Realm Works - Lerchanth video

[LeeSmith]

Hi all, I did a 8 min video of my Home Brew world of Lerchanth some time ago, and thought I'd share it here.

https://www.facebook.com/TheMadCarto...75433601366515

Comments welcome.

[MNBlockHead]

Thank you so much for this. I think one of the most useful resources for new user is videos of other users showing how they have set up their worlds.

You asked for comments. My first is whether you have entered in any of the mechanics? I didn't see any links to rules. Also when you show the dragon NPC, there is no link to a dragon article. For monsters, now that I use and integrate HeroLabs, I rarely crate monster articles in RW. I'm wondering if you are doing the same thing with monsters.

Also, you seem to be really into maps. Do you have a world map that you can then click on continents or regions to bring up the topics for those smaller areas and continue to drill in? If found that after using RW for a while, I went back and redid all my maps because I was trying to put too many pins on my world and country maps. So I carved them up so I can "drill down" in them via pins. I'm wondering what your approach is.

Again, thanks so much for sharing!

[Silveras]

Originally Posted by MNBlockHead

You asked for comments. My first is whether you have entered in any of the mechanics? I didn't see any links to rules. Also when you show the dragon NPC, there is no link to a dragon article.

I will comment on this from my experience.

After my first "scratch-pad" Realm, I tried entering a Paizo Adventure Path (Second Darkness), and I entered the mechanics after I had completed the initial adventure entry. I learned a lot by doing things, and am currently revising how this is entered.

Actually having the Mechanics in the Realm is a mixed blessing.

Pros

• Having the ability to open any Rules topic in a new Tab during play is fantastic.
• Seeing Rules topics highlighted as links helps make it easy to remember that there may be specific issues in a given encounter.
• Monster entries are a good place to put "what the PCs know about this creature type" (Knowledge check results)

Cons

• Many Rules Article titles are common words (such as "Cover", "Concealment", "Movement", "Small", "Large", etc.) that occur again and again in non-rules contexts. The need to click through repeated suggestions of these is frustrating, and it is easy to miss and "Skip" when you meant "Accept" (or the other way around). Using case-sensitivity is not a help, though, as the terms are not capitalized in the text most of the time.
• The need to manually create plural versions of some terms is mildly annoying. I don't know that there's anything LoneWolf can actually do about it.. but that doesn't stop it from being a minor annoyance.
• At the time I was doing the entry, this was well before the ability to pick a Game System at Realm creation was implemented. Even so, there are a lot of things to categorize separately (so I made a number of local, custom Article types), and the available icons are just not enough to visually flag the variety properly.

[LeeSmith]

Originally Posted by MNBlockHead

Thank you so much for this. I think one of the most useful resources for new user is videos of other users showing how they have set up their worlds.

You asked for comments. My first is whether you have entered in any of the mechanics? I didn't see any links to rules. Also when you show the dragon NPC, there is no link to a dragon article. For monsters, now that I use and integrate HeroLabs, I rarely crate monster articles in RW. I'm wondering if you are doing the same thing with monsters.

Also, you seem to be really into maps. Do you have a world map that you can then click on continents or regions to bring up the topics for those smaller areas and continue to drill in? If found that after using RW for a while, I went back and redid all my maps because I was trying to put too many pins on my world and country maps. So I carved them up so I can "drill down" in them via pins. I'm wondering what your approach is.

Again, thanks so much for sharing!

Mechanics... Yes, I currently have 3 1/2 Monster Manuals in there (Planning on more too) and a few other incidentals. I plan on putting in Traps, pricing for Inn's, Food etc for average prices, and some spells.

Currently no "Rules"... But yes Mechanics is the place for it.

Herolab... I only have a few things linked to HeroLab. Characters and NPC's.

Maps... I have created all the "World" maps and are my own creation... I think there are 2 maps in there that I did not create. Yes I love Maps...
If you are on FaceBook: https://www.facebook.com/TheMadCarto...rsCartography/
is my Cartography page. (I have not done anything in some time due to working 55-60 hours a week for months now...)

Drilling Down on Maps... Yes I have some of that in place now. But most of my world is not linked that way "YET", but I plan on doing that.

I have since added the following:

Seasons
Months
Guilds - Currently not fleshed out yet but I have some info in there.
Titles

Also, I have EVERYTHING revealed. I am hoping to sell my Lerchanth once we can do so.

I am hoping to make a new video this weekend to show off some of the new stuff I have added.

Great comments, Thanks!

[MNBlockHead]

Originally Posted by LeeSmith

Mechanics... Yes, I currently have 3 1/2 Monster Manuals in there (Planning on more too) and a few other incidentals. I plan on putting in Traps, pricing for Inn's, Food etc for average prices, and some spells.

Currently no "Rules"... But yes Mechanics is the place for it.

Interesting. I started with the rules. I put in the D&D basic rules, but kinda wish I didn't. I need to go back and adjust all the link rules for those article names. Having all those common words as article names makes saving content a slog as I have to tell RW to ignore certain words when creating links. Also, I just don't find that I look that much up. I would feel differently if I could have the entire PHB and DMG entered, for swift looking up less-commonly used rules.

It will be interesting to see how they name articles for massive rulesets like Pathfinder. If they don't use some special naming convention, I worry that it will break the linking.

Unlike you, I stoped adding in monsters, unless they are custom or I need to record campaign-specific notes about a monster. I just use hero lab and the books.

Magic items, poisons, diseases, random treasure tables, and other game aids are for more useful references to be able to link to and I rely on these extensively.

Herolab... I only have a few things linked to HeroLab. Characters and NPC's.

I link as I prep. I create HL portfolios for encounters, NPCs, and beasts for specific scenes as I prep. When things go sandboxy, however, it would be nice to have HL portfolios linked to monster articles for all monsters. I would glady pay a lot of money to have the Monster Manual and Kobold Press's Tome of Beasts in RW with HL integration, but I don't have the time to do it myself. Barely have enough time to write and prep for adventures.

Maps... I have created all the "World" maps and are my own creation... I think there are 2 maps in there that I did not create. Yes I love Maps...
If you are on FaceBook: https://www.facebook.com/TheMadCarto...rsCartography/
is my Cartography page. (I have not done anything in some time due to working 55-60 hours a week for months now...)

I don't have a FB account but from what I could see from your pages public content (and your video showing your realm), I would love to see more.

Also, I have EVERYTHING revealed. I am hoping to sell my Lerchanth once we can do so.

I am hoping to make a new video this weekend to show off some of the new stuff I have added.

That's great, best of luck with that. I could definitely see buying it. While I have my own campaign world, it would be nice to pick certain towns, merchants, NPCs, etc. from other campaign worlds that I like copy to my realm.

[Jay_NOLA]

Thanks, great video & love your CC3 map.
Really like that you showed off how you set up your world.

[LeeSmith]

Originally Posted by Jay_NOLA

Thanks, great video & love your CC3 map.
Really like that you showed off how you set up your world.

Thank you! I'm enjoying this. I have been wanting to map my world for about 20 years now. I am finally getting around to it.

Lee

[Exmortis]

Always great to see how others use RW, organize and handle the information within it.

It is these types of posts that give others ideas on how they can achieve the same goals.

[MNBlockHead]

@Silveras. I agree that having rules articles as common words is an annoyance. I've thought of using ALL CAPS in all rules articles, or at least those with titles that are more likely to cause this issue. Then the case-sensitivity settings might help.

[Joe]

Keep in mind you can control automatic linking on a per-name basis in the Manage Names dialog. Setting a name to "Never" priority will never have that name bother you for links ever again (though you can still manually create them).

Of course, if you still want intentional rules references to be automatically linked, you can set up an alternate name to indicate you DO want it to link. For example:

Public Name: Cover, Priority: Never
Alternate Name: [Cover], Priority: Normal

This will cause all instances of "Cover" and "cover" in the text to be ignored, but allows you to type "[Cover]" if you mean to refer to the specific rules construct. Of course, I picked square brackets for no reason in particular. You can probably come up with your own special syntax in combination with the case sensitivity settings to make it unambiguous when you want to reference the rules article vs just using the English word.

There's extensive explanation of how it works by clicking the blue info icon in the upper right of the Manage Names window. Be sure also to click the "Show More" button for even more information, explaining each option in detail.

As far as pluralization goes, we do have a feature coming in the next release to address this. It probably won't solve all problems (as seamlessly solving it would be a LOT of work). But we found a way to use an existing .NET feature with minimal effort on our part that should alleviate some of the burden.