Campaign vs Modules

[Alarian]

I had a question regarding how campaigns verses modules work. My initial thoughs about how I was going to use this program were that I would enter in some of my core "campaign" materials such as major geographical maps, cities, major NPC's etc. Then I would load modules as needed to run whatever current adventure the party was on. Now granted I only have a few hours into the program at this point, but Im begining to think that I can't do this, at least easily. Is this correct? I see you can purchase store bought modules and activate them, but can I have a core campaign (not ruleset) entered into the program then create seperate modules that contain specific adventure areas and encounters and load and unload them as needed?

[Cantstanzya]

I started just using the campaign, but now that I have been working with modules, that is the way to go. I am now in the process of converting things to modules. It seems to remove alot of the clutter. For example, each town the players stop in I am making a module for each one of these towns. This way if they aren't in that town I disable that module and all of the NPC's maps and buildings aren't shown to me and don't get in the way. I have seen at FUM (Four Ugly Monsters) they have a party treasure module that will allow the DM to keep track of the party treasure.

[Alarian]

So, to create a module, I enter in all the content pertenant to that adventure and then in the chat window I type /export [module name] [description]

Im assuming then that everything thats currently loaded (except the ruleset) is going to be saved into the module. So, a couple of questions. Can you have more than one module loaded at a time? If not, can you have your core campaign stuff loaded and then load a module into that? Im not quite sure how a campaign and module interact with each other.

Alarian

[Cantstanzya]

Yes, when you do an export everything that is in that campaign is exported. So what I have done is started up a new campaign for the town that I will make a module out of. I put in all of the places I have for that town in the images directory (taverns, temples, city maps, ect...). Then I add all of the NPCs that are in that town. When I have the town setup the way I want it, I'll do an export. Then when we are playing in the main campaign, when the PC are in that town I'll activate that module. And yes, you can have more than one module activated at a time.
I look at a campaign as being an overview of the world my players are in and a module as being the specifics of that world. That is where I am trying to get with my campaign. I want to setup the main campaign with the world map and a module for each place they may visit, you know towns, cities, dungeons. Now if they ever go Spell Jamming then I would probably start up completly new campaign with the modules being different spaceports and worlds they would visit.
Unfortunatly I have been playing for almost a year and my entire campaign is in one campaign. It was starting to get cluttered so I looked into modules, and that seems the way to go. I would be interested to see how others use the modules.

[kalmarjan]

I started to use the modules to break up parts of my campaign. I am playing RTTTOEE, and the book is about 200+ pages with all the information in there.

Be careful with the modules though; for some reason when you disable a module, sometimes the "tabs" in the boxes do not seem to want to dissapear.

Sandeman

[gurney9999]

To continue with what the others have said: Your initial thought on how to handle campaign vs. modules is a good method of using FG.

In your core campaign, have all your major maps, recurring NPCs, overarching story pages, and especially tokens (as they do not export into a module).

Then use 'sandbox campaigns' to create your localized content, then export these as modules.

Yes you can have multiple modules active at the same time. Like Kal said, sometimes 'tabs' do not disappear when you inactivate a module, but you can delete the tab manually after you deactivate it and it doesn't affect the module in any way.

[Bodatoda]

Has anyone had any problems with manually xferring data such as maps, personalities, items, stories, etc. from their main campaign into a newly created campaign via windows explorer copy/cut & paste?

I, too, have been running a game for some time out of my main campaign with no module separation and would like to know if this is a feasible way to get organized.

Are there any potential pitfalls I should be aware of before I attempt this? Any advice other than to backup my campaign?

Thanks.

[gurney9999]

Yes, you can do it with your image related items. When you open the campaign the images will show up in the gui with the file name, so you will have to rename accordingly.

You can move images in conjunction with copying and pasting from one or multiple db.xml files into others as well (for NPCs, story pages, etc.), but you need to make sure your reference points (i.e. node numbers, image file names, etc.) do not conflict with each other and are defined correctly. If you do things like set up shortcuts on maps the copying and pasting gets much more difficult, but it stll can be done.

I'm sure there are other things to look for that others will follow up with.

[Veelivar]

Sorry if this is d dumb question.

But in FG terms what is the difference between a campaign and a module?

[gurney9999]

Campaign - The logical container that a GM creates content in, and also what a GM opens up for players to log into.

Module - a subset of information (story pages, images, npcs, items) that is built in one campaign and exported as a module to be used in another campaign using the same ruleset. Once exported, one or multiple modules can be activated within a campaign opened up for play by a GM. This allows GMs to keep the campaign they use from week to week 'clean' and organized. They only need to activate modules to pull in the info they need for their session at that time.

I did a tutorial at one time discussing this... you can find it here:

https://www.landofcaern.com/visualfaqs.htm

[Veelivar]

excellent thanks. I'll have a look at that.

[Alarian]

Ok, one last question. I have just finsihed creating my first module. All in all it went fairly smooth. I created a bunch of room descriptions, NPC's, Items, etc. Everything is linked nicely and I actually ran a session last night using the module and it went smooth (running anothe session this afternoon as well actually). I saved it all into a module and loaded up a new campaign and loaded the module successfully. Now my question is this. Do I just go back and delete everything out of the campaign since it's all saved in the module? The main thing that makes me nervous is the module size. There is no way anything other than text can be saved in that file, so I'm assuming the maps don't get saved into the module? If not, how do I get them to not show up on my campain maps list?

Alarian

[gurney9999]

Images should be saved in the module. Check the the export script associated with the ruleset you are using. It states what should be exported into the module. Someone with access to FG can follow up with the exact file and info (or do a search here... it's posted in another thread somewhere).

Some create a 'sandbox' campaign to build stuff in and export out into modules. Once the module is created it is its own entity. You can delete info from the sandbox campaign you used to create the module if you like and your module will be unaffected. Wash, rinse, repeat.

[gurney9999]

Here's the thread for the info on how to tell what should be exported

https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3539

[SurlyDwarf]

What are various ways to organize with modules? I mean, should you have one for maps, one for NPCs, etc.?

What is the distinction for how content becomes, well, modular. :D

I am curious to hear what people have done along these lines.

[gurney9999]

Good question! Everyone probably does things differently, so this should be fun to see.

I personally use a central campaign for a group of character sheets, recurring NPCs, main map images, main story pages, etc. I use this for my sessions and activate modules accordingly.

Then in a separate 'sandbox' campaign I usually create modules broken out either by 'session' or by 'location (or locigal group of locations)'. Within each module I place the maps, specific NPCs, story pages, etc. for everything should occur within those maps.

Since you cannot export tokens into a module, I create folders (bags) within my tokens/host folder, with the same module name, and all the tokens that apply only to that module are placed within it (with subfolders if needed).

Separately I have helpful modules that I'll use from time to time... like Kalmarjan's Campaign Log and Party Treasure Mods (https://www.fouruglymonsters.com/downloads_community.htm)

Of course this is all conjecture. With a one month old daughter I don't have time to run games at all. But this is what I have done in the past (and plan to do in the future :) ).