Arranging Data (Shadowrun)

[Acenoid]

Currently I'm trying to re-arrange data a bit better. I have problems to include the matrix locations into the world with the existing categories. So far I have added them where necessary as an adventure area.

Now I'm wondering if it would be better visible later on, to have dedicated topics for example as dimensional region entities. However most of the contents do not fit the subject, but I wanted to stick closely to the standard categories.

Would modify the dimensional region category to fit better to the matrix locations?

"Region Dimensional" topics (these are the hubs for logging into the matrix, a decker usually logs into the local LTG and then he can access hosts or the RTG):
- RTG NW America
- RTG Seattle
- LTG Downtown

"Adventure area" topic would be the hosts which are part of the adventure area the host belongs to.
- "Renraku Arcology - Host 1"
- "Renraku Arcology - Host 2"

But where to contain the RTG + LTG? Contain them in the geographical regions?

geo: "Northwest america"
++ dim: RTG NW America
++ geo: Seattle
++ ++ dim: RTG Seattle

Should the "Matrix" locations be dimensions at all?
A similar question arises with the astral plane - If i have two dimensions then, would you use the same category "dimension" or would you duplicate a category and re-organise the contents?

[DaFranker]

There's various ways to go about this, pick whatever works best for you:

1) Split Worlds: Create a "Dimensional" called Cyberspace. Put all regional networks here. Put each host machine under the corresponding regional network. Leave the physical world under its own "Earth" / "Material Plane" / "Meatspace" dimension. Connection/login points should be physical objects placed under the appropriate physical location, and have a "relationship" link to the network or host they connect to for ease of navigation.

Keep anything cyberspace-related under the big Cyberspace dimensional branch, and everything that can be found in meatspace under the material space / meatspace branch. Use relationship links whenever something in one leads to / affects something in the other (a node lets you open some doors in meatspace? link the node to the meatspace location).

Probably the easiest to understand and very useful if you have a big cyberspace component, less useful for "What can our hacker do in this room right now?"-style questions, could have issues if you're trying to maximize the interconnectedness between cyber and meat spaces.

2) Doors in a funny suit: Pretend Cyberspace doesn't exist or isn't describable as any sort of "location". Put every Matrix node as a custom "Matrix" location type category, or as a generic category like the additional details one if you're unwilling to use custom categories, right under where the server hosting it is physically located in the world and/or where the node is relevant/useful in your campaign (e.g. a node hosted in Washington but that controls the security system of SmallCorp Inc. would be placed under the article for the physical HQ location of SmallCorp). Essentially, you make cyberspace locations act as sub-locations for their related physical locations.

Keeps all your location-relevant stuff in one place, could be a lot more useful depending on the style of play of the campaign. Much more link-heavy, though, because you'll have to link every node to every nearby node a hacker can get to from here, and add tons of relationships for, well, everything. It's also pretty close to what you seem to be going for already.

3) This is meant for story plots? I don't know what you're talking about!: Abuse the Storyboards! Make storyboards for places, put a crapton of nodes in them to visually represent your Matrix networks and link the events in there to the cyberspace nodes / networks instead of actual, y'know, story events. Add little leaves on your rapidly growing tree of matrix network branches that connect directly to meatspace things or specific actions; you'd put a special node in the storyboard graph that represents the meatspace camera the hacker can access from a given node.

Extremely useful for at-a-glance overview of networks / host systems. Terribad for hierarchical organization, since Storyboards currently do not have any. It's also pretty awkward to link back to the Storyboard page, so once you "drill down" into a node's description page, you might get slowed down trying to go back up into the right storyboard page for a good overview. On top of this, linking all your Matrix nodes on a storyboard might take a huge amount of time if you're trying to cover all of Seattle, because linking storyboard nodes to other topics is unnecessarily extremely long and painful (and carpal-tunnel-inducing) in the current RealmWorks version.