Where to go after finishing the Tutorials?

[Parody]

Originally Posted by tml

I have tried creating my own "Class" tag domain, but I think this is causing the app to crash (bug reports already sent from inside app).

That's weird. If you want a more personal response to an issue, use the Report a Bug page on the website.

Originally Posted by tml

If I delete the unused classes from the Global "Class" tag domain, is there a way to get them back at a later date?

Not at this time. If you want to keep Global items around, you need to hide them instead of deleting. (Uncheck "Shown" for the various Tags/Domains/Categories.)

Normally you can hide things without removing Protection, so you don't have to worry about that.

[Vargr]

Originally Posted by tml

So I spent some time looking online, and RW kept coming up; from what I could find, it seemed like it MIGHT be a good fit, but everything seems so oriented to people who are starting fresh, crafting everything from a single perspective. The adverts made it sound like a version of Evernote that would use language analysis to keep track of cross-references between notes, and provide meaningful structured fields; but in using it, it seems a lot more like a blank canvas than the paint-by-numbers tool I was hoping for.

Well, that is what I am using it for - keeping track of information that are interlinked all over the place.

With all the lore you have to keep track of, I would say that Realm Works is just what you need. You will probably find that one day Realm Works will show you connections and possibilities in your world neither you nor your players had thought of.

The canvas is not blank - that is actually why all the Pathfinder things are there (classes and wutnot) to give the user an idea of how things might be used.

Of course this also means that out-of-the-box you might have features you don't need in your specific system/world.

Luckily you can turn some or all of them off or just ignore them (what I tend to do). You can also make your own as you see fit.

As other have stated - start with entering a little encounter, a bar, a town, a few items. Play around with it. Place an item in a city. Add a cousin to the king, integrate a religion. Find out what works for you.

The strength of Realm Works is that there are so many possibilities and no set way of using it. That is also why it is a little difficult to jump into.

And just ask questions - that's what the rest of us do :-)

[AEIOU]

RW has a very strong and robust structure that is almost universal. While it is fantasy oriented with Pathfinder probably as a basis, I think it will easily expand into a variety of settings once the Marketplace is established and we can download templates. I for one am really looking forward to the Paranoia categories and topics and setup I've seen here on the forums and I hope these are shareable later because I want I want I want.

My approach (which is my plan but I don't stick to as I jump around a lot and I flesh some things out right away rather than create stubs...ooooh shiny, add this!):

0) CTRL-Q, make sure that the tag for "empty" or something like that is active. I will be using CTRL-Q to create all entries and I want my default to be an empty category that I come back to later to complete. So I need to flag these so I can find them easily later.

1) Geography - Enter names of all mountains, rivers, plains, hills, lakes, etc. NO content for any of these topics. I want the names, not the details right now.

2) Towns - Enter names. NO content.

3) Infrastructure - Enter the background things that matter to this campaign like religions, ethnic groups, deities, states, landmarks or points of interest, etc. Flesh these out as appropriate but many will be without content still.

4) People - Enter names of major NPC's. Add background material, history, etc. NO stats or HeroLab details.

5) Adventures and details - Start adding adventure areas, dungeons, etc. Work on the Mechanics section with creatures, poisons, magic items, etc. And most importantly, go back to #1 and start this process over but this time add some more details.

Rinse, repeat ad nauseum....

I prefer building the infrastructure that won't have a lot of links first and add content that will link a lot as I go. This way I don't have to refresh links too often.

A lot of my material is cut/paste from PDFs to build out my campaign setting. I find that I'm frequently supplementing published material with additional commentary, finer details or creating relationships (things that just simply did not exist in the printed material but which were implied or make sense).

[Vargr]

AEIOU's approach - I think - would work very well, especially for people new at RW and people building a world from scratch.

I ought to do something along those lines.

[Lexin]

I think AEIOU's idea looks really good...and I work completely differently.

I'm going to be playing a game later this month, and what I'm doing is adding the details for the game I'm going to be running - and because I'm working to a deadline, I don't have time right now to add too much background.

So I've added the places important to the next game, the NPCs important to the next game, and a storyboard for the upcoming events to hang off. I've added background from previous adventures because that was readily available in Word documents that I used last time we played this campaign and fleshes it out nicely.

I'm currently working my way through maps I've created using the Campaign Cartographer software from Profantasy, adding in the possible routes the party might take to the place the 'real' adventure is due to happen.

Today, my plan is to flesh out events which may happen at their destination. So that will be fun for me.

[AEIOU]

Your approach looks good Lexin. I have the luxury of world building for a sandbox setting without a deadline so I'm building the broader context and will worry about storyboard and adventure details later.

I think the beauty of RW is that the more information you add, the more detailed the linkages and the better the understanding of the whole campaign. There are so many links in my campaign that I never would have realized without RW.

As most Pathfinder games are set in Golaria and I suspect we'll likely see setting materials for Golaria added to the pending Marketplace fairly quickly, the work I'm doing will be purchasable soon-ish. I am building out the new Lonelands setting from FGG which I suspect won't have as much immediate support so I'm using it as my guinea pig to learn with.

[kylania]

Originally Posted by AEIOU

I think the beauty of RW is that the more information you add, the more detailed the linkages and the better the understanding of the whole campaign. There are so many links in my campaign that I never would have realized without RW.

Got the the Link Web section of the guides and this absolutely looks like a great tool for that kind of thing. Even just the tutorial content has enough to it to see the potential.

[the_redbeard]

Originally Posted by AEIOU

0) CTRL-Q, make sure that the tag for "empty" or something like that is active. I will be using CTRL-Q to create all entries and I want my default to be an empty category that I come back to later to complete. So I need to flag these so I can find them easily later.

I'm very glad I read this thread just for that tip.