Looking for advises on adventure data entering methods

[Valyar]

Hello all,

I would like to pick your brains about alternate approaches for adventure data entering. If moderators find this post to be for the "RW in Action" forum, please move it.

I am using Realm Works for approximately 9 months and I entered almost all data from Dark Heresy 2 books and published adventures for this edition. Quite a daunting task, but as I don't believe there will be CM packs for discontinued system (and this is what i play mostly) the time was well spent.

The result is quite amazing, I am much more organized, prepare for session with increased enthusiasm and game master better, as everything possible from rule, monster or world information is few clicks away. Having everything at one place is fantastic.

In the process I was re-visiting the structure, organizing it even further until the mechanics and world section was almost perfect... except the adventures...

This is where I need your ideas - how to make the best data entry for an adventure, that is structured in story-like format instead of the scene-like format typical for D&D/Pathfinder adventures?

Attached you will find screen shots from my realm's world almanac, adventure layout... and two page from DH adventure (1st edition, I am catching up with that now lol )

As you can see, the adventures published by Fantasy Flight Games are everything but brief on text. Mechanical references and explanations are intertwined within the paragraphs with the "flavor text" and sometimes important for the plot information is disclosed in similar way.

So, sometimes it is hard to take those walls of text and make them "fit" into the RW's topic structure and keep the same flow of events and have the presentation easy to follow during session where you have much more tasks at hand.

I have been experimenting with various approaches over the months:

• Long sections that contain flavor or explanation for the GM/PC are put into "Further Information" topics, scene-looking content is put into "Scene" type with slight modification to add participants, extract "challenges", "rewards" and etc. from the text, but keeping the same order of paragraphs.
• When it comes to dungeons or other city-crawling activity I use combination of "Adventure site" and Location. Location if it is general object that is not specific for the adventure (i.e. re-usable) and "adventure site" if it will be adventure-specific without re-use value outside of the current context.
• Adventures that are mainly heavy on text that provide overall view leaving all to the GM i put as "Further Information" and workflow of reading organized by prefix and the storyboard function for example.
• All adventure content is nested inside the main container (using "Storyline") and organized in lists (group, individual, places, others) and have prefix and suffixes

I am trying to follow the same pattern, but sometimes i deviate and things get different and "messy". Maybe I dwell too much on this adventure thing, but I am perfectionist (and suffer greatly for that) and want to make the experience for me and my players as best as possible.

So, any thought, comment, criticism, suggestions or ideas?