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To Split or Not To Split Into Snipets or Topics?

J

Jay_NOLA

Well-known member
One thing I noticed as I've entered stuff into Realm orks is that it can get tough to determine if information ought to go into anew topic or snippet. I ran into this when doing several old school short adventures.

Example some of the dungeon entries are just a a sentace in some cases with some stats and the whole dungeon that took a couple of pages took up very little space in Realm Works. So do you put each room as aseperate topic or do the entire dungeon as one topic? What if you have a dungeon that only has like 2 rooms or a small number that would require a separate topic due to the content in them when the rest don't?

Also sometime s just slitting up entries for separate snippets csn be time consuming and a bit pointless. The players are only going into this dungeon for example once, so do I really need to break up the room text into multiple snippets.

What if you have preset up special abilities for lets say "troops", the army of a particular area, and those only have a one sentence description and those abilities. Do you make each ability a separate topic or just make a topic called "troops" and list them all. The abilities also have words that are common that show up often too. Other "troops" in other areas in the campaign have those abilities to and you want a reference to the ability aso you don't need to look u with it does in a PDF as the rules have about 60 different ones.

I'm trying to get an idea on how others deal with having to decide if something needs to be split into a multiple topic or snippets or not when working with PDFs to be entered in.
 
My rule of thumb is that any thing that is a named thing gets a topic the same goes for all but the most trivial of pins on a map. So rooms in dungeons are usually topics.

For snippets, if the information will all be revealed together then I leave it as a single snippet but if the information could be revealed in pieces then I break it into pieces.

For things like special abilities even if it is just one sentence, if that ability occurs multiple times I create an article for it in the mechanics reference and then every creature that has that ability I simply note that it has that ability which causes it to link to the correct article, where the description is at (even if that description is a single sentence). The way I see it you never know when you'll want to change or expand on that ability and if you do having the description in one place means you can do so easily. If you put the description in every creature that has it then any change has to be put into every one.

For instance every undead creature in Pathfinder has what are called "undead traits" which is a whole list of immunities and special rules that apply to the undead. Every undead monster listing in my campaign includes the fact that it has undead traits which saves me the trouble of ever needing to look in the bestiary again.
 
I err on the side of making a new entry.

I tend to re-order information from the published modules to read operationally rather than narratively when I add it to RW. Modules read well as stories but aren't always organized the way my brain functions for actual gameplay. I tend to keep snippets large as it's easy to split them later.

If a dungeon or building is very simple and consists of just a few rooms, I'll create a Location and then each room is a snippet. Everything is in one topic. An example would be a 15 room temple in the town where I do not anticipate combat but players may end up exploring. I have VERY few of these entries.

If a dungeon is large or there are some complexities to some of the rooms, I create a Location that provides an overview which contains Scenes for each individual room. An example is a wizard's tower which may be small but each room may be some sort of encounter.

The closest example in my work to your troops would be wandering monsters. I have 200+ encounters, each as a separate entry with stats and numbers appearing and sometimes a brief description. In each location where wandering monsters are checked, I have a table listing encounters which ususally refers to the established encounters. This way, encounters are re-used in numerous tables so I don't retype the same things over and over. And it doesn't bloat the locations with info that is rarely used.
 
I should add that over the last three years, I've waffled back and forth repeatedly on how I enter data into RW. My response above is where I've settled. But it was a lot of testing different methodologies. Don't be afraid to start in one direction and change your mind later.
 
I'm pretty close to kbs666 and AEIOU in methodology.

Anything that could be revealed separately becomes its own snippet. In one case, that meant that a one-paragraph entry in a PDF became 10 separate snippets because each "fact" could be learned separately by the players. [Note: this also means that "multiple value" Tag entries often need to be split up]

Dungeons (or other Adventure Areas) get their own Topics.. sometimes multiple. The "Ruins of Melthgar" may have both a Location Topic (for general information known in the campaign world) and an Adventure Area Topic (that holds the adventure-specific room descriptions, possibly with additional Adventure Area Topics for "Levels" to group room Locations).

For example,... the Ruins of Melthgar ..

Setting (Story Source)
__World (Region: Geographic)
____Nation (Region: Political)
______Ruins of Melthgar (Location)

Adventure Module (Story Source)
__Ruins of Melthgar (Adventure Area)
____Level 1 (Adventure Area)
______Entry (Location) [Data includes names of possible encounters in "Challenges" section]
________Entry Guards (Encounter)
________Guards at Escape (Encounter)
__________Krovis (Individual)

If Krovis can be encountered in multiple rooms, he'd more likely be put under the Adventure Area as a whole, and maybe moved to the room where he was killed (as a reminder that that's where his body is).
 
I'll add that splitting and merging snippets is reasonably easy and doing the same with topics isn't much harder so pick what ever method you think will work best for you and try it. If you don't like it you can easily change to a different style if you find that the one you chose doesn't work for you.
 
Just a reminder (because you mentioned time consuming):

Ctrl-T - New snippet under current one
Ctl-Enter - New snippet under current one *and* moves anything past your cursor to the new snippet.
Ctrl-M - merge snippet with one below
Ctrl-G - convert snippet to GM directions - (also will convert *from* GM directions to normal snippet)

These commands make working with snippets *so* much easier. I typically will cut and paste anything I want in a topic into one snippet - and then just use the above to carve it up into chunks.
 
I'll add that I've done with my realms a similar set up as AEIOU with dungeons. I've done entry differently in my my main two realms for some stuff. My Red Tide/Scarlet heroes one has more stuff in separate topics. My Stars Without Number has stuff grouped in one topic but i uses aliases for the smaller topics in it that I would have in the past given a separate entry.

Example: Energy Weapons is a topic and I have the stat chart and description for all the games energy weapons in it as they weren't many and it was easier to do that for those weapons and similar topic (Projectile weapons, etc.) instead of having hundreds of topics for each separate item of equipment.

Most of my Stars Without Number entries were done latter on and they are much better organized.
 
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One approach I find helpful is to think of the Realm as a wiki .. each Topic is a "page" of that Wiki. Content that is common to more than one Person/Place/Thing gets its own page they all link to. Content that is solidly about one Person/Place/Thing goes on its page.

In the official Pathfinder structure, there is a "Mundane Weapon" topic with fields (often tags) for each property of the weapon. I am a proponent of more detail and even I did not go that far in my own entry.. just migrated the tables to the "Weapons List" Topic and added some "Mundane Weapon" Topics for ones that had special notes.
 
I've reached my zen with RealmWorks. I have a sufficient feel for the various topic types that I don't worry much about structure. None of my players use RW. RW is a tool for me to build and manage my realm and to run my games.

I have two RW "modes": world building and game prep. When I started using RW, it was all about building a large, rich realm and I spent many hours thinking about structure, setting things up, changing them around. Now, while I would like to spend more time realm building, I don't have to time to spend much time beyond what is needed for the next game.

In terms of game prep, how I organize depends on what I'm working from and how much time I have. If I have a PDF adventure, I may cut and paste the content into topics and sections and snippets in a pretty standard way.

But there are many times where nearly ALL of my content for the session is a map. For example, I found a re-envisioning of Keep on the Borderlands on Drive Through RPG and made some further customizations to fit it into my campaign world and the characters story arc. It is a large sprawling map with some detailed mechanics on how the different factions interact as various groups try to gain control of the various cave systems.

It was a complicated, content rich adventure area that took up nearly 16 hours of game play, but was basically one adventure-area topic and a small number of scene topics.

The adventure area topic itself gave an overview of the area and the political situtation and the mechanics for resolving faction battles that didn't involve the npc. It also give details on the factions, including tables with monster stats (I didn't have Hero Lab at the time) and major NPCs for each faction.

Most of the content was in the map pins. Nearly all of the rooms would just have a map pin with a brief descriptions and what might be encountered there. I often pasted basic monster stats in the room description as well so I didn't have to change tabs. For a very select number of rooms I created scene topics. That is only for rooms where an important encounter or mechanic was involved, or where there were a large number of NPCs to interact with.

Basically, I ran 16 hours from a map and map pins.

Later, after the game, based on what occurred, some of the NPCs were made into their own topics because they were likely to be important in the future. I also took some time to re-file the adventure area properly in the geographical area the I had it take place.

I take this approach a lot actually. Build a session around a map. I just don't find that I need a topic for each room and have no need or desire for "dinning hall of some dungeon" to be autolinked to anything.

I see all the work that some folks put into RealmWorks and it seems like it is more time doing data entry than you spend playing the game. Rarely do I find it important to split everything into its own topic. For PURCHASED content, I would want/expect that. But when I'm putting together my own content or adapting something for my game, I want to get it entered quickly and in a format easy to run at the table. That means generally not spliting things into many snippets, not spending much time on formatting, and not creating topics for most locations, NPCs, etc.

I think this works for me, because I'm not using any of the content reveal features. So I don't have to worry about breaking content up in a way that allows granular reveal of content.
 
Do you not even use RW to show stuff to your players? My players don't use RW directly but they have come to really rely on what I make available to them through my second screen. Be it the map or details of the NPC they're talking to or what ever.
 
The spending more time doing data entry than playing is something I experienced. I haven't done much data entry in the past few months though due mostly to health reasons, but I spent hours just setting thing up. In one case I spent over a year doing data entry for a realm that I haven't run a single game in yet. Now with actual guidelines out on how stuff ought to be entered. My date entry time is worse as I'm trying to make things conform to that.

One big thing is that a lot of what I'm entering in has just been rules and stuff that I would expect to see others at some point enter and have available for download.

Right now I'm the only person that has Realm Works in the group I've played with. I did get Fantasy Grounds a few months back and at some point would like to run campaign via it, so I'm not sure if my data entry will be of much help if I run with an online group.

I have pulled up stuff on a 2nd screen a few times. If I'm gaming at a friends I disconnect my cables and SVGA (?) to HDMI converter so I can use his TV to display stuff. One thing I noticed is that pulling something up for the 2nd screen or reveling a map area can also slow things down a bit, unless I prep stuff in other tabs ahead of time.
 
The more you practice with player view the faster you'll get. I've gotten where I'll be setting up a reveal in it while describing the same thing verbally.
 
kbs666 said:
Do you not even use RW to show stuff to your players? My players don't use RW directly but they have come to really rely on what I make available to them through my second screen. Be it the map or details of the NPC they're talking to or what ever.
Click to expand...

Yes. I share on a second screen during play. But that is almost exclusively maps. I don't both with a lot of art work—I prefer that we use our imaginations and trying to add art always come across as a hodge podge of discordant styles. If I were an artist, creating my own artwork, or if I am using stuff purchased from the content market with excellent, consistently-themed artwork, then I may show it.

The only artwork I do occasionally use is architectural drawings to give players an idea of a structure, which is sometimes difficult to imagine just by looking at the map. An example is the content from Forge Studios from their Patron subscription. They release a map and a drawing of each location. The drawings are good quality black & white line drawings. They are evocative more than trying to completely replace your imagination.

I don't share any text. My players don't want to sit around reading things.

For handouts, I print them.
 
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