Story Almanac -vs- World Almanac

[jkthomsen9]

I am curious how others are using these. I am inputting the Jade Regent Campaign and various supporting information "portions of Inner Sea guide, Varrisa book, Lands of the linnorm kings, ect". I put the current book of the AP in Story Almanac, the other books of the AP in World Almanac, and the rules stuff under Mechanics Reference.

I have found now that I am about half done with the project that I do not always remember where I have put the info I am looking for. Am I missing something simple in my organization of the world?

[Parody]

You might find this thread useful: Story Almanac vs. World Almanac.

My recommendation is to put everything in the World Almanac until you're going to run, then move just the parts you need for each session into the Story Almanac if you need them separated out.

[Vornmusion]

Originally Posted by jkthomsen9

I am curious how others are using these. I am inputting the Jade Regent Campaign and various supporting information "portions of Inner Sea guide, Varrisa book, Lands of the linnorm kings, ect". I put the current book of the AP in Story Almanac, the other books of the AP in World Almanac, and the rules stuff under Mechanics Reference.

I have found now that I am about half done with the project that I do not always remember where I have put the info I am looking for. Am I missing something simple in my organization of the world?

It might help if we had a visual demonstration of what you have, to identify what you may have done that could be better. Although it doesn't really sound like you have done anything "wrong".

Originally Posted by Parody

My recommendation is to put everything in the World Almanac until you're going to run, then move just the parts you need for each session into the Story Almanac if you need them separated out.

This is probably the best way to go about it I think, although you will need to weigh the consequences if you also decide to start placing mechanical rules into the World Almanac without some kind of topic-relevancy.

One easy solution to keeping track of things articles you've made (that may or may not be viable depending on what you are trying to do with your realm) would be to create a Master Article and parent the relevant topics to it.

Here's an example of my very liberal use of parenting in my own realm.



As you can see Golarion is the Master Article, with the Inner Sea Region parented to that, and then the 4 sections of the PF Folio map parented to the Inner Sea Region. The individual nations are parented to one of those 4 sections and the city of Absalom is parented to the nation, with the individual districts parented to Absalom itself. Absalom (general) specific mechanical information (rules and whatever else I as the GM need to know) is placed within Absalom itself under the clever GM INFORMATION article, using the z in front to force it to the bottom of the list (there's not enough rules to warrant it having a higher-level parent article)

This would probably be the easiest way to keep track of everything if you also wanted to keep setting specific rules within easy reach. In your case I would add the mechanical rules to the Master Article, under something like "Jade Regent Rules" with the necessary articles parented to that one and separated from the "fluff" articles, similar to how my 4 sections of the map keep the nations into their separate areas. If you intend to expand your world with multiple campaign settings and many other locations, then you will probably be better served placing any "general" mechanics into the Mechanics section of Realm Works, for consistency. It's up to you though.

In anycase, done correctly you only ever have to move the Master Article from the World Almanac to the Story Almanac and everything relevant to that will move with the Master.

Even if you don't want to go so far as what I've said/shown, you can still make use of parenting to a lesser extent in order to simply keep things better organized.

[jkthomsen9]

Thank you both. I found the link very helpful. Parody hit it on the head as to the intent of the two locations.