Where to go after finishing the Tutorials?

[tml]

I have watched all 7 of the Realm Works Tutorials, but there still seem to be a LOT of features that haven't been explained at all, and the Quickstart Guide under "Help" seems to cover most of the same material.

I'm definitely not "using content [I've] acquired from the community or purchased," so the "Gamer's Guide" doesn't seem a good fit. I opened the "World Builder's Guide," as this seems to be the closest to my own use-case, but it wants me to choose an approach on how I'll use the tool before I even make it past page 5, and I'm not really sure HOW I'll use the tool when I'm still trying to understand what all these bells, knobs, and blinkenlights do.

Are there other resources I'm missing - /r/realmworks seems dead, is there a G+ Group or something?

 

[tml]

As one immediate example, I setup a new Realm and am trying to capture my Dungeon World campaign in it. Entering the first PC's info, I want to choose the correct class, and see all of this:

I need a Thief - which, OK, I can add right here using the blue "+" button - but most of those things need to go (why are they even there in a brand-new Realm?) as DW has a very limited set of classes available. Where do I manage that aspect of my Realm?

 

[Parody]

The Global Categories and Tags are set up for Pathfinder.

The intent is for you to hide individual Tags you don't want in the Global Tag Domains and add ones you do want. This keeps compatibility with the eventual Market, at least in theory. (As we don't yet have the Market, it's hard to say how people are going to use it.)

In my Paranoia realm I ended up hiding most of the Global Categories and Tag Domains and using custom created ones instead. This protects my creations from changes made to the Global items by LWD. It also lets me do everything in ways that best fit the system as well as how I think and/or write. However, it also means that I would have to do more work to integrate things acquired from the Market. I don't plan on adding anything from the Market to my Paranoia realm, so I don't care. :)

 

[tml]

I see "World Almanac" and "Story Almanac" - no "Global Almanac"?

 

[Parody]

Where do I manage that aspect of my Realm?

On the Manage Ribbon, click Tags or Categories. That's where you can edit the Tags and Tag Domains or Categories (respectively).

Global Categories and Tag Domains have a Planet Earth icon, while custom ones have a dot.

Are there other resources I'm missing - /r/realmworks seems dead, is there a G+ Group or something?

There's this Realm Works Community on G+. Also a couple groups and/or Pages on Facebook and probably a couple others I'm forgetting. I don't pay much attention to things outside of this forum.

I see "World Almanac" and "Story Almanac" - no "Global Almanac"?

The Almanacs (Topic Views) and References (Article Views) are a way for you to create subsets of the Topics/Articles you've created.

The World Almanac always shows all of your Topics, while the Mechanics Reference always shows all of your Articles. Custom Topic/Article Views are subsets of these. In a new realm, Realm Works creates a Story Almanac as a custom Topic View. The intent is for you to put your current Topics in it for quick reference, and move items in and out of it as your players proceed through your adventures.


ObTopic: Honestly, I'd make a couple test realms (with and without the tutorial items) and just mess with them. Throw together things like an Inn (with NPCs), a combat encounter, a new special ability. Think about the approaches described in the World Builder's Guide and try the one(s) that resonate with you. The goal for now is to get a feel for how Realm Works works and what things you can do and would like to do with it. Unfortunately, it's hard to look at what others are doing without the Market, but there's a bunch of good people here answering questions at all hours of the day. :)

 

[Agyess]

Parody seem to get your specific questions so I'll go a bit more general:

This is the beauty and flaw of realmworks. You can choose to set up and organize your realm in the way that is most organic and intuitive to you, but looking at that first blank slate can be overwhelming.

I'd go with Parody's advice. play around with things a bit and get a feel for the basic of how things work, then try and match/build things to your own way of thinking. Once you have an idea of what you want, you can come back here and ask specif questions and people are more than willing to help out.

 

[tml]

I don't need that much from Realm Works, though; right now, I have a very specific need that it seemed like RW was a pretty good fit for, if I can just figure out how to approach the software to address the need.

Namely: I am in the GM of Dungeon World game every Wednesday with 3 people who are VERY lore-heavy. After three sessions, we still haven't made it out of the character-intro / bond part of the game, because they all have so much backstory going on. In those three games, I have filled almost half an 80 sheet, college-ruled, 1 subject notebook with notes. As the GM, the players expect me to keep up with them, and weave the 3 distinct stories into a cohesive plot.

So I spent some time looking online, and RW kept coming up; from what I could find, it seemed like it MIGHT be a good fit, but everything seems so oriented to people who are starting fresh, crafting everything from a single perspective. The adverts made it sound like a version of Evernote that would use language analysis to keep track of cross-references between notes, and provide meaningful structured fields; but in using it, it seems a lot more like a blank canvas than the paint-by-numbers tool I was hoping for.

 

[rob]

IMHO, you absolutely MUST read through the first few chapters of the Tips & Tricks Guide. If you don't, you're going to miss out on some incredibly useful suggestions on how to get started with RW and how to make your life better when using it (e.g. <ctrl+Q>).

From your description, you need to start with topics for the various PCs and begin fleshing them out. Add further topics for the various people, places, items, events, and storylines that tie those PCs together. As everything evolves and gets auto-linked together, I believe you'll start to see some of the power of RW. You'll also be able to start seeing opportunities where you can extrapolate from these pieces and start to weave in plots and related aspects for the campaign that tie back to the material the players have given you about their PCs.

From my perspective, you ARE essentially starting fresh. The only real difference is that your players are providing you with a large chunk of the background instead of you having to create it all yourself. Once you have that background in place, regardless of where it originates, you'll then be crafting a campaign that builds upon it. It sure seems like your process will play to RW's strengths as soon as the background is mapped out.

Hope this helps!

 

[tml]

I have tried creating my own "Class" tag domain, but I think this is causing the app to crash (bug reports already sent from inside app). If I delete the unused classes from the Global "Class" tag domain, is there a way to get them back at a later date?

rob - thanks for the suggestion, I will start the "Tips & Tricks" right away.

 

[AEIOU]

My advice is to create a test campaign. Spend a week entering material. Move things around. Use containers and then re-examine them asking whether anything in those containers could possibly also belong to another container -- and then decide what to do about that. Work with the standard tags and add some of your own while making others not visible. Create links. copy/paste material into several categories. Create duplicate category names and see how it reacts. Reveal some content and then show it in player view to see how players might see it. Get frustrated over player view font size. Search for answers here in the forums. Ask here or on G+.

Then start your campaign for your game.

Or just dive into your campaign like I did. And when you change your mind on how to organize material, give yourself permission to redo it, move it, reconsider and get frustrated. My methodology has morphed and evolved so many times. And sometimes it means I'm updating 100's of links to satisfy myself.

Have fun.

 

[Parody]

I have tried creating my own "Class" tag domain, but I think this is causing the app to crash (bug reports already sent from inside app).

That's weird. If you want a more personal response to an issue, use the Report a Bug page on the website.

If I delete the unused classes from the Global "Class" tag domain, is there a way to get them back at a later date?

Not at this time. If you want to keep Global items around, you need to hide them instead of deleting. (Uncheck "Shown" for the various Tags/Domains/Categories.)

Normally you can hide things without removing Protection, so you don't have to worry about that.

 

[Vargr]

So I spent some time looking online, and RW kept coming up; from what I could find, it seemed like it MIGHT be a good fit, but everything seems so oriented to people who are starting fresh, crafting everything from a single perspective. The adverts made it sound like a version of Evernote that would use language analysis to keep track of cross-references between notes, and provide meaningful structured fields; but in using it, it seems a lot more like a blank canvas than the paint-by-numbers tool I was hoping for.

Well, that is what I am using it for - keeping track of information that are interlinked all over the place.

With all the lore you have to keep track of, I would say that Realm Works is just what you need. You will probably find that one day Realm Works will show you connections and possibilities in your world neither you nor your players had thought of.

The canvas is not blank - that is actually why all the Pathfinder things are there (classes and wutnot) to give the user an idea of how things might be used.

Of course this also means that out-of-the-box you might have features you don't need in your specific system/world.

Luckily you can turn some or all of them off or just ignore them (what I tend to do). You can also make your own as you see fit.

As other have stated - start with entering a little encounter, a bar, a town, a few items. Play around with it. Place an item in a city. Add a cousin to the king, integrate a religion. Find out what works for you.

The strength of Realm Works is that there are so many possibilities and no set way of using it. That is also why it is a little difficult to jump into.

And just ask questions - that's what the rest of us do

 

[AEIOU]

RW has a very strong and robust structure that is almost universal. While it is fantasy oriented with Pathfinder probably as a basis, I think it will easily expand into a variety of settings once the Marketplace is established and we can download templates. I for one am really looking forward to the Paranoia categories and topics and setup I've seen here on the forums and I hope these are shareable later because I want I want I want.

My approach (which is my plan but I don't stick to as I jump around a lot and I flesh some things out right away rather than create stubs...ooooh shiny, add this!):

0) CTRL-Q, make sure that the tag for "empty" or something like that is active. I will be using CTRL-Q to create all entries and I want my default to be an empty category that I come back to later to complete. So I need to flag these so I can find them easily later.

1) Geography - Enter names of all mountains, rivers, plains, hills, lakes, etc. NO content for any of these topics. I want the names, not the details right now.

2) Towns - Enter names. NO content.

3) Infrastructure - Enter the background things that matter to this campaign like religions, ethnic groups, deities, states, landmarks or points of interest, etc. Flesh these out as appropriate but many will be without content still.

4) People - Enter names of major NPC's. Add background material, history, etc. NO stats or HeroLab details.

5) Adventures and details - Start adding adventure areas, dungeons, etc. Work on the Mechanics section with creatures, poisons, magic items, etc. And most importantly, go back to #1 and start this process over but this time add some more details.

Rinse, repeat ad nauseum....

I prefer building the infrastructure that won't have a lot of links first and add content that will link a lot as I go. This way I don't have to refresh links too often.

A lot of my material is cut/paste from PDFs to build out my campaign setting. I find that I'm frequently supplementing published material with additional commentary, finer details or creating relationships (things that just simply did not exist in the printed material but which were implied or make sense).

 

[Vargr]

AEIOU's approach - I think - would work very well, especially for people new at RW and people building a world from scratch.

I ought to do something along those lines.

 

[Lexin]

I think AEIOU's idea looks really good...and I work completely differently.

I'm going to be playing a game later this month, and what I'm doing is adding the details for the game I'm going to be running - and because I'm working to a deadline, I don't have time right now to add too much background.

So I've added the places important to the next game, the NPCs important to the next game, and a storyboard for the upcoming events to hang off. I've added background from previous adventures because that was readily available in Word documents that I used last time we played this campaign and fleshes it out nicely.

I'm currently working my way through maps I've created using the Campaign Cartographer software from Profantasy, adding in the possible routes the party might take to the place the 'real' adventure is due to happen.

Today, my plan is to flesh out events which may happen at their destination. So that will be fun for me.

 

[AEIOU]

Your approach looks good Lexin. I have the luxury of world building for a sandbox setting without a deadline so I'm building the broader context and will worry about storyboard and adventure details later.

I think the beauty of RW is that the more information you add, the more detailed the linkages and the better the understanding of the whole campaign. There are so many links in my campaign that I never would have realized without RW.

As most Pathfinder games are set in Golaria and I suspect we'll likely see setting materials for Golaria added to the pending Marketplace fairly quickly, the work I'm doing will be purchasable soon-ish. I am building out the new Lonelands setting from FGG which I suspect won't have as much immediate support so I'm using it as my guinea pig to learn with.

 

[kylania]

I think the beauty of RW is that the more information you add, the more detailed the linkages and the better the understanding of the whole campaign. There are so many links in my campaign that I never would have realized without RW.

Got the the Link Web section of the guides and this absolutely looks like a great tool for that kind of thing. Even just the tutorial content has enough to it to see the potential.

 

[the_redbeard]

0) CTRL-Q, make sure that the tag for "empty" or something like that is active. I will be using CTRL-Q to create all entries and I want my default to be an empty category that I come back to later to complete. So I need to flag these so I can find them easily later.

I'm very glad I read this thread just for that tip.