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kate
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Join Date: Aug 2013
Posts: 41

Old September 8th, 2014, 09:31 AM
The Story/World almanacs have a topic type called "Group (Ethnic)" which the Tips & Tricks manual says is suitable for elves, dwarves, and the like.

However, the mechanics section has a topic for Race/Species which presumably is also suitable for elves, dwarves, and the like.

How should we / how do you use these? Pick one of the two and stick with it? Use the Race/Species entry for basic elf & dwarf info and use Group (Ethnic) for subgroups like "Sylvan elves" vs "High elves"? Put mechanical info in a Race/Species topic and flavour in a Group (Ethnic) topic? I could see the last one complicating linking since there would be for example two topics named "Elves."

I've currently got my flavour and mechanical info mixed together in "Race" custom category pages I made before either of these categories were introduced and I'm trying to figure out how to convert it to the base framework.
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Teresa
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Join Date: Apr 2014
Location: Portugal
Posts: 80

Old September 8th, 2014, 10:03 AM
Although I don't do gaming, just worldbuilding, I do have several Races and I've come up with the same questions. I suspect the answers will all start with "whatever works better for you", so...

After fumbling a bit, I found out it worked better for me to describe the race in the Race category (although I adapted that for me), and then divide the Races into Groups (which are considered Ethnic).

All the hard mechanic aspects are in the Race, but all the flavour is in the groups - to use your words. I create a ethnic-group-topic with the info which is the same for all so I can duplicate it into the real Groups and tweak/add to it as needed.

As for duplicated topic names: The race topic gets the race name, the ethnic groups have their own names (adding the race as defining as most ethnic names are unclear about identifying race).

I do have a problem with a race which has divided into two subraces with slightly different mechanics, but I'm treating them like Races with their own ethnic groups.

Hope my example helps. How have others dealt with this?
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AEIOU
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Join Date: Jan 2012
Posts: 1,147

Old September 8th, 2014, 10:17 AM
You could put everything into either Story or Mechanics and not worry about it.

I would use Story/World for campaign information. Where are they from, leaders, alliances, land holdings, politics, etc. These are things GM/players need to know for how this race/species fits into this particular campaign setting. How long does the race live in this particular setting -- standard humans in medieval vs modern for example have much longer lifespans nowadays and might even have longer-er in a futuristic campaign.

I would use Mechanics for crunch. Darkvision, bonus to INT and DEX, spell resistance. These are things GM/players need to know to build and play a character of this type. These are the die rolls and the default settings.

The differences would become relevant when you build a new campaign and want to move the nuts-and-bolts mechanics over but have a different world structure. An example campaigns set in both Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk -- the races are mostly mechanically the same but the settings have particular nuances.
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