Adventuring Group

[morval]

Something as simple as making an adventuring group I'm having to think about. There are a few ways to do it, just wondering what is the intended way.

So lets say you have a group called the Bee Team. In that team you have Joe, Doug, and Molly.

My first thought was I create three individuals under people. Then a group list under groups ( or could even be a commercial group ). Then make the new group the container for all the individuals. But then all the individuals are listed under groups. Thats OK, but when you are quickly looking for a particular individual, they won't be listed under people and you won't know where they are. I know you can search and there are content links, relationships, etc. to make things easier.

The other way would be to create a Cast List under people and then make that the container for the individuals. But from reading what Cast list is meant to be it sorta doesn't sound like its for this.

I know there is no "right" way, I guess I'm asking what is the current convention for creating groups of individuals?

Thanks!

 

[jkthomsen9]

I have used both of the methods you describe. I find it easier to use cast list for groups that are in multiple adventures, like the PC's; and group list for adventure specific groups, like a thieves guild.

Remember to use individual HL portfolios for characters that will change over time.

 

[MaxSupernova]

What would be cool, would be Topics and Aliases capable of being listed in different containers.

So you could have BOB THE FIGHTER in the MY PCs PARTY container.

And you could have SHADOWY MAN in the PARTY ENEMIES container.

And they both link to the same person.

 

[jkthomsen9]

In a way you can. Rob gave the following example at the con. You would make a topic for Bruce Wayne. You would make a topic for Batman. you would make an alias for Batman as The Dark Knight. You would make a relationship between Bruce Wayne and Batman as "Simple connection to equivalent"

In this way you could reveal Bruce Wayne. You could reveal Batman. You could reveal that Batman is know as the Dark Knight, but not reveal that Bruce Wayne is Batman.

 

[jkthomsen9]

I misunderstood what aliases where meant for in the beginning. Aliases are meant to help with hypertext links. For instance in the Jade regent campaign Ameiko Kaijitsu is referred to as Ameiko Kaijitsu, Amatatsu Ameiko, of just Ameiko. All are the same person. Ameiko Kaijitsu, and Ameiko are know from the beginning. Amatatsu Ameiko is learned latter. By using aliases all references link back to the same page. If Ameiko were Batman you would want that to be a separate topic with a relationship link.

 

[MaxSupernova]

That makes perfect sense.

 

[AEIOU]

For me? People go in Cast with a relationship to Groups. Groups are never containers.

Joe, Doug, and Molly are members of the Bee Team.

- Joe is also a member of the Masons, the Soroptomists and the Assassin's Guild.
- Doug is a card carrying Communist, a Flat Earther, a member of the John Birch Society and the keeper of the Mighty Ziggurat for the We Love Martians Collective.
- Molly is on the local school board, is a decorated sergeant in the National Guard and is secretly the leader of the Spider Team -- the Bee Team's evil arch nemesis!

People can belong to a lot of different groups at the same time....

 

[morval]

For me? People go in Cast with a relationship to Groups. Groups are never containers.

Joe, Doug, and Molly are members of the Bee Team.

- Joe is also a member of the Masons, the Soroptomists and the Assassin's Guild.
- Doug is a card carrying Communist, a Flat Earther, a member of the John Birch Society and the keeper of the Mighty Ziggurat for the We Love Martians Collective.
- Molly is on the local school board, is a decorated sergeant in the National Guard and is secretly the leader of the Spider Team -- the Bee Team's evil arch nemesis!

People can belong to a lot of different groups at the same time....

Ahhhh that makes more sense. Don't think of groups as a container for members, but they hold information on the actual group. I see! OK, I like it. And think of a cast as a container to group a bunch of individuals that belong in the same group. Then use relationships to connect members to a type of group.

This is the kind of stuff we need more in the docs (or maybe I just missed it). The program isn't that hard to use, the hard part I find is to figure out how to use it with the information you have. I think more examples would be best. Tutorial data for an actual fantasy, scifi, etc. module. Then you could see sort of a standards on how things were intended. You can always go your own way, but at least its a starting point. The tutorial data included at the moment just doesn't seem to address all of the situations I've run into justin the first day or two of working with RW.

But I'm loving RW, can't wait to use it in an actual game!

 

[jkthomsen9]

For me? People go in Cast with a relationship to Groups. Groups are never containers.

Joe, Doug, and Molly are members of the Bee Team.

- Joe is also a member of the Masons, the Soroptomists and the Assassin's Guild.
- Doug is a card carrying Communist, a Flat Earther, a member of the John Birch Society and the keeper of the Mighty Ziggurat for the We Love Martians Collective.
- Molly is on the local school board, is a decorated sergeant in the National Guard and is secretly the leader of the Spider Team -- the Bee Team's evil arch nemesis!

People can belong to a lot of different groups at the same time....

That is better than what I have been doing. I like it, and making changes to my campaign now. Thank you AEIOU.

 

[AEIOU]

I started with people in group containers a few months ago. It made sense. And I still put some people in group containers if they are bit players and that is the best way to track them in that instance. I make judgement calls and exceptions. But I also try to make order of the chaos and create patterns that are easy to follow.

It would be nice for someone to start a weekly theme topic with examples in various genres with different approaches....

 

[morval]

I started with people in group containers a few months ago. It made sense. And I still put some people in group containers if they are bit players and that is the best way to track them in that instance. I make judgement calls and exceptions. But I also try to make order of the chaos and create patterns that are easy to follow.

It would be nice for someone to start a weekly theme topic with examples in various genres with different approaches....

Oh I like that idea! We need more examples and info. There is stuff out there, but its all very generic.