Realm Works 1.0.30, 1.0.31, and 1.0.32 Now Available – With Custom Views

[AEIOU]

I have to say that I REALLY like the Views by the way. I've set one up for the major campaign city and one for the greater adventure region around it. That leaves me with several more Views for dungeons, work-in-progress and side adventures that I can bring to the forefront quickly. Kudos to everyone on the team!!!

 

[rob]

I agree the conversion should have done this for you, but you can fix it with only some annoying work. Start by showing the World Almanac. Make a third Topic View and put everything in it by checking Add Topics Shown in View. Then switch to the Story view and remove everything there from the new Topic View, one collection of containment at a time.

Afterwards you can use them just like you used the two before, and still be able to browse and search everything. You can also make more Views if you want.

We considered this approach. However, the drawback with this approach is that you still need to maintain two separate views and manually add/remove items to keep them correct. It's a tedious and error-prone process. I believe the solution we came up with will end up being much simpler and cleaner for everyone. <fingers crossed>

As they get more things done, I hope we'll see more searching and bulk editing functionality added which would make the assignment operation above trivial. ("Not in (View Name)" and "Only in the World Almanac", for example.)

This is definitely the plan. There are a lot of things on the todo list. Once we get through the big things, we'll be able to start knocking off the lower priority, but still quite useful, items.

 

[MNBlockHead]

Love the custom views and an all-inclusive world view, love even more how quickly you released a solution to those like Exmortis who didn't want to have everything in the World View. Kudos to the developers!

 

[Parody]

Just filed a bug report: if you have Invert View turned on and switch back to the World Almanac, you see no Topics. To turn off Invert View, you have to switch to another Topic View because the button has been disabled. Remember to turn it off before switching! :)

Added: One other thing...

We considered this approach. However, the drawback with this approach is that you still need to maintain two separate views and manually add/remove items to keep them correct. It's a tedious and error-prone process. I believe the solution we came up with will end up being much simpler and cleaner for everyone. <fingers crossed>

I think this only works if you have exactly one custom View. As soon as you have more than one (none of which is a superset of all the others) then your world's background information becomes its own independent subset, something you may want to maintain in its own View for ease of access by your players. It'll be interesting to see how people decide to use it.

In any case, this solves the immediate conversion problem of "How do I recover the old separation I had between Story and World?"

 

[Exmortis]

@Rob and @Joe,

Thanks very much for your efforts, the addition is rather neat, and it actually led me to another idea, and you can tell me if is doable. I am playing around now, seeing how I will organize for the future to embrace you changes.

If I had to take the old and the new (views really are cool BTW)and meld them together I would rename World Almanac to "Complete Almanac" and just drop story Almanac, or allow us to say no thanks I do not want the default premade view.

This allows me to create my own views. I would create a "World View" a "View by chapter". Maybe its me but world almanac to me screams "Campaign Setting", and that's how I used it. Think "Inner Sea Guide" and related materials by Paizo is what I had in there.

Now your custom View addition allows me to take a massive 24ish month content story all jammed into one Story almanac and "cut it up" into nice chapter by chapter views, that really is nice, and allows me to even better organize when it comes to actual play.

Your change allows for even more flexibility which is a good thing for sure. Allowing us to rename the almanacs would essentially achieve the same view I had before while embracing your great view additions.

Now go enjoy your weekend and have a beer on me, send me the bill

 

[rob]

Just filed a bug report: if you have Invert View turned on and switch back to the World Almanac, you see no Topics. To turn off Invert View, you have to switch to another Topic View because the button has been disabled. Remember to turn it off before switching! :)

Doh! This will be fixed in the next update.

I think this only works if you have exactly one custom View. As soon as you have more than one (none of which is a superset of all the others) then your world's background information becomes its own independent subset, something you may want to maintain in its own View for ease of access by your players. It'll be interesting to see how people decide to use it.

In any case, this solves the immediate conversion problem of "How do I recover the old separation I had between Story and World?"

The scenario I outlined applies whenever a user wants to maintain two mutually exclusive views, regardless of how many views the user has. The old model moved a topic between views, removing it from one and adding it to the other. The new custom views model allows topics to be added and removed freely, with duplication in as many views as a user wants. So maintaining mutual exclusion requires manually removing a topic from one view and adding it to the other, which is annoying at best (and error-prone).

The "invert" solution provides instant mutual exclusion for any view, allowing the user to only have to maintain the contents of a single view to achieve the same behavior we used to provide. Users can freely have multiple views, and some of them can be intended for mutual exclusion use while others are not. It's flexible and up to the user.

I hope that makes sense...

 

[rob]

@Rob and @Joe,

Thanks very much for your efforts, the addition is rather neat, and it actually led me to another idea, and you can tell me if is doable. I am playing around now, seeing how I will organize for the future to embrace you changes.

If I had to take the old and the new (views really are cool BTW)and meld them together I would rename World Almanac to "Complete Almanac" and just drop story Almanac, or allow us to say no thanks I do not want the default premade view.

This allows me to create my own views. I would create a "World View" a "View by chapter". Maybe its me but world almanac to me screams "Campaign Setting", and that's how I used it. Think "Inner Sea Guide" and related materials by Paizo is what I had in there.

Now your custom View addition allows me to take a massive 24ish month content story all jammed into one Story almanac and "cut it up" into nice chapter by chapter views, that really is nice, and allows me to even better organize when it comes to actual play.

Your change allows for even more flexibility which is a good thing for sure. Allowing us to rename the almanacs would essentially achieve the same view I had before while embracing your great view additions.

Now go enjoy your weekend and have a beer on me, send me the bill

You can delete any custom views at any time. The "Story Almanac" is just another custom view. We auto-created the Story Almanac for you during the upgrade so that it has exactly what it held in previous versions. You can delete it or rename it if you want. You can change the icon used on it. It's just another custom view.

From our perspective, all the topics that comprise your entire realm represent your "world". Everything that takes place is a part of your world, and it's a living, breathing, evolving world. So it made sense to us to call the "Complete" almanac the "World" almanac. We had already established the concept of the "World" within the product, and the term fit perfectly here, so we kept it and applied it to everything.

The only two names you currently cannot rename are "World Almanac" and "Mechanics Reference", since they are "built-in" views. Everything else is a custom view that can be renamed as you see fit. If there's enough demand, we can let users rename the built-in views as well. It just seems like a comparatively low priority item relative to many of the other things on our todo list right now.

 

[Parody]

The "invert" solution provides instant mutual exclusion for any view, allowing the user to only have to maintain the contents of a single view to achieve the same behavior we used to provide.

Technically true*, but not...semantically correct? Inverting a custom View does not necessarily give you your world background, which was the (intended) meaning of Story vs. World before now. For example, if you create two Views holding story items, inverting one gives you the other View's story items as well as your world background. If you want to have a View with just the world background info, you have to create a third custom view and manage it.

Hopefully that makes sense as well.

As far as changing the names (and these are off the top of my head): for World Almanac I'd suggest "All Topics", "Almanac", "Realm". For the Mechanics Reference I'd suggest "All Articles", "Mechanics", "Rules". Letting us rename them would be nice, but would make it even harder to write a manual or other guide. Probably need to think more about these.


* The best kind of true!

 

[Exmortis]

You can delete any custom views at any time. The "Story Almanac" is just another custom view. We auto-created the Story Almanac for you during the upgrade so that it has exactly what it held in previous versions. You can delete it or rename it if you want. You can change the icon used on it. It's just another custom view.

From our perspective, all the topics that comprise your entire realm represent your "world". Everything that takes place is a part of your world, and it's a living, breathing, evolving world. So it made sense to us to call the "Complete" almanac the "World" almanac. We had already established the concept of the "World" within the product, and the term fit perfectly here, so we kept it and applied it to everything.

The only two names you currently cannot rename are "World Almanac" and "Mechanics Reference", since they are "built-in" views. Everything else is a custom view that can be renamed as you see fit. If there's enough demand, we can let users rename the built-in views as well. It just seems like a comparatively low priority item relative to many of the other things on our todo list right now.

I do very much see where your coming from, and its a semantics difference, you say Tomato I say Tomaato kind of thing. So don't fret, I can deal with a simple word change....I think......OK maybe I can

I very much love the mechanics reference, for custom world designers like me I have this FULL of information. I also use it for all the hard to find fiddly rules in PF like Damage to Items which is spread all over the book. I also culminated all the environmental rules for the players, because that plays a massive part in my campaign, no more summer for ever in a temperate world, no sireebob, not in Daede, they will have to contend with a massive desert that makes the Gobi look like paradise, tropical jungle that is akin to the deepest Amazon, and a northern climate to which hardy Canadians would find cold.

I also have a massive section on the character creation rules from day 1 to later in game should the worst happen. Again custom world comes with some custom information, but its all based on PF rules.

Now once the parents leave I will have to sit down and redesign my layout, as much as it is annoying, it will enhance my campaign, my development and I am sure have a profound effect on gameplay for the better once we start.

In future I would ask you post and let us know what is coming, and few screenies and explanations would have been really nice. I am human, I am adverse to change, however with the right poke here and prod there I can embrace the new. But sometimes I just need to be told before, so I can digest it. get used to it, whine a bit, then get to the embrace part before it is reality.

As an aside Rob, for as little pat on the back to your team, I just made yet another pass at my Hero Lab work on my custom races, and now I am going through and creating every single ability they have custom, so the text matches the race. So in the case of an ability the Hominex have, instead of the player reading "this race has or members of this race have" in my race they read "The Hominex are a strange offshoot of the Draconic Races of Daede, though it is not remembered even by the eldest, they share so deep a kinship with the White Dragons of the Northern lands of Daedrea, they too have a racial tolerance to Cold and its effects both mundane and magical, thus they have Cold Resistance 5."

A simple little thing, but to me it helps immerse the player in their character in my world, I can't tell you how much this means to me and my labor of love.

What I also can't I tell you is, how the hell I did this before Hero Lab and Realm Works, nor do I want to remember.

Ever.

 

[JustinThomason]

Just downloaded the update this morning, and I'm really digging the custom views. I'm running a big hexploration adventure path (Paizo's Kingmaker) and now I have a "Geography" view with for all the physical locations, and a view for each of the six books in the adventure path for NPCs, side quests, and the like. Very cool. Good work!

 

[MToscan]

Actually it was exactly the kind of mechanics I was looking for. I am entering all of my Greyhawk books on realm Works and I really wanted to keep Canon, Living Greyhawk (which is semi-canon), fan content (like Oerth Journal) and home brew separated.
In the future I hope I will be able to share just the first 3 views with the other guys at Canonfire so we can all work together on canon and semi-canon GH material while keeping home brew separated and private.

 

[HippyCraig]

Just so I understand after I create a filter I have to go to each topic and from the right click menu assign it to that filter? Are there other ways to do this? I can't seem to select multiple topics to add to a filter, only one by one, this can be very tedious, any suggestions?

 

[Exmortis]

Just so I understand after I create a filter I have to go to each topic and from the right click menu assign it to that filter? Are there other ways to do this? I can't seem to select multiple topics to add to a filter, only one by one, this can be very tedious, any suggestions?

As of now no there isn't. A "affect all in this container" would be a nice feature moving forward, and I am sure something like that is on the radar list, but it's also a big list.

 

[Parody]

Just so I understand after I create a filter I have to go to each topic and from the right click menu assign it to that filter? Are there other ways to do this? I can't seem to select multiple topics to add to a filter, only one by one, this can be very tedious, any suggestions?

Terminology Note: what was just added and what you create are Topic Views or Article Views. Filters are how you search, using the magnifying glass icon on the Navigation Pane tab.

You can assign everything being currently shown in the Navigation Pane to a View, using the "Add (Topics/Articles) Shown In Navigation To View..." item in the (Topic/Article) Views popup menus on the Ribbon. Use Content Scoping and/or Search Filtering to pare down what's being shown in the Navigation Pane to a group of things you want to add (even if you have to add or remove a couple of items manually afterwards) and you can save a bunch of time.

You can also assign everything in a Containment hierarchy in one step; RW will ask you about this when you use the context menu to assign something with contained items.

Hope this helps.

 

[HippyCraig]

Thanks that help

 

[storeyl]

it felt more like the way you buy products and play your RPGs.
...

Everyone of course buys their "modules or adventures",

Whilst I respect everyone is different, I would point out that you are assuming we are all like you. No I don't buy product and modules and see them as separate things, I don't run RPGs like that.

Someone who appears in a module or adventure is as much a part of the world as anyone else. Why would you think otherwise? In fact if I am running some module then I go out of my way to have a few of those NPCs turn up before or after where feasible to make things feel more like a 'living' world.

I was very much hoping for different story almanacs, again mirroring real world where we own several modules.

Do not get me wrong, the idea of custom view is very cool, and I will use it, why did you have to cram everything I spent from release working on nicely organized and separate into one great big pile?

Isn't that the point of the custom views? The world is every thing, custom views are how you group things into modules if that is your desire?

What was the thought process around this? Am I the only one here that did not want my Story almanac in my world almanac?

Well I saw a lot of people really did want this. I want the world almanac it is to me, like you know what it says on the tin, my world and not pretend to be a food dish. Custom views can represent modules, or immediate useful topics that may not be clearly module based but become relevant to what the players currently do. Are you alone? I doubt it, but I expect that you a minority?

It's a shame they couldn't get it all in, but this feature is great IMO. At long last I am not flicking between almanacs, and can organize as I want better.

Just need those other features to make it really great (collaborative journal and web access, individual reveal).

 

[Exmortis]

Someone who appears in a module or adventure is as much a part of the world as anyone else. Why would you think otherwise? In fact if I am running some module then I go out of my way to have a few of those NPCs turn up before or after where feasible to make things feel more like a 'living' world.

This is simple, World NPCs that are above the module or adventure were in my world almanac, such as every merchant and regualer townsfoilk, powerful NPCs as Lords, Barons, etc. Some are in adventures yes, those were found in my world almanac, even if they "first appeared" in an adventure.

However I did not want to popluate my world almanac with NPCs that were going to be dead after the first module, or better yet the first fight. In the first Chapter, I have three subchapters, and in subchapter one I have about 3 dozen NPCs....None of which will be alive after play, or so few I can have easily gone in as they survived and move them to the world almanac. Why flood your world almanac with corpses? This is the awesomeness of somenthing like RW, which relates to what your saying; Once an adventure is done, the left over NPCs can be then migrated to the world almanac, which is exactly the way I was planning to handle it. Even better, for Pathfinder/D&D buying a module probably fleshes out a part of the world with little info in the campaign setting, when you buy and import it it could have asked if you want to import all the new world info to the world almanac, but keep the "story adventure" in its own almanac.

A better way to exolain why I did what I did is this:

You do not pay an extra $40 on top of the $10 a module cost, because you were "rebuying" the world every time, or when you bought the world at $500 because it included 50 modules of which 10 you wanted.

From day 1 in RPGs; rule sets (articles), Campaign settings (world almanac) are seperated from the adventures (story almanac(s)) as far as I am aware, even back when I bought basic edition D&D it came with one little adventure, the rest I had to buy seperately. I also am pretty sure a lot of NPCs in the adventures were dead after the adventure. Take my beloved Pathfinder, I first bought the CRB, then the Inner Sea Guide, Then and adventure, all different books, different purchases.

Same goes for the RW market place, I am 100% sure that buying Pathfinder, The Campaign settings AND any adventures will all be seperate purchases. same as every other RPG medium.

All I was doing was using the default view that was provided from release. What annoyed me, wasn't that I thought my way was the best, or better, or even the way anyone else did it, it was simply that the DEFAULT WAY from day 1 was changed with out warning, with out choice, it was forced. Same way as if you woke up and suddenyl found your car had to be driven on the oppsoite side like a british car, with out warning, with out choice, you were just forced. It is not like you cannot adjust or deal, its just the idea that Toyota would come and change the car you bought and paid for, with out any prior knowledge or warning.

The custom view is totally cool, and now that I am playing with it, its value is huge, no question. But as my last post stated, it isn't the change so much as I was taken by complete surprise by some fundamentally massive change in how I must now use RW. Why I asked in future, a warning post with some screenies and explanations and hints and tips on how it will bring greatnes would not only have helped me, but others too, possibly allowing people to reorg in anticipation of this change.

 

[Parody]

Why I asked in future, a warning post with some screenies and explanations and hints and tips on how it will bring greatnes would not only have helped me, but others too, possibly allowing people to reorg in anticipation of this change.

It would also allow us a chance to catch things like the "What if you're actually using the World/Story distinction?" conversion issue that was a big part of your earlier post.

 

[Exmortis]

It would also allow us a chance to catch things like the "What if you're actually using the World/Story distinction?" conversion issue that was a big part of your earlier post.

Yes very true indeed.

 

[storeyl]

I think a lot of us saw it as a fundamental bug stopping us using RW as we wanted, and probably expected. There was no way of having 1 place with everything, and then just a way of showing the bits you wanted. It has driven me mad at times having to flip between 2 views to get a fuller view of what I have put in so far. Putting everything in world is overload at times, splitting it out means I start to lose track of what is in due to lack of a single view.

Neither can I see how it could have been used as you wanted. You only had 2 views, at best you could have had 1 world and 1 'module', but not multiple modules. However, all the LWD hints on how to use the 1 almanacs seemed fairly clearly (to me anyway) to be indicating the story almanac was intended to be where the 'current' stuff was placed, and when it wasn't current it was in the 'world', certainly a different intent to what you wanted. 'Story' wasn't a specific module, but just what was relevant at that moment in time.

From day 1 in RPGs; rule sets (articles), Campaign settings (world almanac) are seperated from the adventures (story almanac(s)) as far as I am aware, even back when I bought basic edition D&D it came with one little adventure, the rest I had to buy seperately. I also am pretty sure a lot of NPCs in the adventures were dead after the adventure. Take my beloved Pathfinder, I first bought the CRB, then the Inner Sea Guide, Then and adventure, all different books, different purchases.

You are conflating the medium by which I buy and the actual playing of the game. Sure I might buy all those things separately, but when running a campaign they are all just 1 world. There is no separation game wise from what is in each module. As a GM I want them to all be seamless and appear as 1 world, as a player I want them to feel seamless and that I'm playing in a coherent world. Adventures and modules are extensions to the world, not some isolated thing.

Same with RW, if I get round to using fully (when other features arrive) then I want players and myself to see a seamless view of the whole world in one place. I don't want a visible and artificial split between 'campaign setting'/'world npcs' (as you put it) and adventures and the 'lesser npcs'. That cheapens the whole experience IMHO. We can set views for our purposes (and I'm hoping players can create their own views as well), but in what ever way suits each player or GM.

Same goes for the RW market place, I am 100% sure that buying Pathfinder, The Campaign settings AND any adventures will all be separate purchases. same as every other RPG medium.

They may or may not. But that is not relevant as far as I can see. If I bought all 3 under the old RW scheme then where would the stuff go in my realm? If I buy 5 adventures/Modules for a pathfinder campaign then they can't all be the story almanac without some unholy mess! Equally I would only be able to put the 'world NPC' or location etc in one of the stories! The only logical method I can see would be exactly what has just been introduced. Everything goes in world, and each also supplies a custom view (or multiple, say 1 view per chapter) by default.


In the campaign I'm running at the moment (not in RW) I have a published setting, and several published adventures/modules plus stuff I am adding myself. But the whole lot is intertwined. Even though the modules are bought standalone they are all from the same world and region, and the players are flipping between them, probably with no idea that is happening. Pulling them altogether forms a richer 'world'.


That to me one of the selling points of RW, every one who appears (even as a bit part) is now logged in the world not to be forgotten.

All I was doing was using the default view that was provided from release. What annoyed me, wasn't that I thought my way was the best, or better, or even the way anyone else did it, it was simply that the DEFAULT WAY from day 1 was changed with out warning, with out choice, it was forced. Same way as if you woke up and suddenyl found your car had to be driven on the oppsoite side like a british car, with out warning, with out choice, you were just forced. It is not like you cannot adjust or deal, its just the idea that Toyota would come and change the car you bought and paid for, with out any prior knowledge or warning.

You are right that a bit of a hint as to what is coming would be useful. Though I thought we knew this was coming - it wasn't a surprise to me as such, at least the functionality has been noted before as coming I'm sure, if not the timing.

PS. I'm British. I fully agree with you waking up and having to drive properly like us.