Module writing - the story book

[Veelivar]

I think it's called the story book in FG any way.?

What I as wondering is what is a good line to draw between what you put in th estory book and what you 'wing'.

My impulse is to do the following, is this a good way to go.


description of main places PC's are likley to visit
likly maps/handouts/pics
initial description of any characters PC's are liley to encounter
stats for above characters
stats for likey generic nps'c/creatures


What else do you find useful?

Also as I am doing WFRP I was just gong to finish my charsheet and mini char sheets for the characters. I don't need to bother doing a full rulest do I? the charsheet is taking long enough (all my players have the book)

any other tips?

Cheers,
Dan.

[DarkStar]

Also as I am doing WFRP I was just gong to finish my charsheet and mini char sheets for the characters. I don't need to bother doing a full rulest do I? the charsheet is taking long enough (all my players have the book)


I suppose, as long as you use the paper rulebooks for Warhammer it will be OK. The character sheet for D&D, which is included in Fantasy Grounds, is a great tool, becase it calculates the modifiers and relations between various skills (synergy) and probably it's based on the ruleset itself, but I'm not sure. If you just want to have a WFRP character sheet w/o all those automatic calculations it should do it's work as well.

[richvalle]

I think it's called the story book in FG any way.?

What I as wondering is what is a good line to draw between what you put in th estory book and what you 'wing'.

My impulse is to do the following, is this a good way to go.


description of main places PC's are likley to visit
likly maps/handouts/pics
initial description of any characters PC's are liley to encounter
stats for above characters
stats for likey generic nps'c/creatures


What else do you find useful?

Also as I am doing WFRP I was just gong to finish my charsheet and mini char sheets for the characters. I don't need to bother doing a full rulest do I? the charsheet is taking long enough (all my players have the book)

any other tips?

Cheers,
Dan.

If you do a pre-published adventure (as I am) you can do the following:

Create a story item for each room with the room number as the story title. You can also put a note about monsters in the title. For example: I have stories like : E032 4 Shadows

Create a FG personality for each monster type/npc.

In each room story page put in notes of things you want to keep track of. Door open, room has magical darkness ect. You can also create links to any critters that are in the room.

Drag each story page to the map and create a pin. If you want, you can also drag each personality on to the map or just use the links you created above.

Now when you run the game you can just use drop the tokens on the map and use it for movement. You can mouse over the pins to see what rooms are coming up and what creatures are in them. When they enter a room, you can go to that page in the book and read them the descrition.

rv

[Veelivar]

Cheers I didn't realise that you can drap story elements onto the map.

It's not going to be a published adventure. It's somthing I'm making up myself.

Cheers,
Dan.

[richvalle]

Still usefull to drop those things on the map (I think). You can drop links to towns on a world map, then links to buildings, then links to npcs in those buildings. If done completely, you can run the whole thing from the map using it to pull up the story items, npcs ect as you need them.

Note: the pins do not show up by defaut on the map. You can either hit Ctrl to see them or right click, map layers, turn on pins to make them visible all the time (but only for that sesson of FG. You'll have to turn them on again next time).

I love the pins! :)

rv

[gurney9999]

If done completely, you can run the whole thing from the map using it to pull up the story items, npcs ect as you need them.
Yes, that is the greatest thing about the pins. People post sometimes about how confusing it can be having info in multiple story pages on multiple tabs, multiple Personalities, etc. but if you put links to everything in your maps (other than to tokens, which I still hope for someday), you never have to search for anything through your other 'containers' while you are running a session.

[Veelivar]

Cool,

Once I have finished my charsheet I'll have a look into this. I'm slowly getting there. I keep changing my mind about what I want where :)

Just a few questions.

I believe that you can do seperate modules with different info in. So for example I could do a module for a Village that has maps, prominent npc's, places of interest etc. could I combine multiple modules with in one interlinked map as you suggest above? So i could alos have a module for a group of bandits that are roaming the country side, and link thm into the map's of th evillage and into a nother map of the surrounding area? If you see what i mean?

Also can I then save this? (export it seperatly?)

and finally (for now...) How do you guy's keep track of things with n a module. For example say one of the PC's met an NPC and ripped him off. Can you easily add this info to the NPC so that when they meet again the info is there for you to remember it?, again can this be saved off?

I guess I'm wondering if you can use it as a kinda dynamic database? How easy is this to manage? Or to you do this out side of FG and just ahve the info you want in fg?

Cheers,
Dan.

[gurney9999]

If you do a search on 'module' you will find several threads where some of these items are discussed.

Shortcut pins would be saved between maps and other items within a single module, but you would not be able to set up links to different maps in different modules outside of a campaign and bring in all that info intact.

You should consider a module to be a 'finished' set of info. You can't alter info within an active module and save it out. You can however activate a module and then create new pages within your campaign referencing actions that you want to capture for later use (like the example you mentioned of a PC ripping off an NPC).

Kalmarjan created a Notes module that you can use to take notes within a module (just always keep it active within the campaign so your notes will always be saved with the campaign). This module (and other helpful DM modules) can be downloaded from the FUM website (link below).