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Any suggestions on how to prep for Realm Works?

J

JackOfAllGames

Well-known member
I'm a newbie DM. I've had some ideas floating around for upcoming campaigns. I'm really looking forward to Realm Works (as, I'm guessing, all of us are). I'm curious. Does anyone have any suggestions on how best to have our info organized once Realm Works does arrive?

What are you guys using in this interim period?

Me, I'm using SimpleMind (relational tree software) on my Android + Windows PC for brainstorming, mostly. Keeping track of more abstract ideas than specifics, the details to be filled in later.
 
Currently I use Evernote to keep track of ideas. I use curio sometimes (mind mapping mostly), but at the moment I am running an adventure path so I don't have as much need for it.

However, I will be using the crud out of Realmworks to run a sandbox campaign I have in the works.
 
At the moment, I am mostly using RealmWorks. I'm also using OneNote for timeline tracking while I desperately await the calendar function to be cleaned up and implemented.

As far as organising your existing notes, in almost all cases RW will be just a bit different to anything you use right now, but it's extraordinarily well thought out.

High level overview (subject to change, beta product, etc, etc):

Categories: moderately broad groups of topics that are of the same overall type. Examples include Individuals, Communities, Groups. The included Categories in the software will cover most of your needs, but you may need to create custom Categories for your specific needs.

Topics: specific entries. Every character is a topic, every city is a topic, every organisation, kingdom, god, magic item, planet, plane of existence, etc... they're all topics. If it has a name, it's a topic.

Snippets: individual pieces of information about a particular topic. If you're like me, you won't be used to separating information into these discrete little chunks, but it's well worth the effort. Just looking at a single person, you'll have snippets for: Date of birth, place of birth, place of residence, friends, family, foes, beliefs, likes, dislikes, job, history, personality, appearance, race, gender, pictures, and many more. As many more as you want.

Your biggest task will be to create all of your topics. I would recommend starting big, and working your way down. Planes of existence, or planets, or galactic quadrants, or whatever the largest-scale regions of your campaign are. Then move to tighter and tighter scales. There are really two reasons I suggest this. Firstly, so that you have a definite input plan and can see your progress starting to shape up quickly, but secondly (and perhaps more importantly) because when you create smaller-scale topics you will want to use the larger scale ones as Containers (topics which are made up of numerous other topics), and having the larger topics already in place means it's easy to get into the habit of assigning the Container as you're going along.

If you already have your campaign notes in electronic form, you've already won half the battle, though, since copy/pasting information and breaking it up into snippets is utterly trivial.

And I haven't even touched on plots.
 
You touched on how to prepare for RW. This doesn't answer you question directly but may be helpful....

I suggest that you start gathering your images, maps and other importable materials. That way you can add pins to maps, add images to NPC's and add player handouts quickly and easily. This will help build plotlines more easily.

If you will be pulling data from PDF's, beware that you will need to proof the info after copy/paste as there are lots of odd spacings and amazing typos that I cannot even begin to understand. I'd recommend waiting for RW and then import as you'll be creating snippets as you edit by pressing CTL-ENTER for over and over and over. I edit my material on the fly as I break it into snippets.

For NPC's, try to think of templates and start putting those templates together for major NPCs the players will interact with. By this I mean really simplified statblocks with soft skills or RP things like personality or social or whatever. Full statblocks are beautifully covered by HeroLab portfolios.

Think through how you want to use snippets ahead of time. I broke a lot of things down into lots of snippets and later went back to recombine the things that are GM-focused. I have found that material for players is better as sentences; material for GM is better as paragraphs. Since we don't have the cloud yet, I'm basing this on instinct rather than fact but I think it'll play out this way. Your mileage may vary.

Think about how NPC's and areas and locations and plots interlink. I place my NPC's in town "containers" to group them all together. And my towns are in nation "containers". And my scenes within quests and quests withing plots.... This will all make more sense when you start messing with RW. But for now, start to think about how to group things.
 
The user doc is on the way will help as I've included lots of examples :)

If you have specific questions I'm happy to answer as I have five realms all running using different build idea starting points.
 
I have a question about the installation of RW. Can you target a directory for your campaign that is outside of the RW root directory, like a dropbox folder?

-Car
 
As Chemlak has mentioned, this question has been asked/answered a number of times. The answer has always been highly discouraging the practice to avoid Bad Things.

Is the answer probably out of an (over-)abundance of caution? Yes. Do I care to be the one to find out they were right with my precious data? **** no. I'm using my Dropbox as a location for database backups, which I then restore on my other computer. After a few times of forgetting which computer made the backup (I'd been using a timestamp in the file name only) I started adding in an extra character indicating the source computer.

HTH.
 
AEIOU said:
If you will be pulling data from PDF's, beware that you will need to proof the info after copy/paste as there are lots of odd spacings and amazing typos that I cann ot even begin to understand. I'd recommend waiting for RW and then import as you'll be creating snippets as you edit by pressing CTL-ENTER for over and over and over. I edit my material on the fly as I break it into snippets.
Click to expand...

I've got into the habit of pasting from PDF's into Notepad, then into OpenOffice, though Word is just as good... :D (Pasting into Notepad removes most of the formatting of text.) In OpenOffice I then spell check and do anything else necessary to the text.

(On the slightly technical side of things, I've noticed that PDF's use line breaks rather than paragraph breaks. Once you know this, it makes things a little easier as you can then use search and replace to change them.)
 
weogarth said:
As Chemlak has mentioned, this question has been asked/answered a number of times. The answer has always been highly discouraging the practice to avoid Bad Things.

Is the answer probably out of an (over-)abundance of caution? Yes. Do I care to be the one to find out they were right with my precious data? **** no. I'm using my Dropbox as a location for database backups, which I then restore on my other computer. After a few times of forgetting which computer made the backup (I'd been using a timestamp in the file name only) I started adding in an extra character indicating the source computer.

HTH.
Click to expand...

It's worth mentioning that once the cloud is up and running, it shouldn't be necessary to do this to get the same data on two computers.
 
@Zaphod: You're making your life unnecessarily difficult. After you paste from the PDF into RW, go to the Tools menu on the snippet. Then go to the Text Content submenu and select the option to Clear Text Formatting and Reformat as Single Paragraph. Or you can perform those two operations independently of each other (clear and reformat). This will achieve the same net results as copying into Notepad and then copying out - with a few less steps and hassles. :)
 
Caraldur said:
I have a question about the installation of RW. Can you target a directory for your campaign that is outside of the RW root directory, like a dropbox folder?
Click to expand...

The info from @Chemlak and @weogarth is accurate. You can't put your database in a shared location and access it from multiple sources. That would invalidate the safeguards we've put into place for syncing data between the client and cloud. So it's a no-no.

Once the cloud provides full syncing, the need for using Dropbox and the like should be obviated.
 
rob said:
@Zaphod: You're making your life unnecessarily difficult. After you paste from the PDF into RW, go to the Tools menu on the snippet. Then go to the Text Content submenu and select the option to Clear Text Formatting and Reformat as Single Paragraph. Or you can perform those two operations independently of each other (clear and reformat). This will achieve the same net results as copying into Notepad and then copying out - with a few less steps and hassles. :)
Click to expand...

*rubs hands together like a cartoon villain*

Brilliant! That technique is a hold over from pre-Realms Works, btw. That'll make things a *lot* easier! Thanks! :)
 
As far as "Tips for preparing" goes...

Organizing your information
Looking at Wiki sites might be a good idea as a model.

One key is going to be that you will want to separate things you would reveal from things you would not. A printed adventure, or your own notes, might mix GM-only information with information intended for the PCs. You will probably want to separate those while entering them, to make revealing just the PC-appropriate information easier.

Because the arrangement can be like Wiki pages, you will likely want to think about the best place to locate the information. If one NPC can tell the PCs about another NPC, which one makes more sense to be where you put the information? It is ABOUT NPC #2, so that makes sense.. but they are going to get it from NPC #1, and so maybe it is in NPC #1's notes or printed description instead of NPC #2's. You might want it in both, but if you decide to alter it later, that makes it easier to miss one of the locations.

Editing your Information
Also, you will likely find yourself editing the wording. If the original text refers to "they" and "them", you might find yourself changing it to "you" so that it reads better when the players have access to it.
 
Lots of great information in here. Thanks for all the suggestions and RW info so far!

I'm hoping to start the real work of fleshing out my ideas soon (this weekend if possible). I know that *I* have a much better idea of how to proceed now.

More info is always appreciated too. If anyone has further idea/suggestions, keep 'em coming! =)
 
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