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MNBlockHead
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Old January 7th, 2016, 06:13 PM
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Originally Posted by Madmaxneo View Post
All great ideas from both you and Silveras. I might make a category entitled Flora/Fauna then make a few sub sections for the flora and fauna with names like mundane and fantasy in the titles. But then that may be to much. I vaguely remember something about tags or nicknames, is that part of RW or am I imagining things?
You can create tag snippets which are great for adding more complicated categorization without making your navigation list too messy. Tag snippets do have the danger of leading you into spending more time classifying your topics than is warranted by any search benefit. But it could be helpful for organizing your creatures into mundane and fantasy.

My campaign is for 5e, so I have a tag snippet in my monster articles to categorize as celestial, humanoid, beast, fey, undead, etc. I'm also thinking of adding a snippet for encounter environments, based off of the DMG tables. That makes it really easy to filter to only show arctic beasts, for example.

Aliases/nicknames are managed in the "Manage Names" features. I use this all the time. The main advantage is to allow linking on spelling variants and abbreviated versions of monster names. You can also use it to show alternate names, either different languages or different names within the same language. You can select whether or not you want any name shown in navigation. I would not use names to categorize your creatures, but instead to ensure you can easily find and link to a creature that may be referred to by many names in your campaign.

RW Project: Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition homebrew world
Other Tools: CampaignCartographer, Cityographer, Dungeonographer, Evernote
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Madmaxneo
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Old January 7th, 2016, 06:43 PM
Ah yes, tag snippets, they are useful. I had forgotten about them.
Aliases /nicknames is something I was searching for earlier but could not find. I will have to look into "Manage Names". There are a few things I have entered recently that I would like to add nicknames to on a few.

There is also the "Suffix" entry that could be used to designate mundane or one of the categories you mentioned.

GM of HARP, Rolemaster, Spacemaster, Dreamchaser, Savage Worlds, and a myriad of other not so well known systems.
Software I use for gaming: Realm Works, Inspiration Pad Pro, Ebon, Aeon Timeline, Scrivener, Syrinscape, Hexagon, Fantasia Archive, OneNote, and a spreadsheet program.
Mapping programs: CC3+, MapForge, Worldographer, Xara Photo and Graphic Designer 10.
Programming experience: Java and Javascript (Maptools and PDF programming).
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MNBlockHead
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Old January 7th, 2016, 07:09 PM
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Originally Posted by Madmaxneo View Post
There is also the "Suffix" entry that could be used to designate mundane or one of the categories you mentioned.
I would caution you to be careful with using prefixes and suffixes to categorize articles and topics in this way. There are plenty of discussions about the best use of these fields in the forums, but here are my thoughts, based on my hard lessons learned:
  • Prefix and Suffix are just text fields. You have to type everything in and can't have a pick-list. This makes it more likely for typos to cause mischief and is less efficient in terms of data entry.
  • Sorting and foldering in the navigation pane has diminishing returns the more content you enter. Once your realm gets large and complicated enough, you'll find that the ability to filter based on tags is a life saver.
  • The consensus on prefixes seems to be, and my personal experience echos this, that the best use of prefixes is to enter map area/room numbers. Most of my content I create myself, so I didn't see the wisdom of this until I started entering some purchased content from PDF.
  • I find suffixes are better used for metagaming information not in-game categorizations. For example, my main use for suffixes is to enter a short name for the adventure the topic belongs to. This is information that I like to see in the navigation pane. Also, given that I generally enter blocks of content for the same adventure at a time, tag snippets don't really add any data-entry efficiencies and typos are less of an issue because I'm entering the same content in the field from one topic to the next within a short time period.
  • Suffixes and Prefixes do not aid complex searching. Since you cannot limit a search term to a specific field, the search term is searched for in all content. But, with tags, you can select multiple, specific tags in your query, allowing for sophisticated filtering if you've put together a good tagging scheme.

Just some considerations based upon my experience. YMMV.

RW Project: Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition homebrew world
Other Tools: CampaignCartographer, Cityographer, Dungeonographer, Evernote

Last edited by MNBlockHead; January 7th, 2016 at 07:14 PM. Reason: typos
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Madmaxneo
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Old January 7th, 2016, 10:49 PM
I am adding the creature stats to add the creatures and I am having an issue in trying to figure out how to add this snippet or what have you.
In the game I run they have RR's (Resistance Rolls). There are 3 RR types, Stamina, Will, and Magic. Each one of those has a number that adds to the roll. How would I add all that as either part of the statistics or some other section definition? Basically the section would have the title RR's and have 3 sub snippets (or what have you) of the RR types with a text entry for a number to be entered. I can't figure out how to do this?

EDIT: I get how to add sub sections and what not, but that honestly takes up so much space by the time I am done adding everything. Is there not an easy way to add sections Like Hits and then have a space for text directly next to it instead of below it?

Edit: I am creating another topic for this as there is more.

GM of HARP, Rolemaster, Spacemaster, Dreamchaser, Savage Worlds, and a myriad of other not so well known systems.
Software I use for gaming: Realm Works, Inspiration Pad Pro, Ebon, Aeon Timeline, Scrivener, Syrinscape, Hexagon, Fantasia Archive, OneNote, and a spreadsheet program.
Mapping programs: CC3+, MapForge, Worldographer, Xara Photo and Graphic Designer 10.
Programming experience: Java and Javascript (Maptools and PDF programming).

Last edited by Madmaxneo; January 7th, 2016 at 11:01 PM.
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Vargr
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Old January 7th, 2016, 10:55 PM
I normally use prefixes to have topics listed in a logical order in the navigation pane.

Say, organisation of the army of Wun Su: I would like General to be listed before Colonel, so prefix is useful.

Vargr
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Legend has it, that the Tarrasque is a huge fighting beast, perpetually hungry.
Sleet entered History when he managed to get on the back of a Tarrasque only to be ridden out of History shortly after.

Using Realm Works, Worldographer (Hexographer 2), LibreOffice, Daz3D Studio, pen & paper for the realm World of Temeon and the system LEFD - both homebrewed.

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MNBlockHead
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Old January 8th, 2016, 11:34 AM
@MadMaxNeo

Would you ever filter on those numeric values? How often do you search for a creature with a specific AC or number of hit points. You can't currently run comparative searches (AC>15), but even if you could, I still don't see myself filtering creatures by AC.

I thought about adding fields for AC, HP, attributes, etc., but found that to be ugly and hard to look at in game.

I much prefer everything together in a statblock, for which I use a nicely formatted HTML table, with shading, font formatting, etc. I just created a template in PhraseExpress, a text-expander program, which makes it easy to drop into any text snippet in RW.

RW Project: Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition homebrew world
Other Tools: CampaignCartographer, Cityographer, Dungeonographer, Evernote
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Madmaxneo
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Old January 8th, 2016, 01:15 PM
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Originally Posted by MNBlockHead View Post
@MadMaxNeo

Would you ever filter on those numeric values? How often do you search for a creature with a specific AC or number of hit points. You can't currently run comparative searches (AC>15), but even if you could, I still don't see myself filtering creatures by AC.

I thought about adding fields for AC, HP, attributes, etc., but found that to be ugly and hard to look at in game.

I much prefer everything together in a statblock, for which I use a nicely formatted HTML table, with shading, font formatting, etc. I just created a template in PhraseExpress, a text-expander program, which makes it easy to drop into any text snippet in RW.
I am not sure what you mean by would I ever filter on those numeric values.

The problem is I have to enter in a load of monsters and I would rather have all the sections defined so all I need to do is enter the actual stats. Having to re-enter every stat name would be time consuming.

GM of HARP, Rolemaster, Spacemaster, Dreamchaser, Savage Worlds, and a myriad of other not so well known systems.
Software I use for gaming: Realm Works, Inspiration Pad Pro, Ebon, Aeon Timeline, Scrivener, Syrinscape, Hexagon, Fantasia Archive, OneNote, and a spreadsheet program.
Mapping programs: CC3+, MapForge, Worldographer, Xara Photo and Graphic Designer 10.
Programming experience: Java and Javascript (Maptools and PDF programming).
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MNBlockHead
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Old January 8th, 2016, 06:28 PM
Still think it would be easier to cut and paste nicely formatted HTML statblock into a text snippet than have to deal with lots of data entry fields. Looks better as well. To make it even easier, use a text expander.

1.png

RW Project: Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition homebrew world
Other Tools: CampaignCartographer, Cityographer, Dungeonographer, Evernote
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Madmaxneo
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Old January 8th, 2016, 11:16 PM
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Originally Posted by MNBlockHead View Post
Still think it would be easier to cut and paste nicely formatted HTML statblock into a text snippet than have to deal with lots of data entry fields. Looks better as well. To make it even easier, use a text expander.
How does one create a "nicely formatted HTML statblock"?

GM of HARP, Rolemaster, Spacemaster, Dreamchaser, Savage Worlds, and a myriad of other not so well known systems.
Software I use for gaming: Realm Works, Inspiration Pad Pro, Ebon, Aeon Timeline, Scrivener, Syrinscape, Hexagon, Fantasia Archive, OneNote, and a spreadsheet program.
Mapping programs: CC3+, MapForge, Worldographer, Xara Photo and Graphic Designer 10.
Programming experience: Java and Javascript (Maptools and PDF programming).
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Silveras
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Old January 9th, 2016, 08:51 AM
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Originally Posted by Madmaxneo View Post
I am not sure what you mean by would I ever filter on those numeric values.
Tags are primarily intended for use in filtering what you see in the Navigation panel. If you want to find all "Human" creatures, for example, you would go to the magnifying glass over the Navigation pane. There, you would click on the blue "tag" icon, and select the "Human" tag. Now, your list of items in the left-hand pane is limited to those with the "Human" tag (or their containers, if you have the hierarchical display turned on).

The benefit of tags giving a controlled list is incidental.. that's not what they're for.

Going forward, though, with the option to auto-assign tags based on recognizing the text, I expect the use of tag-based snippets to decline.
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