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Madmaxneo
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Join Date: May 2014
Posts: 203

Old July 13th, 2017, 04:04 PM
@daplunk That is a really good setup you have going there! I learned a lot from those screen shots, one thing being I need to organize my RW data better...lol.
I thought there was something I was missing in my layout but it seems I was not doing anything wrong just yet.
Regardless that was inspirational for me to get cracking on my campaign, thank you very much for the screen shots!

GM of HARP, Rolemaster, Spacemaster, Dreamchaser, Savage Worlds, and a myriad of other not so well known systems.
Software I use for gaming: Realm Works, Inspiration Pad Pro, Ebon, Aeon Timeline, Scrivener, Syrinscape, Hexagon, Fantasia Archive, OneNote, and a spreadsheet program.
Mapping programs: CC3+, MapForge, Worldographer, Xara Photo and Graphic Designer 10.
Programming experience: Java and Javascript (Maptools and PDF programming).
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daplunk
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Old July 13th, 2017, 04:16 PM
Nps mate. If you want to see more I keep a collection.

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MNBlockHead
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Old July 13th, 2017, 07:17 PM
For me, a dungeon is almost always an adventure area. For many, all the information will be in a single AA topic, in others I have lots of associated scene topics.

AAs are generally contained in other location topics. Generally, story lines and quests will link to AAs but not be parent containers of AAs. If I will ONLY use the AA for ONE storyline or one quest and the party is unlikely to return and it is unlikely to be used in future campaigns (unusual for dungeons in my campaigns), I *may* have it contained under a Storyline or Quest, but it would still be an AA topic. Only the most simply dungeons would be entered as a map and text in the Storyline or Quest itself.

MORE likely is that I will have the AA contain a number of possible quests related to it.

To give perspective, my campaign is fairly sandbox. I have multiple possible storylines and the party may be involved in more than one at a time, which I riff on and often find they merge an morph into new storylines. Since story lines in my campaign are fluid, they make for poor anchors for other content.

So, for me, it makes more sense to take a geographical approach and place the adventure areas in specific locations.

That said, I do have a number of drop-in dungeons and drop-in adventures that I can place almost anywhere. I have these organized using the "Other" topic. So I will have, for example, a "Drop-in Communities: Any Human" list that has a number of settlement topics under it. After I use one in a game, I then pin it on the appropriate map and file it under an appropriate parent place topic.

Other examples of this that I use is: "Drop-in Inns: Generic", "Drop-in Dungeons" (no subcategories, just try to make the names descriptive enough), "Drop-in Merchants", etc. I also do this with adventures, organized by level. Some are completely created from scratch, but many are material from ENWorld En5ider, DriveThruRPG and DMs Guild Material, that I like but do not have an immediate use for. What is nice is that if the party goes completely in a new direction that I have not planned for, I can pull up something quickly.

RW Project: Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition homebrew world
Other Tools: CampaignCartographer, Cityographer, Dungeonographer, Evernote
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Madmaxneo
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Old July 15th, 2017, 10:02 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by MNBlockHead View Post
For me, a dungeon is almost always an adventure area. For many, all the information will be in a single AA topic, in others I have lots of associated scene topics.

AAs are generally contained in other location topics. Generally, story lines and quests will link to AAs but not be parent containers of AAs. If I will ONLY use the AA for ONE storyline or one quest and the party is unlikely to return and it is unlikely to be used in future campaigns (unusual for dungeons in my campaigns), I *may* have it contained under a Storyline or Quest, but it would still be an AA topic. Only the most simply dungeons would be entered as a map and text in the Storyline or Quest itself.

MORE likely is that I will have the AA contain a number of possible quests related to it.

To give perspective, my campaign is fairly sandbox. I have multiple possible storylines and the party may be involved in more than one at a time, which I riff on and often find they merge an morph into new storylines. Since story lines in my campaign are fluid, they make for poor anchors for other content.

So, for me, it makes more sense to take a geographical approach and place the adventure areas in specific locations.

That said, I do have a number of drop-in dungeons and drop-in adventures that I can place almost anywhere. I have these organized using the "Other" topic. So I will have, for example, a "Drop-in Communities: Any Human" list that has a number of settlement topics under it. After I use one in a game, I then pin it on the appropriate map and file it under an appropriate parent place topic.

Other examples of this that I use is: "Drop-in Inns: Generic", "Drop-in Dungeons" (no subcategories, just try to make the names descriptive enough), "Drop-in Merchants", etc. I also do this with adventures, organized by level. Some are completely created from scratch, but many are material from ENWorld En5ider, DriveThruRPG and DMs Guild Material, that I like but do not have an immediate use for. What is nice is that if the party goes completely in a new direction that I have not planned for, I can pull up something quickly.
Also great ideas. Another one is using Scene for an area.
One thing I wish RW had is the ability to drag and drop whole sections to other areas. I currently have all the races of my campaign world listed under Group: Ethnic because that was the first place I found that it would fit. I don't think each race is it's own ethnic group as there can be different ethnic groups for each race. So all my races should be under a race section. I found a better place for them but it will not let me move them under another group as part of the tree. But that is nothing compared to needing a calendar system....lol.
For a calendar I am currently using Aeon Timeline but it is a pain because it is a separate program entirely, so there isn't much to it yet. I wish there was a way to sync it up with RW....

GM of HARP, Rolemaster, Spacemaster, Dreamchaser, Savage Worlds, and a myriad of other not so well known systems.
Software I use for gaming: Realm Works, Inspiration Pad Pro, Ebon, Aeon Timeline, Scrivener, Syrinscape, Hexagon, Fantasia Archive, OneNote, and a spreadsheet program.
Mapping programs: CC3+, MapForge, Worldographer, Xara Photo and Graphic Designer 10.
Programming experience: Java and Javascript (Maptools and PDF programming).
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MNBlockHead
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Old July 16th, 2017, 09:31 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Madmaxneo View Post
But that is nothing compared to needing a calendar system....lol.
For a calendar I am currently using Aeon Timeline but it is a pain because it is a separate program entirely, so there isn't much to it yet. I wish there was a way to sync it up with RW....
Hey a chance to talk about calendars again!

:-)

I downloaded, installed, and tried Aeon, but just didn't find it helpful. I can see it being useful for outlining for a novel or history book, etc. But I can do that in RW, as long as I use the Gregorian system.

And that is what I do.

I simply decided that in one of the realms in my campaign, the Rasane Empire (Etruscan/Roman inspired), it was the same date as the date I started my campaign. In other words the empire was founded 2015 years ago from the date I started creating my world.

Then I built my time line from there. All dates are entered based on that.

I also maintain a spreadsheet where I log in broad strokes what the party has been up to. The spreadsheet has five calendar systems that I calculated based of the Gregorian. So, if I want to paste conversion into a topic, I just have to copy the relevant cells and paste them in.

After a session, I also complete an "in-game dates" snippet for important events, scenes, places visited. This helps keeps a nice, detailed time line in RealmWorks.

After this campaign ends, I'm going to take a break from it and play some published APs, but I plan to come back to it in the future with a new party where the events from the prior party are now part of the history. Realm Works makes this process pretty easy.

My main issue is that if I want to calculate dates in the far past or far future for the other calendars, my spreadsheet won't help. I just manually entered in the calendar dates for year and repeated down the column for several years. I have not had the time to figure out the calendrical calculations to convert any date, future or paste, from Gregorian to one of my other calendars.

And, I really doesn't matter. None of the players really care. I'm fine using the Gregorian system. But I still look forward to having support for multiple calendars because it would provide an easy way to give more flavor to a campaign. Also, if I had the ability to easily convert within RW, I might build adventures and puzzles where calendars are more important. Not that I want to frustrate my players with calendrical calculation—I would hope the player view would also support switching calendars. Even if I have to do it for them as a DM, just the fact that they have to think about it, adds some flavor to the game.

RW Project: Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition homebrew world
Other Tools: CampaignCartographer, Cityographer, Dungeonographer, Evernote

Last edited by MNBlockHead; July 16th, 2017 at 09:34 PM.
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Greebo
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Join Date: Aug 2013
Location: Germany
Posts: 282

Old July 17th, 2017, 12:17 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by MNBlockHead View Post
Hey a chance to talk about calendars again!

:-)
Jippie!





Quote:
Originally Posted by MNBlockHead View Post
I downloaded, installed, and tried Aeon, but just didn't find it helpful. I can see it being useful for outlining for a novel or history book, etc. But I can do that in RW, as long as I use the Gregorian system.
Sounds interesting, even though Aeon is - at least for my current budget - a bit pricey.



Quote:
Originally Posted by MNBlockHead View Post
I also maintain a spreadsheet where I log in broad strokes what the party has been up to. The spreadsheet has five calendar systems that I calculated based of the Gregorian. So, if I want to paste conversion into a topic, I just have to copy the relevant cells and paste them in.

(...)

My main issue is that if I want to calculate dates in the far past or far future for the other calendars, my spreadsheet won't help. I just manually entered in the calendar dates for year and repeated down the column for several years. I have not had the time to figure out the calendrical calculations to convert any date, future or paste, from Gregorian to one of my other calendars.
I have been using spreadsheets for quite a while now. And they are cumbersome at best. Beside the problem with distant events you describe, I have another layer of complexity due to different year lengths and calendar systems used within my gameworld.

So, if I set up e.g. an underground necropolis (or any other site vaguely resembling a "classic dungeon"), which I do strictly as a place (for later revisits and the like), most of these sites tend to have been used over - at least - several decades. But many of those were used, one way or the other, by different cultures as well. And sorting discontinous dates within different calendars (solar, lunisolar, lunar based on the large moon, lunar based on the small moon, cylce-based...) is a real pain...



Quote:
Originally Posted by MNBlockHead View Post
And, I really doesn't matter. None of the players really care. I'm fine using the Gregorian system. But I still look forward to having support for multiple calendars because it would provide an easy way to give more flavor to a campaign. Also, if I had the ability to easily convert within RW, I might build adventures and puzzles where calendars are more important. Not that I want to frustrate my players with calendrical calculation—I would hope the player view would also support switching calendars. Even if I have to do it for them as a DM, just the fact that they have to think about it, adds some flavor to the game.
That is exactly the reason, why I do things like that. One of the ideas I am currently pondering is to integrate an evil spirit with a Maya-inspired background (with a cycle based Maya-like calendar) into our science fantasy campaign (with a solar calendar).


Supporting Calendar Campaigner

Tools: Realm Works, Campaign Cartographer 3+ and Add-ons, MapTools
Games: home brew world, Lord of the Rings (CODA), Shadowrun, Earthdawn
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Lexin
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Old July 17th, 2017, 04:50 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Greebo View Post
Sounds interesting, even though Aeon is - at least for my current budget - a bit pricey.
It does look as if it could be helpful, but I blanch a bit at spending £42 on a calendar for one of my worlds - only one of mine has a non-standard calendar. I'll wait patiently for RW to bring in calendars.

--
Lexin

GM from Gwynedd, Wales - seriously old school - playing RPGs since 1980!

Tools: Realm Works, HeroLab, Campaign Cartographer 3+
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Madmaxneo
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Join Date: May 2014
Posts: 203

Old July 17th, 2017, 05:58 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by MNBlockHead View Post
Hey a chance to talk about calendars again!

:-)

I downloaded, installed, and tried Aeon, but just didn't find it helpful. I can see it being useful for outlining for a novel or history book, etc. But I can do that in RW, as long as I use the Gregorian system.

And that is what I do.......

And, I really doesn't matter. None of the players really care.
Some of my players do care, or at least did at one time. I even had one party member volunteer to keep track of dates and the timeline. I dropped the ball on that one though. Having a date system adds color to the game and will help in future games when referencing events that happened in the past. At least 3 game systems I have use their own date system.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Lexin View Post
It does look as if it could be helpful, but I blanch a bit at spending £42 on a calendar for one of my worlds - only one of mine has a non-standard calendar. I'll wait patiently for RW to bring in calendars.
I got Aeon for less than half price through Stack social, consequently I also got Scrivener for about half price. There should be another sale on both of those coming up soon on there. Keep an eye out for them.

GM of HARP, Rolemaster, Spacemaster, Dreamchaser, Savage Worlds, and a myriad of other not so well known systems.
Software I use for gaming: Realm Works, Inspiration Pad Pro, Ebon, Aeon Timeline, Scrivener, Syrinscape, Hexagon, Fantasia Archive, OneNote, and a spreadsheet program.
Mapping programs: CC3+, MapForge, Worldographer, Xara Photo and Graphic Designer 10.
Programming experience: Java and Javascript (Maptools and PDF programming).
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