Usage of groups

[Vargr]

Originally Posted by kbs666

That does bring up something, and maybe the calendar will help with this, most people aren't at the same place all day every day. Having them contained by where the PC's are most likely to interact with them and relationships to the rest of the places they go works but it would be nice if there was a way to set the time of day, and day of week/month, and have RW adjust where everyone is for me.

Isn't this when the GM should earn his money and just decide where the NPCs are, when the characters need them or might run into them?

Otherwise we run into the problem of the players looking for the contact at the harbour front but the automated process has decided the contact is at the cabin in the mountains - and never shall the twine meet... Essentially stalling the campaign.

[Vargr]

I contain NPCs in groups, organized upon Houses.

The same with PCs.

Most NPCs are pretty one-dimensional, so there often isn't much need to for much detail. (Gruff is a guard at the temple, he often sells information so he can pay his gambling obsession; that sort of thing.)

So, the members of the great merchant Mathews' family and close household is placed in the group House Mathews.

The NPCs working for the great merchant Mathews are simply grouped under Mathews' Trading House under Groups.

NPCs and PCs without family or group affiliation are placed under People.

Well, it works well for me in a fantasy setting and in Star Wars.

[kbs666]

Originally Posted by Vargr

Isn't this when the GM should earn his money and just decide where the NPCs are, when the characters need them or might run into them?

Otherwise we run into the problem of the players looking for the contact at the harbour front but the automated process has decided the contact is at the cabin in the mountains - and never shall the twine meet... Essentially stalling the campaign.

I aim for a more sandbox build to my campaign so I try to put many different adventure hooks into the setting. Which ones the players run into and what rumors they believe, or are interested in, is something I try not to control.

But if the PC's are looking for a PC in the middle of the night at his work place then no, I don't let them find him no matter what the software says.

However my primary starting town has dozens of NPC's some of whom move around quite a lot. Being able to automate that would be very helpful.

[MNBlockHead]

Automating the location of an NPC in RW would be a major development. I'm not saying that it wouldn't be cool, but I don't think that many players would put this functionality very high up the list over the long list of other feature requests.

I generally take the "wing it" approach when it comes to this. I make things complicated enough for me. Should I find it important to the story and experience to have an NPC with a schedule or a percent chance at being at a one location over another, I would handle it this way:

1. I would create the place topics for all the locations that the NPC may be.
2. I would create a person topic for the NPC
3. In the NPC's person topic I would create a snippet for "schedule" and I would create a table that would list the places and times the NPC is there. This should auto-link to the pre-created placed. If I really wanted to get fancy, I would create a random-roll tables for different time periods of the day and even the season/month. If I REALLY wanted to go crazy, I would also create various routes that the NPC may take to go from one place to another.

But at some point, I have to say that I'm not trying to program the next Skyrim. I have a much better computer in my head and I can just "become" the NPC and determine where that NPC decided to be at a given time.

I would probably only go through the hassle of creating complicated schedules for a very specific quest where the players have to track down a number of NPCs, perhaps in a limited time period, and I want to make it "fair" to them or make it feel less as if I'm leading them on. Bring some randomness to it. It would basically be a mini game in the overall campaign and not a major mechanic of the campaign itself.

That said...if someone were to create a bunch of NPCs that included schedule tables that I could plug into my world and they made that available in the content market, I would probably use them, if the NPCs otherwise made sense and were fun.

[martinmaster]

Thanks for those fast replies and enlightening ideas.

Indeed, I might learn to use relationships more efficiently, and I admit that the numbers of ways you can use either a combination of relationship versus qualifiers tends to confuse me a little.Always thinking about a military type structure... what is better:resident, member, minion (as some organization are above other (like a HQ), and especialy how to best deal with the relationships of leaders towar groups without multiplicating endlessly the number and types of relationships.

Here a typical mil org structure:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...e_Division.png

Each structure on that chart has its own sub structure divided in companies, squads, and individual members. So each sub category is also a member (contained) of all the above units and might also have a relationship of master-minion or superior subordinate with above units.

So , hearing the above mentionned suggestions , one of the good solution would be if Im Right :

- Create all individual in PEOPLE
- Set them up in a structure that is very general and will become quickly overwhelmed by the sheer number of individuals, and jus dont bother too much about it as i would no use PEOPLE to find anybody, but rather GROUPS.
This structure could be like:
- AXIS
- Germany
- Waffen SS
- Werhmacht
- Infantery
- Solider a
- soldier b
- and a list of hundreds of solider following without any more attempt at structure

- PanzerKorp
- Luftwaffe
- Marinekorp

- Militia
- Japan
- Italy

-----------

- ALLIES

---
And in group, it would be structured like



- Army Group A West
- 15th Army
- 26 th division
- 1st Batatalion
- 1st company
- 1 plattoon
- 1 squad
- 2n squad
- 2nd platoon
- 2nd company
- 2nd battalion
- etc...
- 5th div
- 3rd panzer army
- etc..

- Army Group B



- Sub unit would have a reltationship of 1) belongs to or within or 2) would use containement in the GROUP structure or 3 ) BOTH ?

- Also :What would be the qualifier best suited between groups ? Depends on ? Member of ? Resident ? Master , owner etc... this is a little confusing about the pro and cons of different options.

- As for inividuals.... if i understand, all individuals would have a relation ship of belongs to their sub unit, and a qualifier of affiliation-member ? Or resident ? As fol the leader of the group (ie the seargeant) he would have 2 relationships ? a member of the squad... and would have a relationship of Comprise-encompass and a qualifier of master minion ?

Does this make sense, im worried about making a lot of work and in the end having and completely useless and incoherent structure

Thanks guys

[kbs666]

The point of RW is do what works best for you.

If you're really worried build out a test realm first to see how things work before doing anything in your "real" realm.

[AEIOU]

And if RW doesn't do what you need, use the tools you always have and embed them. I use spreadsheets for tracking large groups of NPCs and then I embed the tables. I can more easily add/delete/sort/manipulate an Excel spreadsheet than I can anything in RW (mainly because RW does not allow exporting - but let's stay on topic because that's a whole different rabbit hole).

[martinmaster]

Does anybody have a text clarifying how each relationship and each qualifiers should be used, in relation to one another, and to group versus people.

Like a said the number of different interprations of the proper choice cn become confusion (master,*minion, resident, members...)

[MNBlockHead]

See the Reference Guide, section 2 (p. 45), available from Manual section, available in the Help tab in RealmWorks. Not sure if this has enough detail for you. It would be helpful to have a lot of examples and illustrations, but the user community is the best resource for examples.