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MToscan
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Join Date: Oct 2010
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Old January 1st, 2015, 04:30 AM
Hello everybody, I was a Kickstarter backer but I have started working on RW just a few weeks ago. I am really excited to finally have found the ultimate way to organize almost 30 years of notes and campaign material.
As a starting point, I am importing data from the 1987 Forgotten Realms grey box set and canon Greyhawk's Folio/Box/FTA etc. I am already seeing the whole content organized in an infinitely clearer way and figuring out links I never thought about before.
There are several entries in the settings, though, that I am unsure how to classify. I might as well just skip them, but i'd like to have the whole set at hand when I bring my laptop to the gaming table.
A few examples:
Languages: i store them as Other>General Article. Can't find another good place.
Books written by important mages: they are not exactly named items since they're not "one of a kind".
Adventuring companies (including npcs) do you classify them as military of other groups?
Wines/drinks, I classified them as mundane items, while generic magic items are "special item" (es. the codex of infinite planes). Named items are just things like "Blackrazor" or "King Azoun's shortsword".
Spells, like Iuz specialty priest spells I classify as Abilities>Spell/Power.
Articles like years, seasons, weather, etc. fall on User notes, but maybe they can be Other>General Article as well.
How do you deal with non standrad topics other than people, groups, places etc.?
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Parody
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Join Date: Jan 2013
Location: Rochester, MN
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Old January 1st, 2015, 08:13 AM
If something doesn't fit and you're going to enter a bunch of them, make your own category.

Also consider that there's a lot of details in our systems, settings, sourcebooks, and adventures that you might not want to bother entering. Not everything needs a Topic/Article, and not everything that might warrant a Topic/Article needs to be entered right now. If you have no plans to let your players have the Codex of the Infinite Planes, then you don't need to put in all the details about it. If they're not going to fight King Azoun, you don't need his game stats or details of his personal items.

Your Specifics:

Languages: I'd just make a list in a Tag Domain, but if you're going to detail some of them then a custom Category might be useful?
Books: Unless you need to detail their contents, no Topic/Article. Otherwise they're an Item of some kind.
Adventuring Company: If there's a lot of them, then make a Category. Otherwise, Group: Other.
Drinks: Maybe a list of them in a Topic/Article? Doesn't seem worth individual Topics/Articles. (You might describe them in the Topic for the place where they're found: a tavern, region, etc.)
Non-Unique Magic Items: the Global Category for these is Special Item.
Unique Items: the Global Category for these is Named Item.
Spells: Spell/Power, though I'd make my own Category that fits better.
Calendar-related stuff: One Topic/Article that describes how the calendar works.
Weather/Climate: General Gameplay Article if there's game effects you want to detail, otherwise no Topic/Article or maybe one Topic/Article for all terms just to describe them.


Last edited by Parody; January 1st, 2015 at 08:35 AM. Reason: Added responses for specifics.
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MNBlockHead
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Join Date: Dec 2014
Location: Twin Cities Area, MN, USA
Posts: 1,325

Old January 1st, 2015, 12:06 PM
It really depends on how your are going to use this information. Since I am fairly new to RW and am building my own campaign world from the ground up, I find it helpful to think through these things. This is how, I think, I would handle these items in my campaign.

1. Languages

If you merely want to have a list of languages organized by race/region, I think a sincle topic that using sections and snippets for further organization and description. I would put the "languages" article under "abilities". If you want to have detailed notes with grammar, glossaries, images of scripts, etc., I would have a languages section under abilities and a separate article for each language under the languages section.

2. For books I would have a series of articles containing random roll tables of titles and for some more important books, brief descriptions. I might have separate topics for different types of libraries/regions/languages, further organized by rarity/value. I would file books categories and topics under Game Mechanics—>Equipment

3. An adventuring company would best be a group in either the story or world almanac so I can use "relationships" link to it. If you have a lot of adventuring parties that you want to have info stored on but are not that crucial to the world or current story, you can put them into a Group List.

4. Drinks: I agree that a single topic would work best for me. I would further organize within the topic by sections and snippets. I would put it under "Equipment"

5. Non-unique magic items. "Special Item" under equipment.

6. Unique items would be "Named Equipment" or "Named Object"

7. Spells, I agree with your approach. I like to have a separate topic for spells, feats, etc. so that all the mechanics can be pulled up in a click.

8. Currently I manage calendars entirely outside RW. This is the most important gaping hole in the product: the lack of custom calendars. I can create articles describing each calendar, but that just isn't very useful to me and I use a Google Spreadsheet calendar comparisons and descriptions. I haven't found RW useful for calendar info.

9. Weather / Climate. I generally put this into the place topics, but it might make more sense to create a variety of climate articles that I could then link to a place. The climate article might have random-roll tables, though I find it less work to find an Earth equivalent to my fantasy world location and just to place-and-date historical weather look ups. In a large game world, weather is so complex, that trying to create climate and weather tables for every location is impractical. Even with date & location lookup sites, I often just wing it.
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