5e adventure creation - learning by doing - questions

[Myrdin Potter]

When I do that, as soon as I close the monsters module, they go away again (they have little module open icons besides them). I must be doing it wrong, I am doing it from the tab and dropping on the other NPC tab. Maybe I need to do it from the library? Can you be more specific of dragging from where in the interface to where?

I suppose I need to redo every encounter once I do this ... sigh ...

---- and I went and tried after writing this post ---

OK, If I drag from the library to the NPC tab, it works. Except I was being complete and put a link with a picture of the monster into each monster and, of course, the image is in the other campaign and module. So I have to copy all the images over to the new campaign with the master module and remove the offending links and add back the better links.

Annoying but no other way to learn but trying and making mistakes, I guess. :-p

[LordEntrails]

If you want to fix the links by editing the xml, you can see this post, it has the basics of what you would need to do (after copying the NPC to the NPC list): https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forum...l=1#post276334

[Myrdin Potter]

I am not sure what I would edit it to, at least at my current knowledge level.

What would be good for monsters would be if they had a field for their official image. Right now if you want to have a picture for a monster yiu put a link to an image in the monster description. Except the image is not copied when you copy it into the NPC list.

So in my monster campaign that I created the monsters in, I have all the images in my image folder and linked them into the monster in the notes tab. That does not work when you copy the monster over as the link refers back to the original image. Unless I did something wrong when I exported and that is the problem ....

[Myrdin Potter]

Is there something I should have done different in creating the monsters with the image links in the notes section of the monster entry to make this more portable, or are you always going to have to copy over the images into your new module? Is there a way to not have to redo all the monster entries that have picture links?

[Trenloe]

You'll need to copy over the images. The links to the images will be coded to look in the module. You need to have the images in the module making campaign to allow you to export these into a new module.

Just remember that everything you want to export to a module has to be in the campaign. It can't be contained in other modules, unless you want a pre-requisite of having those other modules loaded - which is a manual process to activate the required modules in the end campaign.

You could manually edit the links, but this would require you to know which image reference in the campaign is for which image. It will be more reliable (and probably quicker) to re-do the image links.

[LordEntrails]

I'll add a section in the module creation guide about this. To make sure I've got it right, this is roughly what I'll say;

"Images that are linked in NPC entries should be placed in the Images list (usually in their own tab/group) and then the link dragged to the NPC description text."

Though hopefully I'll come up with better text than that in the next half-hour.

[Myrdin Potter]

I think that you need the images, or a copy, in the images folder of the campaign that you want to latter turn into a module. If you plan on distributing the module later the images and everything needs to be in the right folder set. You then need to use that image to make a new link.

For the advice on making a module with your "monsters module" that is the suggested approach (make a campaign with monsters only) then you should specific that you need to drag the monsters over to the main NPC tab for the campaign from the library list, not from tab to tab in the NPC list. You also should warn that if you have images of the monsters in your monster campaign that you include in the monster stats via a link, that you will have to re-add the images to the campaign and delink them to the NPC as well.

I am a little unclear about what happens with the tokens. I made tokens for the new monsters and I wonder what happens to them if I send the final module to a new person.

[LordEntrails]

Right, for a self-contained adventure module everything has to be directly in the campaign file that that you are creating the module from. Except maybe tokens, I don't have a good understanding of tokens yet.

[Trenloe]

Except maybe tokens, I don't have a good understanding of tokens yet.

The last time I tested this, tokens were a little bit weird. If you use a token from a token module it appeared that in future, as long as the GM had the token module then the tokens would be available even if the module was not activated. I tested with letters and the standard FG supplied top-down tokens. Now, whether this also applies to tokens in general modules (i.e. not just a token module, but an adventure with some tokens) I don't know. Perhaps someone can test it?

[Myrdin Potter]

I am always a big fan of making things like where the images have to be and the consequences of the choice of making a "monsters module" as clear as possible in guides. The people that will read the guides are people like me doing it the first time. Once we get it right once or twice from following the guide, then it becomes more second nature.