) and select Show Aliases.

Thank you. A month of using RW and I don't think I ever noticed that there was an Options icon in that tab. The tab showing in white (at least on my machine) and the search icon being on it always has me thinking of it as a search box, not a tab indicator.

-K