Tracking sources of information
 

Relative n00b here... I'm just now trying to punch a published Dark Heresy adventure into RW for the first time.

This particular adventure (as with most of the DH adventures, I'm finding...) has some consistency problems, e.g. at the end of a chapter it says "By now your players should know the following:" and lists several things that as far as I can tell they have no way of knowing yet.

My question is: Does anyone have any suggestions on how RW can help me keep track of what information can be learned in what ways? For instance, let's say the Great McGuffin is located in the Cathedral of McGuffinton and the two ways to find that out are either to interrogate the notorious heretic Big Mac or to bluff your way into an audience with Governor Guffin and ask him directly. I'm assuming one would represent this by having a snippet on the McGuffin topic that says "It is located in the Cathedral of McGuffinton" as well as a similar snippet in Big Mac's topic under "Info the players can beat out of him" and another one in Governor Guffin's topic. Is there any way to link these snippets so that when looking at the Great McGuffin I can see that there are these two other places that information can be revealed? (And if revealing those snippets in the other two topics could automatically reveal the one in the McGuffin topic that would be awesome too...)

Or would I have to try and model this in the Storyline view somehow, e.g. "Interrogate Big Mac" and "Audience with Governor Guffin" are both events that lead to "The Acolytes Locate the McGuffin?"

I keep finding new awesome features every day just when I need them, so I'm sure there's something in here to help me with this stuff... but even if I have to "cobble it together" a bit I appreciate any suggestions you guys have. :)

Thanks,
Ditchdigger

My first thought would be to try to use the storyboard. For each encounter or tidbit, put an entry in there.

Everyone will use differently and others may have other ideas. You may end up having to try a few different ways to address this. I'd be interested in hearing what finally works for you.

The clue could be made a separate topic (quest?) which is linked to both possible entry points.

It could be a snippet in the Opening section of a topic which describes the actual quest; you would then need to link the clue to the topic with the Opening.

Assuming that the topics for Big Mac, Governor Guffin, and the Cathedral of McGuffinton all mention the Great MacGuffin somewhere in their snippets, they should all have prompted you to make a link to the Great MacGuffin. Since Realm Works keeps track of all links, you could easily go to the topic Great MacGuffin, look at the right hand column section called "Content Links" and look for incoming links (which have the arrow pointing left). You can even click on the topics there in order to navigate to Big Mac, etc, even if nothing in the Great MacGuffin's snippets mentions him.

I tend to use Quest topics for this, and track what is known by whether or not it's been revealed. For instance, I would make a "Find the McGuffin" Quest, which would (amongst other info of course) include a snippet saying "The Great McGuffin is located in the Cathedral of McGuffinton" with GM text "Can be discovered by talking to Governor Guffin or intimidating Big Mac", and let RW automatically generated links from that text. If that snippet's been revealed, I know there's only one reason why. Even though my players obviously can't access the realm on their own yet, I find player revelation is very useful for reminding me of what they should and shouldn't know ^_^;

By the way, Governor Guffin will appear in my campaign if it is the last thing I do.

I posted a feature request for 'embedded snippets', where a piece of information could be located and revealed in multiple topics. I think this is related to your question, but in a more general sense than something that could be part of a quest.

Link:
http://forums.wolflair.com/showthread.php?t=46414