First thoughts about RW:PE

[Chemlak]

Much agreement: it's quite hard to grasp that we have here a very flexible, mutable tool for active management of campaign information.

But...

Once we reach the stage of being able to share our work with each other, the starting state matters.

If, for example, I choose to share my current adventure (unlikely, how many people want a Pathfinder adventure for 23rd level characters with 5 mythic tiers set in the Forgotten Realms?), it behooves me to ensure that Iridris (elf female illusionist) isn't inside the Council of Seven (group (criminal)) container because her role in the adventure is to pretend to be an ally of the PCs for a while, and if a GM blindly reveals her and the group (highly likely, since she explicitly tells the PCs about the group), the container relationship is out there.

So really, right now I can structure things however I want, as long as it meets my needs, but when it comes to sharing with others, there are some potential pitfalls we need to be aware of, so that we can make life easier for our fellow GMs who might use our work.

It's in the nature of best practices for other users: there will be GMs out there who will snag encounters and plotlines wholesale from the community repository, and anything we can do to not make them work harder to integrate that work into their own realm for instant use is a good thing.

[Dark Lord Galen]

Originally Posted by Chemlak

Much agreement: it's quite hard to grasp that we have here a very flexible, mutable tool for active management of campaign information.

But...

Once we reach the stage of being able to share our work with each other, the starting state matters.

So really, right now I can structure things however I want, as long as it meets my needs, but when it comes to sharing with others, there are some potential pitfalls we need to be aware of, so that we can make life easier for our fellow GMs who might use our work.
It's in the nature of best practices for other users: there will be GMs out there who will snag encounters and plotlines wholesale from the community repository, and anything we can do to not make them work harder to integrate that work into their own realm for instant use is a good thing.

True,,, and All of your collective comments has me relooking at that cross usability as well. Although I may have differing campaign or approach. a consistency of logic will become essential for sharing ideas and those idea landing in the appropriate places.
For Example, I have placed the vast majority of my "people" (NPC and Others) into the Individual "Slot"... not really looking at their relationships unless they were members of a guild, order, etc.... these comments has me reevaluating that approach.

[enrious]

Originally Posted by Dark Lord Galen

these comments has me reevaluating that approach.

Me as well.

[Chemlak]

Glad I've been able to provoke some thought.

Of course, one of the beauties of RW is that there isn't really a "right" or "wrong" way to do things, so category-wise it really doesn't matter if things aren't perfectly aligned, even when it comes to sharing. What works for you should work for me with a minimum of fuss, and I'm picky enough that I'll recategorise things to better suit my own structure if yours is different.

The only stumbling block I've identified so far is the container/relationship issue, since it's the only thing I can see where the reveal state of the topics can have unintended consequences (with players being able to see the container relationship if both the container and the governed topic are revealed). There might be more.

Not a big deal, in the grand scheme of things, but worthy of consideration.

[Coldashes]

Sadly I'm too far into my Exalted Campaign to restructure everything but I will be doing things differently in my next game solely for the purpose of sharing.

[meek75]

This has been an interesting discussion. Here is my struggle - LWD has discouraged us from defining our own categories if we want to share content, but the pre-defined categories are just not what I want for my realm. I get much more functionality by creating rule-set specific categories and labels. For example, when putting in an NPC, I want to be able to use snippets that have the correct names. If my rules set calls for "Brawn" instead of "Strength" I want it to read "Brawn". If my NPC needs a "Reputation" stat, I want to see it and have it labeled correctly. I know I can create a text snippet and put anything I want in it, but the beauty of RW is supposed to be the ability to customize it to fit my needs. If customization means shooting yourself in the foot from a sharing perspective that is frustrating. What approach are you guys using to balance the requirements of the purposed marketplace with customization of the realm?

[Indus101]

Meek, this was a question I had. If you're creating custom categories, will they not be seen by players when they sync to your realm?

[MaxSupernova]

Can I just comment that this would be far, far simpler if we could get access to the sample example realms that were promised?

They don't even need to be "marketplace" ready. Now that PE is out, just share them with all of us users. We all download the sample realm and view it in RW and get to see how it's structured and laid out and then we can talk about more concrete things.

[monsterfurby]

I guess this is the dilemma that RW has been struggling with from the beginning - data can be arranged in a billion different ways due to the system's open nature; however, unless you have a REALLY good idea of what you want to do and can do from the very beginning, there's a real possibility that your entries may be either too broad to be useful in a roleplaying context or too specific to be of use to anyone unfamiliar with your structure.

For example, my group and I have had trouble with the predefined entry types, most of which are completely useless to us. We are playing FATE Core, a system where character background and game values ("Aspects") and character background/description are to a large degree the same thing. The massively detailed character entry that RW has by default doesn't really work when your system is based around compressing qualitative information about a character into concise terms that are then used in the game itself.

[Pollution]

Originally Posted by MaxSupernova

Can I just comment that this would be far, far simpler if we could get access to the sample example realms that were promised?

They don't even need to be "marketplace" ready. Now that PE is out, just share them with all of us users. We all download the sample realm and view it in RW and get to see how it's structured and laid out and then we can talk about more concrete things.

That is a REALLY good idea.

I personally would love this.

I've been putting in different things kind of slapdash, just to test the system, and get some quick and dirty work done for my own games, but I'm dying to see how the "official" layout would be (I know, there's no official way of doing things, but it would REALLY help to see an example by the devs).