Question on design/implementation

[Quintain]

I was doing some data entry on my new realm over the weekend. I stub entries as sources -- the books themselves. But apparently when putting in the book titles as a general danger article requires a full on copy of the "sources" entry, instead of just a link-like reference.

Is this correct, or is there something I'm missing?

The same applied to putting a monster in a dungeon reference in the world/story almanac... is there a reason to have more than one entry per thing in the realm?

[kbs666]

I'm not sure what you're saying. I make empty topics all the time.

[Quintain]

Well, what I did was make a source called "Monster Manual".

Then I right clicked the source entry, and looked for a way to just make sort of a "reference" to the source, but instead the best I could do was do a fully copy of the source as a different type -- in this case, a general danger article.

The linking of the name worked fine in the article itself, but it would seem more efficient to just have the Danger general article to be a simple reference back to the source, not an entry in and of itself.

[kbs666]

That's not how RW is meant to work.

RW links to names already created so any time a name is mentioned somewhere a link is created.

Also topics and articles can contain other topics/articles under themselves in the tree. So, assuming the Monster Manual source was a mechanics source, you could just put each Creature article under the Source article there should be no need for a Danger general article. This would also go for any other articles that you create that would go under the Monster Manual source like ones for creature type or whatever.

[Quintain]

Right, I saw that you can create any type of article under any type of category.

What that leads me to be is what is the general purpose of each category type...Dangers seem to lead toward monsters and such, what type of content should be under "source", ideally.

[Silveras]

Originally Posted by Quintain

Right, I saw that you can create any type of article under any type of category.

What that leads me to be is what is the general purpose of each category type...Dangers seem to lead toward monsters and such, what type of content should be under "source", ideally.

A lot of that becomes "whatever you want to put there".

RealmWorks is intended to be very flexible, and to accommodate what you want to do. If you do not like the existing Categories, for example, you can make your own (or clone of the standard ones to start, then modify your copy as you like). You can alter the standard Categories to better reflect your needs, but since the Content Market (sold content) pretty much depends on the standard Categories to have at least the snippets they have now, adding is much safer than re-naming or removing snippets. That said, I find it easier to just make my own custom copies. I have long since given up on buying anything from the Content Market.

So, Sources. As a recent debate here went, some people want to group their content "by book", and others don't. A Source, in my opinion, is best used as a "root" topic to hold content you want to export together for re-import into a working Realm. When there are multiple books (MM1, MM2, MM3, etc.), it sometimes makes more sense to just have "Monsters" as a root topic, and to ignore the MM1, MM2, MM3, etc. -- that way, all the grouped monsters (ex. Demons, Devils, Angels, etc.) that have one or two entries in each book are now combined.

And that means the Source topic itself will likely have little content.. maybe the OGL (or equivalent) if you plan to distribute it.

But that's just one way to do it. In the end, it can be what you want. Sources are a little different in that they cannot be children of other topics (last I looked, anyway), but things like Monsters can be grouped under General Articles named "A", "B", "C", and so on (although you would likely want to set those to be "Never" link targets).

[kbs666]

[for long time forum regulars this will be familiar]

Realm Works works best when you organize the data in whatever way works best for you. I have all my monsters organized by type and then by CR. When I'm creating an encounter I know I want a specific kind of critter and I know it needs to be roughly so hard. I don't care what book it comes out of. Every entry includes a tag that tells me that so I can look up anything not in the article. I can also use RW's search function to filter by CR or even if it should ever come up by book since those are tags and filtering by tag is easy.

If some other method works for other people, good for them. My method works for me and I hope theirs works for them. Find one that works for you. I do strongly doubt that simply copying the various books directly into RW will be terribly helpful.

As to the general Danger article and other such categories, those are so you can create articles that don't fit into any of the other categories. It does come up.

[Taronthir]

For myself, I've found that using a tag to specify a source book works very well, and using the annotate field for that tag to insert a page number making it quick and easy to find for players and myself alike works pretty well. If I decide to create a source category article in mechanics, it's usually for one of two reasons:

1. To place an electronic copy of the book within the article itself, or
2. To have a way to place additional topics/articles under that general source entry that don't make sense to place within the general category for the rest of the topics I create with it.

To use the "Monster Manual" example cited by Quintain, I might place an electronic copy of the actual source book within the general Source article for Monster Manual, then as a child article for it, I might do an article named "Sacred Bundle", detailing some notes from that book on an item carried by members of certain types of aborigines - ones based on Native Americans or ancient Aztecs or Mayans, for example. It doesn't really belong under Dangers with the actual monsters, perhaps under Equipment or Special items instead - but this way, I have the source material I'm using to create that item already to hand and linkable, in case I forget to create that other article, or the way I decide to place snippets in that article type doesn't make sense to include that original text there.

In the end, as kbs and others have already stated, whatever organization works best for you is how it should be done, the same as how you go about creating your realm(s). As long as it makes sense to you, and allows you to find what you need quickly and easily, it's right. Even if you decide to export later and let others use what you've created, if they don't like the way it's organized for themselves, they can always re-organize to suit their style.

[Cammagno]

Originally Posted by Silveras

A lot of that becomes "whatever you want to put there".

So, Sources. As a recent debate here went, some people want to group their content "by book", and others don't. A Source, in my opinion, is best used as a "root" topic to hold content you want to export together for re-import into a working Realm. When there are multiple books (MM1, MM2, MM3, etc.), it sometimes makes more sense to just have "Monsters" as a root topic, and to ignore the MM1, MM2, MM3, etc. -- that way, all the grouped monsters (ex. Demons, Devils, Angels, etc.) that have one or two entries in each book are now combined.

I find Relationships very useful to add even more flexibility. For example in this case, one could choose to have "Monsters" as a root topic, but instead of ignoring MM1, MM2, MM3, he can set a Relationhip for each monster to its specific MM source.

[Farling]

Originally Posted by Cammagno

I find Relationships very useful to add even more flexibility. For example in this case, one could choose to have "Monsters" as a root topic, but instead of ignoring MM1, MM2, MM3, he can set a Relationhip for each monster to its specific MM source.

I prefer to use tags, since then I can use the auto-tag feature when creating new topics to have the source tag automatically added to each topic without having to do any manual additions.