Advice on Period Info

[meek75]

So, I am inputting things for a Trail of Cthulhu game. The game typically set in the 30s and the core book has some great info on the 1930s. The game can, obviously, be set during other time periods as well. Any ideas on where to put that info? I'm thinking either an article in "Gameplay" or a topic in "other".


OK, so the "Timer Period" under events seems like the intended place for stuff like this. Found it right after posting - sorry.

[Lexin]

By sheer chance, I spent today inputting information for my Call of Cthulhu game due to be run next Saturday.

Like you, I do sometimes struggle to know where to put background information on the time period. I ended up creating a place for Glasgow (logical) and putting all my time-related information for the city into the city section.

I had to create a separate entry for the Clydeside docks, so put time-related information for ships and shipping there. I also had to create a separate section for the cathedral, for the hospital and for the necropolis, so put time-related information for those areas in there.

Into the Mechanics Reference section went background information about the characters including what is public knowledge about them for each other. I also put there, obviously, spells and books.

Under the World and Story almanac I have sections on where we are in the campaign, what's happened to date and the current date. I have a few sections on there which are as yet not public, because my characters left India last game but have not yet arrived in Glasgow. (Though they do know that's where they're going.)

So basically, background information about the world as it is in the 1930s is mostly under the entry for the places they travel to, with sections in there reminding me to read it out or paraphrase. Additional information may be under the entry for a person, if it's more useful there.

General information can be found in the Mechanics reference area - for instance that's where I put all the information about what to do about rolls for exposure and mountain climbing, and what to roll for if the characters ended up in the Himalayas without a tent.

Does that help?

[meek75]

Originally Posted by Lexin

Does that help?

Yes, it is always helpful to see how others organize things. Thanks a bunch!

[Teresa]

Just curious: how would/do you approach a place with different time periods?

I've decided to create a central place topic with "timeless" info which works as an index to the place topics that describe the "time period" info. But this has the problem that the information concerning a city is broken into different topics.
ex: Paris as original celtic tribe settlement, as roman city, as Frankish city, and 16th century, and so on

What other approaches would anyone suggest?

[AEIOU]

I had a similar question recently. I thought I was missing something obvious but it's just not well implemented and no one really knows how to do it. It's a significant weak point that I'm hoping LW is looking at resolving with calendars.

http://forums.wolflair.com/showthrea...ght=aeiou+time

Edit: By "no one really knows" I mean it's not obvious and while we can work around, it should be intuitive. Especially to those that have significant RW experience.

[Farling]

Originally Posted by Teresa

Just curious: how would/do you approach a place with different time periods?

I've decided to create a central place topic with "timeless" info which works as an index to the place topics that describe the "time period" info. But this has the problem that the information concerning a city is broken into different topics.
ex: Paris as original celtic tribe settlement, as roman city, as Frankish city, and 16th century, and so on

What other approaches would anyone suggest?

I would go with a parent topic that describes the unchanging nature of the place; then create a child topic for each specific time period.

If I was needing to see a particular time period across all locations, then I would probably then set up multiple topic views (one for each time period). Each topic view would contain the generic topic + the child topics across all topics for that specific time period. An alternative would be to use tags so that you could use the search filter to see only a particular time period.

[AEIOU]

Building on Farling, you could create current city as the main topic and it acts as a container for the older child topics. That keeps them all together. Use period date for prefix for the child topics to keep them in the correct order.

[Parody]

Personally, it depends on how significant the differences are between the different time periods. If they're actually minor, I'd put everything in one article. Larger differences might warrant a Topic/Article for the main time period and secondary Topics/Articles for the ones you see less often. Massive differences warrant separate articles for every time period.

For example: Feng Shui has five permanent time periods, but most areas are only visited in a couple and the differences (to the PCs) are more about how everything looks and what sorts of NPCs appear. I'd probably handle that with single Topics/Articles and notes on differences. All Locations would have Tags for the time periods in which they primarily appear, notably the many sub-locations that only appear in one time period.

Of course this is speculation, as I haven't had to put together a set of locations in multiple time periods. :)

Aside: While Calendars may provide an alternative to Tags to note in which time period(s) a Location appears, they're not that significant to the issue. You'd have the same question if a Location appeared in multiple alternate Earths, and both are a subset of handling anything that appears in multiple settings in the same campaign/system.

[Teresa]

Thanks for your suggestions, everyone.
I had never thought of Farling's suggestion of "multiple topic views (one for each time period)". It sounds brilliant.

AEIOU's idea of setting the main topic on a present city is interesting, but as my world spans between 10K BC and 4K AD (even present coastal regions change from underwater to miles from water, not to mention climate and resource changes ), I'll probably set the main topic on the full span of the city with a general description of its evolution in time. That way, borrowing from Parody's comment, I'll only need to create children topics for each time period when I need to flesh out that period-city (if needed). It'll save me some hard work, I guess.

By the way, do you know if calendars will allow for filtering when they come out? I've been using the Gregorian calendar for now to set general standard dates, but I can't use filters when I'm in timeline view.

[Pollution]

I'm putting in Eternal Lies currently in the hopes that I'll get to run it someday.

What I'm doing, is having an entry for Location (Savannah, GA, LA, etc..) that topic contains the bulk of the information you're talking about there.

THEN, I create a scene container (events list) for each city where I put in the scenes that happen in the actual plot. This way, I can jump to the location topic to answer questions about that area when they're debating where to go next, and I have the scene list topic that is specific to WHEN THEY GET THERE (the two could be very different).

I'm also putting in a custom section in that scene list which discusses things like wardrobe or the biggest Clues for that city, etc... Kind of an outline.

I'm also putting in past events (what happened in 1924 for example) to fill out a timeline.

Eternal Lies is complicated..... But it's SOOOOO cool.