Hey adzling,
had a busy time so it took me a while to get back ^^ Thanks so far, it is very helpful to see how people approach the massive information load and the rich (hi)story of shadowrun.
I am following a micro-approach in session prep, just adding what is immediately needed and then, when time is left, i follow a macro-approach, adding year after year of the Almanac of the sixth world and whatever important element of the world comes across. Slowly, both information-webs are connecting, giving me a totally new approach to making up new runs that are connected to events that happened decades ago.
But for the NPCs/Organizations/... , I think I will break down the structure to
1. Obvious Information/Appearance
2. Reputation
3. Background Story
and then just add a calendar snippet if I really need to know when someone was married :-D
Well, a really big help would be to sneak a peek of your realm from a players perspective ^^
had a busy time so it took me a while to get back ^^ Thanks so far, it is very helpful to see how people approach the massive information load and the rich (hi)story of shadowrun.
I am following a micro-approach in session prep, just adding what is immediately needed and then, when time is left, i follow a macro-approach, adding year after year of the Almanac of the sixth world and whatever important element of the world comes across. Slowly, both information-webs are connecting, giving me a totally new approach to making up new runs that are connected to events that happened decades ago.
But for the NPCs/Organizations/... , I think I will break down the structure to
1. Obvious Information/Appearance
2. Reputation
3. Background Story
and then just add a calendar snippet if I really need to know when someone was married :-D
Well, a really big help would be to sneak a peek of your realm from a players perspective ^^
hey Ich, as you noted I built my own templates to emulate Srun scenes.
I mostly use default or generic ones for the other categories (though not all).
You are right this can result in either a wall of text or tons of tiny snippets with disassociated info all broken up and hard to read.
I tend to lean towards the wall of text, broken up into smaller walls that correspond to the break points in the source books.
Once you get to a certain level of content entry the whole thing starts building reference links and becomes far more helpful than it otherwise would be.
Basically the more work you put in the more utility you get out on the backend but you have to reach a certain base level for it to be any use.
Our campaign spans the globe so I have been entering content from the sourcebooks before my team gets to the locale. I focus on those areas and leave the rest of the world until they have a reason to go there.
This lets them read the background on a location between play sessions so they have something to Roleplay against in-session.
I then reveal more local content as the discover it / the plot demands.
I do wish we had player specific reveal, printing/ export and the ability to run the client on an iPad.
But if lonewolf ever gets the web-view working this should solve a lot of these issues.
Let me know if I can help you with anything else.
cheers
Adz