Need advice for structuring an adventure

[Arbarth]

I need some help...I have tried a few different ways to structure things at an adventure level (wilderness, a few different "dungeons", a small town, etc.) and nothing really seams to work well. I also want to be able to add things at higher level (world) latter. Can someone give me advice at what to put at what level especially dungeon stuff (rooms, encounters, etc.)

Thanks,

David - Pathfinder GM

[Silveras]

I can tell you what is working for me, if that helps.

I find it helpful to rough in the bigger areas.. so create the continents as "Region : Geographic" entries with just the name initially, for example, so I can use them to contain the countries or other regions that belong together.

I am increasingly willing to create different entry types with the same name, for different uses. There is nothing wrong with creating "Dark Fortress of Muthgor" as both a Location and an Adventure Area. The Location can be revealed early to the players, and can contain the "common knowledge" and "reputation" information. The Adventure Area can contain any encounters that occur there. This way, if the same site is needed for multiple adventures, I can have separate Adventure Areas for each adventure with just the appropriate encounters linked in each case.

Really, the best advice I can give is to make a "test" realm and experiment to find what works best for you. Certainly, as I have been working with RealmWorks, how I organize information has changed, and what I do now is different from what I started with.

[AEIOU]

I've since evolved how I am nesting things from my links below, but this may be useful to you as a starting point.

I nest places as continent - geography - region - city/adventure area/citadel. The region is an arbitrary choice and usually matches the borders of a map on a piece of paper. The geography is above the region because it can span several regions. I do not "contain" countries or political boundaries as these change over time.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B3...nB3ZjZLMlRsUVU
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B3...mZQbzJBV1psMjQ

And this is how I track NPCs: I create cast lists for each major location/city/region/dungeon. I create a table in each cast list like the one linked below where I list all NPCs in that location with minimal stats, primary map location and brief notes as to who they are or what they do. I make sure to also include all the bit players that are mentioned in the module text but don't have a full write-up so I can keep track of them -- these don't get their own RW categories unless they become recurring or plot-related later.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B3...lJ6T3I5RC1hT00

[Bobifle]

You're not very specific to what your problem is

I'll give it a try

Most importantly : never interrupt your imagination flow with some structure/whatever RW technical concerns. Write things downs in RW, things can be reorganized later easily.

For the structure itself, just use the natural relationship.

world->region->town->merchant

You can add a dungeon in any of these (except possibly merchant). The dungeon then contains rooms etc... Rooms can even contain encounters if that particular encounter can only happen in that room. Otherwise you may create the encounter in the event group and link it in multiple places.

I'm just stating the obvious so feel free to add some precisions on

nothing really seams to work well

Also, unless you plan it for the market content, don't plan anything more than 2 sessions ahead. That's key for not loosing your precious prep time on irelevant concerns.

[MNBlockHead]

You said you needed help to add an adventure with world-building a secondary concern (something to add later). If I read your post accurately, then my best advice is to go use a bottom-up approach rather than a top-down approach. When I started using RW, for the first couple months, I just used it to build my world, but even with countless hours of work, most of my topics were big-picture topics, covering the world, different realms, races, languages, history, etc. When it came to preparing an adventure and use at table, I realized that all my time was just flavor text. Still very useful and important for informing and giving ideas for adventures, but not very useful at the table.

I recommend that you focus on the story line. Map out the story on the story board. Don't worry about what topic you'll associate with each scene/encounter, just map out the overall storyline and its twists and turns.

If you are like me, you'll likely fiddle with it for awhile, splitting some plot points, combining others, adding and deleting. It is easy to do in the storyboard, but is more work to be breaking up and combining topics.

After you are happy with the story board, decide which require more info that the text in the plot point itself. Keep in mind that plot point text will not have autolinks, but if you have a simple decision or "travel montage" that you don't intend to spend much time on or can roleplay without any special preparation or need to reference in the future, you really don't need to create a topic.

For those that you want to have detailed out, referencable in the future, and autolinked to other content, you can right-click on the plot point and select "associate contents with the plot point". from the "select content to associate with plot point" dialog box, you can create a new topic by clicking on the blue plus icon next to the appropriate group. That will open a "create new [topic] element". Use this to enter the bare minimum for the new topic. If you don't have much world content developed, you can just enter the name and be done with it. Otherwise you can select the container topic you want it to be a child of. If you don't immediately know how you want to organize it, DON'T WASTE TIME THINKING, just enter a title and and click CREATE. It is easy to organize latter.

For me, most topics associate with plot points are scene (a type of event) and adventure area (a type of place). I will often also use location and community (also place topics). Occasionally I may have a plot point associated with a merchant topic if the interaction with the merchant is important and I plan to have the merchant reappear in future adventures.

I've seen others on this forum who create a plot point for every room in a dungeon, mapping out the path that the players can take through the dungeon. Each room associated with a scene. It looks cool, but for me that is too much work. Instead, I would have the dungeon as a location topic and in that topic I would have the map as a smart map and use pins for the room, some of them further associated with scenes and for some I would just have the room description and GM instructions in the pin description itself.

At the end of this first phase, you'll have your story mapped out, and the skeletons of the scenes and important adventure-level places linked to their appropriate plot points.

At this point, I right click on the plot point and view the associated topic in a new tab. I usually don't do this in story order. I do it in inspiration order. Which scenes or places am I most interested in working on first, what cool idea do I have that I want to capture now? I find that even if I don't complete all associated topics, I can still run an adventure if I have the content most important to the adventure completed.

As you create your topics, you'll think of context. For example, you'll be creating an adventure area to describe a section of travel on the way to the dungeon, with random tables, etc., and you'll start thinking about the races, cultures players will encounter, the realm that the area is in, an important historical event that took place there.

My advice is to write it into the description of the topic. DON'T leave the topic and break the flow of creative thought. If you the adventure area is the "swamp land of the lounging lizards", you can type in "On the way to the Dungeon of the Sadistic DM, the party must travel through the swamp land of the lounging lizards. The swamp land is a lawless area on the edge of the Barony of Deorfolkingham, part of the small Kingdom of Laceratia."

I would then highlight "Barony of Deorfolkingham", and while that text is highlighted use CTRL+Q to bring up the quick-entry form for "create a new content element". The highlighted text will already be entered as the topic name. You just need to select what kind of topic or article it is, in this example it would be "Place:Region:Political". Same with "Kingdom of Laceratia." Again, just highlight, ctrl+q, select the group and save. You can fill in details later but now focus on the content you need for your upcoming adventure. You'll note that I could create the quick topic for Kingdom of Laceratia first and then create the one for the Barony, so I can make it a contained topic for the Kingdom, but I prefer to make it as quick and unobtrusive as possible so that I stay focused on writing the adventure text. I can always categorize and do filing later.

Anyway, that's my "bottom up" approach.

[Arbarth]

Thank you to those who have posted some great advice so far.

I am sorry my original post was lacking details, I was at work and kept getting interrupted after I started it so I kept is short. So let me, now that I have some time, expand on what I am thinking "Big Picture".

I am desperately waiting for the content market to open so I can hopefully purchase some pathfinder material, such as some "Inner Sea" content for the world level. I would then add other Pathfinder materials I have to it along with a lot of old "AD&D" material that I have started converting to pathfinder.

One of the things I have been hopping to see once the content market opens is how the experts structure their material; for the main reason that when I do it things tend to get lost in translation, so to speak. Admittedly I have not had a great deal of time to wrap my head around "Real Works" like others have; I do however want to learn --- If I can just find the TIME.

David - Pathfinder GM

[Bobifle]

Originally Posted by Arbarth

If I can just find the TIME.

This.

Doing it the expert market way is expensive, in terms of time efforts and skills. I'ts almost like writting a book, People get paid for that.

Now there's another use for RW : helping you with your next session. In this case, you don't need to bother about fancy structure, tags and getting all fleshed out. In this scenario RW is meant to save you prep time, not cost you some more. It's the bottom up approach described by MnBlockHead . And you'll get more fluent in RW as the sessions go. Maybe you should start this way before trying to go the the whole adventure content.

[Globetrotter]

Question:

I made Hill Giants as a monster in the Mechanics Reference Section to detail basic information on what the typical Hill Giant is: what to expect if you encounter them in the plains or the foot of a mountain; what classes to typically have; what are their tactics, etc.

Then I created a specific Hill Giant individual in the World Almanac. How do I link him to the Hill Giant monster section and vice versa?

[MNBlockHead]

There are a number of ways. First, if you use the word hill giant in any snippet of the individual topic, it should have given you the option to auto-link that text when you saved the topic. For me, that's all the linkage I would use in this situation.

If you have multiple ways of referring to hill giants, make sure to add these as aliases to the hill giant article. CTRL+SHIFT+A will allow you to add alias to any active topic or article (or click on the wrench icon in the up-right of the topic/article and select "manage aliases").

You can also select text and right click on it. From the context menu, select "Create new custom link for selection".

One you have links between them, you'll also see each reference the other in the "Content Links" section of the right-most column.

[JustinThomason]

You could also create a Relationship between the individual and the mechanics article using the tools in the right hand pane. You wouldn't have a hyperlink in the text, but the linkage would be available from that same right hand pane.