Organizing not-yet-situated adventures

[MNBlockHead]

My current campaign uses a fairly open-world format. This requires that I have in stock a good number of adventures that I can have on hand and drop into the location the party travels to. For example, I have a collection of city adventures that could take place in nearly any city, though a number of them are further broken down into city adventures that would only take place in a city of a particular region.

Obviously, I don't want to link these to a specific city, yet. When I do use them, then I would. My initial though is to create a "Place" in the world almanac, called "Unsituated" and under it have a number of subcategories, (e.g. "cities", "rural settlements", "wilderness") and further break down from there as I build up my stock of adventures. Right now, they would all be lower level adventures. I may further specify adventure level in the name of each adventure, though I would try to make the adventures scaleable by giving alternatives based on level.

I've also thought of using the "Other" section to help keep unsituated adventures from making things too messy.

Right now most of these are quite simple adventures, so I'm not using plots, once I do, however, I would probably make a special plot group for these unsituated adventures.

This is another instance where I can see things getting messy if I don't think it through better. Curious if anyone else does something similar and how they handle it. What issues have you run into? Any tips, especially on how to hook into your realized world once you use a stock adventure. I can imagine that this will be an issue when the marketplace goes live. If I buy an adventure in advance (I tend to buy a bunch at a time so have on hand), how will these be organized so that they don't mess up my campaign records until I'm ready to use them and build in the necessary hooks?

[Farling]

You could put them into a "group" containing hierarchy, and then change their parent topic when you assign a location to them.

[MNBlockHead]

Originally Posted by Farling

You could put them into a "group" containing hierarchy, and then change their parent topic when you assign a location to them.

I only use groups for groups of characters: guilds, cults, important families, and other organizations. So, for me at least, it would not be a good place to start unsituated adventures.

Since an adventure can have several categories of topics, I need to think trough how I'll set them up to minimize the amount of work to hook an adventure into the campaign. Since this is an issue that any purchased content is going to present, it'll be interesting to see how the marketplace will handle this.

[AEIOU]

This sounds like a good use of the Plot Idea. Park them there and group them in an Other List if you feel like it.

[Silveras]

One thing I have found myself doing, and I suspect others have been as well, is trying to fit *everything* into one hierarchy, or a small number of hierarchies.

It doesn't have to be that way. Once I let myself start using "Story Source" as a root to organize content by book, I found a) I could use RealmWorks more flexibly because I stopped trying to MAKE it work a certain way.. and b) organizing things under Story Sources and Mechanics Sources made the use of relationships more obviously valuable.

So, my advice is to experiment. There's no one "right" way, but don't let your assumptions or desire to get it "perfect" block you from trying other ways of organizing your data.

[MNBlockHead]

Yes, plot idea and plot hook seem to be what I should be using. Completely overlooked that. I keep ignoring the "Other" category, forgetting that there are some useful pre-created sections in the World Almanac.

[zazaodh]

Originally Posted by Silveras

One thing I have found myself doing, and I suspect others have been as well, is trying to fit *everything* into one hierarchy, or a small number of hierarchies.

It doesn't have to be that way. Once I let myself start using "Story Source" as a root to organize content by book, I found a) I could use RealmWorks more flexibly because I stopped trying to MAKE it work a certain way.. and b) organizing things under Story Sources and Mechanics Sources made the use of relationships more obviously valuable.

So, my advice is to experiment. There's no one "right" way, but don't let your assumptions or desire to get it "perfect" block you from trying other ways of organizing your data.

Sorry to threadjack slightly, but could you expand upon this?

Maybe I am just being dumb but how exactly would you lay this out?

[Silveras]

Originally Posted by zazaodh

Sorry to threadjack slightly, but could you expand upon this?

Maybe I am just being dumb but how exactly would you lay this out?

Sure..

I'm entering and running Paizo's Rise of the Runelords Anniversary Edition.

(Root 1) Story Source = Rise of the Runelords Anniversary Edition
GM Synopsis: Campaign Synopsis
Storyline: Chapter #
GM Synopsis: Advancement Track
Cast List: Chapter Allies
Cast List: Chapter Enemies
Cast List: Chapter Support
GM Synopsis: Chapter Synopsis
Storyline: Part #
Adventure Location: Location A
Scene: Location A1 Encounter

(Root 2) Geographic Region: Avistan (contient)
Geographic Region: Varisia
Geographic Region: Magnimar Influence
Geographic Region: Sandpoint Hinterlands
Community: Sandpoint
Other key Locations (including Location A)

(Root 3) Story Source: Wayfinder #7
Storyline: Adventure Article
Adventure Location: Adventure Site
Location: Room 1 in Adventure Site (includes Encounter)

(Root 4) Story Source: Magnimar, City of Monuments

(Root x) Story Source: Other sourcebook
Adventure Location: Additional Location in Magnimar
Room # : Room within Adventure Location


Now.. I can add text links to any entry (say the city of Magnimar) to expansion articles that are connected to another book.. and I can add Pins to the Smart Image of Magnimar's district to link articles from multiple sources as needed.

I hope that helps.