Story Almanac vs. World Almanac

[rob]

They really ARE just a first level of filtering and nothing more. I strongly recommend that you start with everything in the Story almanac. As the world evolves, you MAY reach a point where you just find there's too much to sift through all the time. At that point - IF it comes - you can then start moving stuff into the World almanac that isn't pertinent to the current game sessions. I'm sure it will all make much more sense when there's an actual use and benefit to having the alternate almanac.

[Parody]

FWIW, I gave up on the Story Almanac early and put everything in the World Almanac, because it's described as the place to put everything.

The way the Almanacs are designed and described it seems strange for them to be completely separate in the UI. The World Almanac should always show everything, the Story Almanac should be a subset of it you want for ease of access. You don't Move things to the Story Almanac, you Add them to or Show them in the Story Almanac. Internally it's just another tag on which to filter. (This would also allow custom "Almanacs" if you wanted to have such a thing. "Relevant Mechanics" might be nice for some but not everyone would want a button for it.)

[Farling]

Originally Posted by rob

They really ARE just a first level of filtering and nothing more. I strongly recommend that you start with everything in the Story almanac. As the world evolves, you MAY reach a point where you just find there's too much to sift through all the time. At that point - IF it comes - you can then start moving stuff into the World almanac that isn't pertinent to the current game sessions. I'm sure it will all make much more sense when there's an actual use and benefit to having the alternate almanac.

This was the view that I use too.

The Story Almanac is the current working set of topics.

The World Almanac is the place to put topics that you aren't interested in for the moment (e.g. a bit like archiving them away for later use).

[zarlor]

I would add that when all is said and done the only difference it makes to having anything in either place is for that top-level visual look at things and how they are organized in the left-hand column. All the things I end up using the most, which is following links in topics or using links from relationships to a given topic as shown on the right-hand column, will happily link to whatever it needs to no matter if it's in World or Story. So it's really just about how you want things to look at that top-level organizational level, really. That's it. All other functionality is there no matter where you put the topics.

[AEIOU]

Thanks for talking me in off the ledge, Rob.

I think I'm going to try Parody's approach -- put it all in World and pull what you need into Story as your game progresses. I've been trying to work the other way around trying to figure out what I don't need that I can move into World and I'm making this more complicated than it needs to be....

[Portilis]

Working on my current project (a Pathfinder campaign), my intent has been to put all general content in the world almanac, only using the story almanac for plotlines and specified encounters.

[rob]

There's no "right" way to do anything. Just start out relatively simple and introduce complexity as the need arises.