Player's Guide and other world building woes

[Parody]

There's a lot, actually. One very notable change was how, in the past, there were exactly two Almanacs and Topics could only be in one or the other. Now the World Almanac holds all Topics and other Topic Views (like the Story Almanac) show a subset of them.

 

[Globetrotter]

That makes the story almanac more confusing now... but again, I am sure it will make more sense.

What is the point of the storyboard and making plot points? I just read that section, but what I didn't read is why I am putting that in the game. Can I link encounters to it? is this for me or the players?

Do people really put in multiple paths and then never use them? Seems strange to create work that you don't use in the campaign. I have always used most everything I created, although I just reflavor sections to make it work.

Is that the point of this? To create the different options early enough and then move them as needed?

 

[Parody]

That makes the story almanac more confusing now... but again, I am sure it will make more sense.

A Topic or Article view is there to focus on things. For example, if you're playing through a published multi-part adventure, you might put everything for the current part in a View to make it easier to find. When your group moves to the next part, clear it out and move in the next part.

What is the point of the storyboard and making plot points? I just read that section, but what I didn't read is why I am putting that in the game.

It's a way to visualize your story. If it doesn't help you, don't bother with it.

Can I link encounters to it?

Yes, each Plot Point can link to a piece of content.

is this for me or the players?

Hopefully both, but you can use it however you like.

Do people really put in multiple paths and then never use them? Seems strange to create work that you don't use in the campaign. I have always used most everything I created, although I just reflavor sections to make it work.

You can do the exact same thing in RW: put in ideas, then when you use them update and reveal them.

Hope this helps.

 

[MNBlockHead]

Hey Globetrotter, my best advice is stick with it. I never looked deeply into Obsidian Portal but did think of just setting up a wiki for my campaign. RW, however, offers much more and the roadmap looks great. I also was frustrated when I first started, but it is worth taking the time up front to familiarize yourself with the default topic and article options. There is a lot of talk about how steep the learning curve is, but it really isn't the program that is difficult to learn. What makes the learning curve steep is that it is designed to support the creation of any type of campaign, regardless of rule system or genre. Wrapping your head around how to fit YOUR world into existing templates and what customizations, if any, to make—THAT is what causes the most angst to most new users. Here is a list of things that I wish someone told me when I first started using this program, some of which address your most recent questions):

1. YOU CAN EVERYTHING, BUT YOU PROBABLY DON'T HAVE TO.

Take the time to understand the default topics and articles. There is decades (centuries?) worth of game-mastering wisdom behind them from the designers and all the beta-testing feedback. That said there are others who prefer to delete/hide everything and start from a blank slate. Parody is a user who frequents this board that has done this and has posted a lot of great advice for those who are compelled to tweak everything.

2. HIDE, DON'T DELETE CATEGORIES.

If you do realize that you need to change the default categories, hide those you don't need. For those that you are going to significantly alter (e.g. remove default snippets), make a copy of the category and edit that and hide the original. The reason is that if you buy content from the Content Market in the future, it will use the default categories. You can find more info about this in the guides and in these forums.

3. CONSIDER BOTTOM UP WORLD BUILDING.

I spent months creating my world in RW. I enjoy that. But when it came time to create my first adventure it really didn't save me much time in creating the adventure. If you are thinking about all the stuff you want to flesh out in your world, it can keep you from actually using the program for running actual games. CTRL+Q should be your best friend in RW. As you type an adventure scene, you may refer in the text to a renowned person, a place, a famous artiface. Just highlight the text and use the hotkey CTRL+Q for quick create. Don't fill in the details, just create the topic as a place holder. It will automatically get a utility tag that it is incomplete so you can filter on such placeholders later on to fill in.

This is where the storyboard also comes in. I use the storyboard to outline an adventure. You attach scenes or place topics or adventure area topics to it. You can then use the diagram as the navigation during the game. I write in detail about my approach in the following thread: http://forums.wolflair.com/showthread.php?t=53681

4. READ THE MANUALS

I think that the manuals could be better organized, but they still contain a wealth of information. It really with worth the time to read them through once and then refer to them often when you are new.

5. READ THE FORUMS

There is so many great threads in this forum where folks have shared screen shots on how they have organized their adventures and worlds. Of course searching the forums when you have a question can be helpful, but I also highly encourage browsing through old threads when you have time. I've had so many aha moments when doing so. There are things I've never thought of doing or features I've completely overlooked.

Some of the above are obvious but I hope it helps.

 

[MNBlockHead]

It's a way to visualize your story. If it doesn't help you, don't bother with it.

Parody, I think you undersell this feature. Yes, it is a visual tool. But keep in mind that it can be use to not only quickly plan out a story, but it is also a handy navigation tool.

By mapping out a story, associating topics to it, and then displaying in the navigation pane, I can easily navigate through the story. I click on a plot point in the left column and the topic (e.g. encounter scene, place topic, etc.) displays on in the middle content area. It is SOOO helpful at the table. It is also helpful when creating the adventure because I can easily move around without needing lots of tabs open or scrolling up and down my increasingly long list of topics.

The more I use RW and more content I put in it, the more I rely on the Storyboard to plan and run my adventures.

 

[Globetrotter]

Hey Globetrotter, my best advice is...

This is all great information! I cannot believe how helpful the people on the these forums are.

So far, I have read the quickstart guide and I am halfway through the Gamer's Guide. I really have trouble using a program unless I know everything about the program and what the intention of the designers are. I get locked up when I do not understand something; it's a fault of mine.

I am have moved about 20% of my content from OP to RW, but after reading some of the forums and the two manuals, I see I did some of it wrong. It will get easier I am sure. I am excited to learn how to make this all work.

The beauty is, when I normally detail all of this in OP, my players have trouble finding it. I do feel once I get a hang of it the information will be used in a much more efficient manner.

Helpful tips like you detailed above are invaluable. Thank you.

 

[MNBlockHead]

Hard to do anything "wrong", since it is such a flexible program and there is almost no wrong you can do, BUT it is easy to do things in a way way that you later regret now that you know how you REALLY want to organize things.

The good news is that it is easy to reorganize, including changing a topic from one type to another.

The one gotcha is that moving something from the "Mechanics" section to the "Topics" section is not trivial. So while I generally say, just get in an enter stuff and reorganize latter if you have to, I do counsel new users to understand the difference between topics and articles and if they are not going to stick to the defaults to have some rule on what kinds of content they will enter into each.

Here is my approach, which is pretty much "by the book":

ARTICLES
The crunch. Rules. Monster entries. Price lists. General random tables. This is your digital game-master's guide, players handbook, monster manual, errata, etc.

TOPICS
The flavor. All the content related to the campaign world. All of your adventures. Your NPCs, your macguffins (named/famed items), pantheons, factions, etc.

Now, it seems pretty obvious and straightforward, but when I started, it didn't seem that way. Especially since there is the topic category "inhabitant" for local fora and fauna. My rule there is, does it need a statblock? It is an article (monster/enemy). Though I would now also consider using an inhabitant topic to discuss common creatures that may be enountered—giving a high-level description and let the autolinking link to the mechanics articles.

Also, equipment vs. "things". I only use "named object" for unique items that are important to a storyline. A long-sword goes in an equipment—>mundane weapon article. King Arthur's Sword is discussed in a named-object topic.

I have yet to use the "thing list" topic.

Also, you may find the discussion and (especially) the screen shots in the following thread helpful:

http://forums.wolflair.com/showthread.php?t=52565


Start on the second page of the thread with the links user AEIOU provided. His use of flowcharts are both inspiring and insane. Some are overkill for my purposes. But neat. What I like about his examples is that it shows how he entered a very complex, content-rich adventure module, including the story board, the smart maps, and how he converts encounters from the print module to RW.

Also check out the screen shots from Exmortis, starting on page 3. He also includes screen shot of his Herolabs integration.

Geg gives links to screenshots from his Shadowrun campaign and Gloranphile shows some views of his Glorantha realm.

Once the Content Market goes live, I think the slope of the learning curve will decrease, as you'll have a lot more examples to go by. In the meantime, there are some game masters in this forum doing some impressive things in RealmWorks.

 

[Parody]

Parody, I think you undersell this feature. Yes, it is a visual tool. But keep in mind that it can be use to not only quickly plan out a story, but it is also a handy navigation tool.

Navigating with plots is also visual, thus it's still a visual tool.

Personally, I don't like Plot Navigation. It replaces your clear list of Plots, Topics, or Articles (depending on what's in the Content Pane). Once you've started Plot Navigation you can no longer use the Back button to go back, since the Back button only affects what's happening to the Content Pane. The option you have to navigate upwards via the context menu opens the containing Plot in the Content Pane, not the Navigation Pane. (The related option in the Navigation Pane Options Menu affects the Navigation Pane, so the context menu version is likely a bug.) If your Plot has any complexity to it (== width), it likely doesn't fit in the Navigation Pane anyway. (I don't normally maximize Realm Works.)

I would much prefer it if double-clicking a Plot Point was "View Associated Contents" instead of "Navigate to Associated Contents", thus containing any meanderings to the Content Pane. I know that's what single-clicking does, but I can't seem to train myself out of double-clicking on these visual elements. :(

There's also the automatically drawn diagrams, which restrict what you can do with Plots. I tend to have places in adventures where the players have a bunch of choices and can do them in any order, with perhaps a mandatory event or two thrown in. These places where I might have diagrammed all the choices I've had to drop from the Plot system to prevent the diagramming from going haywire. The only safe Plot is a straight line. :(

So, as with many features, YMMV.

 

[ThatOneMike]

I came over from OP myself, and this is what I ended up doing.

I'd put races in the Mechanics section (there is a topic category there for it), and your Player's Guide info in the Sources > Player Synopsis categories. You can make a Source called Player's Guide and then add various Player Synopses for the subtopics.

I use Storylines in events for session recaps.

 

[kbs666]

I am have moved about 20% of my content from OP to RW, but after reading some of the forums and the two manuals, I see I did some of it wrong. It will get easier I am sure. I am excited to learn how to make this all work.

Don't worry if you got something not quite right. I put in stuff "wrong" several times as I was learning what was available. When I absolutely could not leave a topic in the category it was in I changed it. The system handled the conversion very smoothly. In several cases I had to do nothing but confirm that I wanted to make the change. In a couple where the new topic had differing snippets than the old with content I had to copy and paste some content around but that was pretty easy as well.

About the storyboard, I love it. I like having adventures where the players can follow multiple paths. The storyboard lets me visualize the whole thing and keep track of how I want the adventure to flow.

 

[MNBlockHead]

Parody, I understand what you mean about how more complex storyline become quickly unweildly. But I generally break them up and really have not run into much a problem. They seem to be one of those things that some folks like kbs666 and I really dig, but others could not care less about.

 

[Vargr]

I have found, that the key is to keep the complexity down - I have main points (like start, first plot, that lead to two potential plots, they each lead to the next, identical, plot and so forth).

Each plot then has a link to a story line outlining that plot.

All the story boards become small and simple and I am forced to keep the overview simple which is a great benefit for me (I am very good at making convoluted campaigns, sometimes getting lost in them myself).

But each to his own.