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Suggestions needed for groups for adding new content

M

Madmaxneo

Well-known member
I was thinking of adding a few new groups to my Realm Works Database and I'd like to see how others have added similar material.

A few other categories I was looking at adding as there are no specific categories already defined for them are:
1. Flora or plants and herbs and what not.
2. Fauna meaning both the mundane and fantastical creatures of the world.
That is it for now. Thanks in advance!
 
Yeah I found that by chance shortly after posting this thread.

The title "Inhabitants" threw me off.

The reason I looked at it was because there was already an entry entitled "Individual" and was wondering why there would be a second category with what would seem to have similar entries.

Why not just call the category "Flora & Fauna"?
 
I suppose because it is not limited to flora and fauna :)

I mean, non-significant NPCs, or generic entries for common creatures other than animals and plants (such as "typical resident" or "typical soldier") could go there as well.
 
"Inhabitant" is a good section for those exact things.
But it is a little misleading to include flora and fauna in such a section.

I will probably just create another section or sections to denote such things. The world I use is filled with various herbs and other useful plants that I plan on adding to with real world examples. I may also add things such as minerals and gemstones along with similar items to such a category. Now to figure how to name these categories...

I also added a glossary of sorts that has a summary definition of some of the things in this world. I created this glossary under Other, General Topic. Was this the best place for a glossary and definitions or is there a better category?
 
There is also the "Monster/Enemy" article type in the Mechanics section.

Between "Individual", "Inhabitant", "Monster/Enemy", and "Race", there could be a good deal of overlap. At that point, it becomes more a matter of preference on what makes sense to the individual GM, I suppose.
 
Silveras said:
There is also the "Monster/Enemy" article type in the Mechanics section.

Between "Individual", "Inhabitant", "Monster/Enemy", and "Race", there could be a good deal of overlap. At that point, it becomes more a matter of preference on what makes sense to the individual GM, I suppose.
Click to expand...

Therein lies another problem I am having. I put all the race info under the World Almanac; Group: Ethnic. I had created a "Races of Mithra" section under People but had forgotten about that when I was entering the race data.

There are a few instances of me entering data in one area only to find a better section elsewhere. As of right now I do not know of any way to move (or copy) entire entries between sections. That is one editing function that needs to be implemented, everything is staying put until that possibility gets implemented.
 
Madmaxneo said:
Therein lies another problem I am having. I put all the race info under the World Almanac; Group: Ethnic. I had created a "Races of Mithra" section under People but had forgotten about that when I was entering the race data.

There are a few instances of me entering data in one area only to find a better section elsewhere. As of right now I do not know of any way to move (or copy) entire entries between sections. That is one editing function that needs to be implemented, everything is staying put until that possibility gets implemented.
Click to expand...

That's one reason why I consider all my use of RealmWorks to be an ongoing learning experience. If I wait until I have the "perfect" plan.. I will never start, because I will keep thinking of ways to organize "better".

In the end, I have also accepted that it is ok to have entries for the same thing in two or more categories... hopefully serving different purposes.

For example, in my Rise of the Runelords Realm... I have "Location" entries for some of the adventure locations. These are initially revealed to the players as "known landmarks" and the like nested in a geography-based container hierarchy. I also have "Adventure Area" topics for the areas that are relevant to the adventure (some of which are the same places as Location entries) nested in a containment hierarchy separate from the geographic one, based on the adventures. This gives me more flexibility to organize, and more ability to re-use a place for more than one encounter.

I am resisting the temptation to make too many specific sub-categories of things to represent Temples, Arcane Schools, Military Schools, Dojos, and other organizations separately from "Merchant" (because the players can buy gear at either) in order to wait and see what they look like when licensed "official" versions start coming out.
 
Early on I had trouble deciding where to put non-dangerous animals for example. But I ended up taking the lazy DM way and sticking with the defaults.

The Dangers—>Monsters is what I use as my Monster Manual. Any creature with a statblock goes here. I'm assuming this is the intention...if it has a statblock you could fight it. So, cat, dogs, etc. all go here.

Inhabitants are mainly for in-game plants and creatures that give flavor to an area but are not used in encounters. I just don't use this topic category. Generally, if I want to describe the flora and fauna of an area, they go into a snippet for the place's topic. If I need more information, it is almost always because it is something they need to interact with that requires statblocks, so they end up in my creature manual.

Where I might use the inhabitant topic is if there was, for example, a sacred type of tree and I wanted to add a lot of history about its socio-economic importance to the area and plot points surrounding it.

There are other threads about this on the forums and there isn't one "right" way. Different approaches may make more or less sense based upon the game system and campaign. Personally, I don't want to think much about where to find something, so I would probably put "timid toothless squirrel" under "dangers/monsters" rather than inhabitants, because I might still need a statblock if they want to hunt this creature and all my other creatures are in monster topics.

Others will probably want to put mundane fauna and flora in inhabitants topics as flavor for places, and keep the monster topics for, well, monsters.
 
MNBlockHead said:
Early on I had trouble deciding where to put non-dangerous animals for example. But I ended up taking the lazy DM way and sticking with the defaults.

The Dangers—>Monsters is what I use as my Monster Manual. Any creature with a statblock goes here. I'm assuming this is the intention...if it has a statblock you could fight it. So, cat, dogs, etc. all go here.

Inhabitants are mainly for in-game plants and creatures that give flavor to an area but are not used in encounters. I just don't use this topic category. Generally, if I want to describe the flora and fauna of an area, they go into a snippet for the place's topic. If I need more information, it is almost always because it is something they need to interact with that requires statblocks, so they end up in my creature manual.

Where I might use the inhabitant topic is if there was, for example, a sacred type of tree and I wanted to add a lot of history about its socio-economic importance to the area and plot points surrounding it.

There are other threads about this on the forums and there isn't one "right" way. Different approaches may make more or less sense based upon the game system and campaign. Personally, I don't want to think much about where to find something, so I would probably put "timid toothless squirrel" under "dangers/monsters" rather than inhabitants, because I might still need a statblock if they want to hunt this creature and all my other creatures are in monster topics.

Others will probably want to put mundane fauna and flora in inhabitants topics as flavor for places, and keep the monster topics for, well, monsters.
Click to expand...

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?
 
Madmaxneo said:
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?
Click to expand...

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

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.
 
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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.
 
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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.
 
@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.
 
MNBlockHead said:
@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.
Click to expand...

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.
 
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
 
MNBlockHead said:
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.
Click to expand...

How does one create a "nicely formatted HTML statblock"?
 
Madmaxneo said:
I am not sure what you mean by would I ever filter on those numeric values.
Click to expand...

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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