Organization!

[GunbunnyFuFu]

I'd be interested to hear how the beta testers set up their campaigns. For me, I run multiple campaigns in the same game world (Golarion, for example). I imagine I'd set up the Realm (Golarion), and add stuff that is relevant across all campaigns in the World Almanac, and have group specific stuff in the Story Almanac. But that begs the question..can you have more than one Story Almanac. What is the difference as far as organization goes between Story Almanac and World Almanac?

GB

 

[Silveras]

For your first question, the sharing of content is not available yet. That requires some of the server sync functionality that is not yet enabled.

When that's in, from what has been said by LoneWolf (I am not a representative), you would be able to copy data from Realm to Realm. So you could create (or purchase, eventually), your Golarion realm and then use its content in separate Realms for each Campaign you run.

As for the World and Story almanacs, a lot of that will wind up being what you find works best for you and your group. As described, the World Almanac would be background articles (nations and regions that are not prominent in your current campaign, for example) while the Story Almanac is all the stuff that is of immediate interest (active deities, nations where the story plays out, etc.) So the world almanac is still there for "background knowledge", and the Story almanac for "current stuff". As your campaign moves from land to land, you may transfer a country's entry from the world almanac to the story almanac, and send the country you just left from the story almanac to the world almanac.

 

[GunbunnyFuFu]

Ah, so total Realm information is what is pulled in. I for example couldn't have my important information in the Story Almanac, and pull in the World Almanac from someone else.

Thanks for clarifying this for me!

GB

 

[Silveras]

Well, the details are not clear yet. The important part is that if you want to make immediate use, you will need to put all that information into one Realm until the sharing is established. Once that's in place, we will have a better idea about what options there are for organizing the information.

 

[GunbunnyFuFu]

Thanks Silveras!

 

[Ashran]

I'm still dabbling in the program right now. I'm prepping for a small one shot in a dungeon to test dnd next with my group of players. I found quite usefull to use the world almanach for anything that is "geographical" (in a dungeon I know, it's not really the right word) ie. the rooms, corridors, traps, and so on...
I use the story almanach for quests, encounters, and anything in that vein.
I dunno if it's the best way to do it, but it seemed logical when I started prepping for that game

 

[rob]

I'm still dabbling in the program right now. I'm prepping for a small one shot in a dungeon to test dnd next with my group of players. I found quite usefull to use the world almanach for anything that is "geographical" (in a dungeon I know, it's not really the right word) ie. the rooms, corridors, traps, and so on...
I use the story almanach for quests, encounters, and anything in that vein.
I dunno if it's the best way to do it, but it seemed logical when I started prepping for that game

The following is a re-post of an answer I provided to a member of the Beta team when asked about the rationale between the Story Almanac and World Almanac. You're sort-of doing this with your usage model, but the following should hopefully make our thinking clearer and allow you to potentially refine your usage a bit further....

The primary motivation in having the two is to provide a very simple, first-level filtering for users. Let's say you're running a campaign world with lots of different cities, towns, villages, dungeons, etc. You'll have quite a few topics to sift through. However, at any point in time, the PCs will be exploring a particular region, with the other areas being unimportant. Let's say the PCs are exploring the Temple of Doom and using the nearby Convenient Village as their base of operations. At this point, you can move all of the topics for all the other places and their associated NPCs into the World Almanac, leaving only the Temple and the Village in the Story Almanac. You now have only a fraction of the topics shown in the list, as the others that would clutter it up are now over in the World Almanac. You can readily access all that info and follow links between topics, but they don't clutter up the list. Suddenly, your ability to access the content you're looking for is much faster
and easier.

This exact same analogy would apply to something like an Adventure Path, even if you just run adventures without a big campaign world. The entire AP goes in the World Almanac to start with. From there, the important bits from the start of Chapter 1 get moved into the Story Almanac. As the PCs progress through Chapter 1, content they've completed get moved into the World Almanac and new content they're soon to encounter moves into the Story Almanac. This process continues through all chapters of the story, swapping material between the two almanacs. At all times, though, the important bits the PCs are interacting with are always in the Story Almanac, with everything else out of the way to reduce clutter and make everything much easier to search wade through.

This approach is much simpler than requiring users to leverage the filtering mechanisms. It also provides a first level of filtering that will make it possible to easily filter within the Story Almanac, without requiring users to learn about more sophisticated filtering capabilities. We want the product to be readily usable by players as well as GMs.

Hope this makes sense!

 

[Ashran]

Thanks for the answer, and Yeah, it does make sense.

However, maybe the name of the categories is then a bit misleading. When I read "World almanach" I think about topics of the world, its geography, maybe its denizens, its specials objects, and anything that has to do with the world, neutral of any current events. The background of the world if you will.

The actual adventure would be in the story almanach, where it's easy to follow.

Maybe it does not really apply with oneshots where the world is less important to the story.

I see where you're going for long campaigns with a rich and detailled setting, and I'm all for it, though