Events vs Places

[Galymyr]

Greetings,

I'm a brand new user (just downloaded a couple nights ago) and I'm trying to figure out the difference, at the encounter level, between Places and Events. I originally started out using the Places menu and began containerizing all my entries. For instance I start with an (Adventure Area) The Echo Wood, then put another Adventure Area inside that one (Ancient Goblin Outpost), then I put a Location (Goblin Cave Entrance) In the Ancient Goblin Outpost. This is where I start to get a little confused. As I go to build the Goblin Cave Entrance encounter I realize there's no Participants snippet that would allow me to link my encounter to Hero Lab like I can in the Events section. In fact there's only 8 snippet sections in the Event topic but there's 11 snippet sections in the Places topic. Am I only supposed to use the Event topics to detail out each room of my dungeon or is there someway to link Places with Events that I haven't figured out yet. Or maybe I'm just totally missing something here. Thanks for any help you can provide!

 

[daplunk]

You could use either. You can add the hero labs portfolios in using the tool box button on each snippet.

Personally. My Monsters are entered in the mechanics section. The hero lab portfolio resides in there
This means I just write the name of the monster in the encounter which links to it.

This is slower when starting the encounter if I have multiple different monsters. I have to add each type individually. However it means prep is quicker as once I build a monster I never have to build that portfolio again.

 

[Silveras]

So, this is an example of how RealmWorks flexibility can lead to paralysis as the user tries to figure out how it is "supposed to work". As daplunk mentioned, you can do it either way.

One thing I have experimented with is to use Locations and Adventure Sites as just that.. the place information, without encounters. Scene-type Topics (one of the types of Events) contain the encounter information.

The disadvantage: Slightly longer prep-time (see below).
The advantage: more flexibility with the Location.

The advantage of this approach is that, if there are multiple different versions of the encounter, I can prep both and have both versions ready for easy use.

For example, if the PCs have a way to raise or lower the alert level of the adventure site, I can prep versions of encounters with the alert level at low, medium, and/or high as needed. There is one Location... but there can be multiple different ways for the encounter to appear.

Likewise, something else I do... I may create multiple Topics for the same Place.. one as a Location, which can be revealed early-on to the Players as part of their research on the area... and another as an Adventure site, which may contain all of the Scenes that will come up during the adventure. This is especially useful if the PCs will pass through a place as a "normal" Location at one point, and may then have to treat it as an Adventure Site later (or the reverse).

In short, RealmWorks is very flexible and will accommodate whatever approach works for you. My best advice is trial-and-error... create a "throw-away" Realm that you can mess with, one where you can try different arrangements to see what works best for you.

 

[TheRoeler]

"create a "throw-away" Realm that you can mess with, one where you can try different arrangements to see what works best for you."

Nice tip, just got RW and facing same questions but definitely will do this now.

 

[Galymyr]

Thank you both! I'm ok with having options, guess I'll just play around and see which way I like the most.

 

[rob]

At the risk of coming to the party too late, the approach we're using within all the content we're developing is to primarily utilize Scenes. There is an assortment of Locations for places where the PCs will potentially go but not have major interactions that drive the story. And there are Adventure Areas for places where multiple situations will unfold (e.g. Dungeon of Doom). Storylines are used to collect Scenes that don't really belong within an Adventure Area. The vast majority of adventure content (like modules) lives in Adventure Areas and Scenes within those areas. Storylines, Locations, Communities, and the occasional Region (different flavors) fill in the holes where Adventure Areas and Scenes don't really make the most sense. Obviously, there's a smattering of other stuff, too (individuals, groups, etc.). But that's the core structure that we're utilizing, and it is working well for us.

As for the suggestion to create a "test" realm, it's unquestionably the absolute best thing you can do. Experiment with different approaches and pick the one that makes the most sense. And do NOT worry about getting everything perfect the first time. Realm Works is pretty darn malleable, so you can adapt your approach as you discover new approaches that work better for your style and you grow your campaign over time.

Hope this helps!

 

[Galymyr]

Thanks for the insight Rob, it's nice to have the logic behind the design.

 

[wurzel]

At the risk of coming to the party too late, the approach we're using within all the content we're developing is to primarily utilize Scenes. There is an assortment of Locations for places where the PCs will potentially go but not have major interactions that drive the story. And there are Adventure Areas for places where multiple situations will unfold (e.g. Dungeon of Doom). Storylines are used to collect Scenes that don't really belong within an Adventure Area. The vast majority of adventure content (like modules) lives in Adventure Areas and Scenes within those areas. Storylines, Locations, Communities, and the occasional Region (different flavors) fill in the holes where Adventure Areas and Scenes don't really make the most sense. Obviously, there's a smattering of other stuff, too (individuals, groups, etc.). But that's the core structure that we're utilizing, and it is working well for us.

If you focus solely on single adventures that is probably the best way to create content. The campaigns I create consist of many small adventures that form a bigger story and are usually all in the same country so my focus is more on re-use. A location is therefore a location, not a scene. In the scene I just link to the place so I have it at hand.
I bundle scenes in quests which I use as main topic for the single adventures. Storylines bundle quests. I use one storyline per year in play, and all storylines together make up the campaign. A single campaign can contain up to maybe 20 years in play, that is around 3-4 years real time. During this time sometimes other adventures take place with other players, but in the same general area. That is why I need places to be places, not single events.
And of course, that is why I want to re-use the content in another realm witout having to type it all again.

 

[adzling]

I put all of my setting lore (country and town descriptions etc) into Places and all the missions specific info (floor plans, building interiors, scene descriptions etc) into Events.

Important NPCs that may be encountered more than once go into People.

 

[MNBlockHead]

One mistake many new users make is feeling that they need to create a topic for each bit of content. This can make game prep a slow slog and world building can get hung up in minutia and data-entry busy work.

I, and many other in this forum, have posted at length about our approach and how we have evolved our use of the product. Search the forum. There is lots of great stuff.

My current, lazy-DM approach is:

Place and people topics are to organize my home-brew DnD 5e campaign world. I organize them from a world-building perspective. Places are contained by larger places. People are contained either in place or in specific lists, based on what makes creating more content and running games easier. With people, I don't sweat getting organization perfect. It is EASY to move a person topic from one container to another. Also, I use views to prep for game sessions, so I just add to a session-specific view the places, people, quests, etc. that I think I will need to have handy at the table.

I keep lists of "drop-in" topics. People, merchants, locations, and quests that can either be dropped in nearly anywhere or within certain regions/cultures/environments. This allows for an open-world adventure style.

For more story-based, rail-roady adventures and adventure-paths, I use story boards, story-line topics, quest topics, plot hook topics and scenes to organize them. When running these adventures I put the story board in the navigation pane and use it to navigate at table.

Increasingly, however, I use a hybrid approach where I create an adventure area for, say, some caverns, a castle, a wilderness area, etc. Then I start with the map. I drop pins for each area of interest or encounter with a short description in the pin. Just enough for me to improvise from. For the monsters encountered at the pinned location, and for wandering monsters, I add HeroLab snippets in the adventure-area topic itself.

While I could run many hours of play with just this, I am often inspired to flesh out an encounter area more fully and will then create a new scene topic linked to the map pin. I add the hero lap snippets to the scene topic itself.

Finally, rather than create quest topics, I just write in plot hooks, quests, possible interactions, and other notes for running session in the adventure-area topic itself.

I find it easy to set up and run adventures using adventure topics in this way and players find it fun because they feel less rail-roaded. They don't have to follow a pre-defined story. They make their own stories.

 

[wurzel]

Once mistake many new users make is feeling that they need to create a topic for each bit of content. This can make game prep a slow slog and world building can get hung up in minutia and data-entry busy work.

I begin to have the feeling that having one topic for a lot of content might cause some errors. I had one topic for a large ruin complex with huge maps for the surroundings and every single dungeon level. Furthermore there were a lot of pictures, HL portfolios for resident monsters and more. And I quite often got System.OutOfMemory exceptions and a crash, although there is enough RAM for many more realms. When I broke the topic down, created new topics for every level etc. the number of exceptions decreased significantly.

I can't easily reproduce this behaviour so I didn't place a bug message in the queue. Just the crash mails have sometimes been sent.

 

[daplunk]

If you are doing a dungeon.

Create a parent topic with the name of the dungeon. In here put the map of your dungeon and summary.

Create children encounters for each specific place within your dungeon.

Go back to the smart image map. Put a pin on every location and link the areas content.

Not run it at the table with the map on the left have view panel. When you click the pins the information for that area will load on the right letting you easily read the whole Dungeon.

 

[AEIOU]

Large snippets are a problem. And so are large tables with lots of links. No crashes from them but a top end computer grinding away when loading them is annoying. When I break my NPC listings and timelines down into smaller bite-sized chunks (but still all in one topic), all the load problems go away. Same amount of data but in multiple snippets or tables.