Sorting stories from purchased products (Question)

[GavinRuneblade]

In the story dialog window all of my purchased modules and books have their information in a jumbled up mess.

https://imgur.com/a/rcq5V

Is there any way to sort these? I would like if all of them had a top-level based on the name of the product and then all the content was only visible with that section. Can I do that sort of editing to purchased adventures and books?

Edit: for some reason my image is getting nulled out. I have it here: imgur.com/a/rcq5V

[LordEntrails]

You can sort them by their groups. Within their displayed list, they will always sort alpha-numerically. So for instance, in the items list, you can sort by product or group (if the product/module has individual groups). Just change the pull-down filter at the top or click the group name on the right side.
22653

[Talyn]

Aside from the obvious "why do you have everything you own loaded at the same time?" as @LordEntrails mentions, there is a dropdown menu allowing you to select specific groups per product. Some products only have a single group, other have several, depending on the window. Such as the DMG has multiple groups ordered by chapter in the Tables window. Lost Mines of Phandelver has each section as its own group in the Story window, and so on.

https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=22654&stc=1&d=1521315330

[GavinRuneblade]

You can sort them by their groups. Within their displayed list, they will always sort alpha-numerically. So for instance, in the items list, you can sort by product or group (if the product/module has individual groups). Just change the pull-down filter at the top or click the group name on the right side.
22653

That's why I tried to post a screenshot. It is the groups that are screwed up. I have in the groups pulldown: (all), (New), 0.Introduction, 0.The Sunless Citadel, 00.Curse of Strahd, 01. Chapter 1: into the mists, 01. Into the Doomvault, 02.Chapter 2: The lands of Barovia... etc

Why don't I have and is there a way to get (All), (New), Curse of Strahd, TYP, Rise of Tiamat, etc and then the chapters ONLY appear in the relevant group rather than every chapter from every product showing up as its own group?

[GavinRuneblade]

Aside from the obvious "why do you have everything you own loaded at the same time?" as @LordEntrails mentions, there is a dropdown menu allowing you to select specific groups per product. Some products only have a single group, other have several, depending on the window. Such as the DMG has multiple groups ordered by chapter in the Tables window. Lost Mines of Phandelver has each section as its own group in the Story window, and so on.

I don't have everything loaded (that was an exaggeration born of frustration), but this is a 3 year-old campaign and I have used many different products over the years. I have two big adventure books (strahd, princes of the apocalypse), the rules, xa-iforgetthename, and a couple smaller items we used for one-offs (Beauty and blood, dead in thay, etc), plus a lot of map packs. I let the players have access to the player versions of campaign guides and volo's guide to monsters because one is playing a race from there.

The issue is that most of the books have every chapter as its own group. So it gets really messy. If I actually had everything loaded.... I think it might crash my computer lol.

[Talyn]

Why don't I have and is there a way to get (All), (New), Curse of Strahd, TYP, Rise of Tiamat, etc and then the chapters ONLY appear in the relevant group rather than every chapter from every product showing up as its own group?

This is why I stopped building adventures using the groups when I do DLC. If you tell FG that things are separate then, naturally, it separates everything. If the developer had omitted the groups entirely, then you could simply choose, say, Rise of Tiamat, and everything from ROT would appear nice, easy and clean. I'll run that suggestion by the developer who did those.

[GavinRuneblade]

This is why I stopped building adventures using the groups when I do DLC. If you tell FG that things are separate then, naturally, it separates everything. If the developer had omitted the groups entirely, then you could simply choose, say, Rise of Tiamat, and everything from ROT would appear nice, easy and clean. I'll run that suggestion by the developer who did those.

Please do. ^.^

[Zacchaeus]

Why don't I have and is there a way to get (All), (New), Curse of Strahd, TYP, Rise of Tiamat, etc and then the chapters ONLY appear in the relevant group rather than every chapter from every product showing up as its own group?

No. You can have a group called Curse of Strahd and that will contain all of the story entries for CoS in it; you can't have sub groups with just the chapter headings which then open up the story entries (I think this is what you are after). I agree that if you have more than one adventure module open then the groupings get messy. One possible solution is to preface the category with the module name (or at least an abbreviation of the name) so that all of the CoS chapters for example would appear together. I'll give it some thought once I've finished my current project.

[Trenloe]

I think quite a few of the DLC modules need to be closely reviewed for the group names used within them. It is up to the individual developer as to how they set it up and how they name groups. Many appear to have the idea that their product will be used in isolation or it never occurs to them that the headings used wouldn't be "obvious" to people not familiar with the product - developers know the product they're working on inside-out so sometimes think things are obvious, when they're not to the average user.

This is not aimed at any particular developer - it happens across the whole FG product range (not just 5E). It's more aimed at the SmiteWorks product review process and/or recommendations given to FG developers as to how to structure groups within modules. At the minimum there should be a unique abbreviation of the product name used at the beginning of the group name (IMHO).

[LordEntrails]

The stuff I've been working on lately (DMsGuild, not FG store) I'm using a 2 or 3 letter abbreviation for the module before the chapter number. It's the best solution I know of, but would be willing to adapt another standard if people had a better one.

[damned]

Guys - is this the sort of thing you mean?
Suggestions on the right way to do this?
Can we all throw some ideas into the pot and try to come up with a consensus to work towards?

https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=22659

22659

[Zacchaeus]

I don't thik the problem exists with the reference library it is the groups in the Story in the campaign that's the issue.

This is what I have in mind for the story groups except only the group would need to have the prefix - not every story entry. So in Lost Mines for example I'd have LMoP Chapter 1, LMoP chapter 2 etc.

Basically then if you have LMoP and SKT open at the same time instead of having generic groups each adventure would appear alphabetically so all of LMoP's chapters would appear before SKT's

[damned]

So ditch the ToC-SB on each story entry and put it on the Chapters?

ToC-SB Background
0-00 Background
0-01 Trail Of Clues
ToC-SB Scenes
1-00 Getting on Board
1-01 Arrival In Shanghai

https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=22678
22678

[Zacchaeus]

Yes. In your case it doesn't look like you created story groups for that adventure (at least your graphic doesn't show them)

Here's a mock up of what I mean

[Trenloe]

So ditch the ToC-SB on each story entry and put it on the Chapters?

ToC-SB Background
0-00 Background
0-01 Trail Of Clues
ToC-SB Scenes
1-00 Getting on Board
1-01 Arrival In Shanghai
It’s the names of the groups in the campaign data window (accessible from the right of the desktop) that is the issue we're discussing. Not headings in the reference manual as a reference manual only contains data for one module/product.

[JohnD]

Yes. In your case it doesn't look like you created story groups for that adventure (at least your graphic doesn't show them)

Here's a mock up of what I mean

I like this personally, makes it easy to clear the clutter and just look at the area you want easily.

[LordEntrails]

Yea, what Mr. Z is indicating for sure. Not Ref Manual, but for the story lists.

I would suggest that the adventure pre-fix be kept to 4 or fewer characters (maybe 5 with a dash?).

Here's another example of the problem (just so everyone, including me, are on the same page);
22684

If all of those modules had a prefix, then these entries would be better organized, rather than mixed in together.

EDIT: oh, for all lists, not just stories!

[Trenloe]

Yea, what Mr. Z is indicating for sure. Not Ref Manual, but for the story lists.

I would suggest that the adventure pre-fix be kept to 4 or fewer characters (maybe 5 with a dash?).

Here's another example of the problem (just so everyone, including me, are on the same page);
22684

If all of those modules had a prefix, then these entries would be better organized, rather than mixed in together.

EDIT: oh, for all lists, not just stories!
I don't think it is being suggested that individual entries have the abbreviation in front of them. We're suggesting that the group names have the name abbreviation at the beginning. This won't help with organising the "All" lists. But it will allow GMs to better filter content on a product-by-product basis and not be confused as to what some group names mean.

For example, in the Pathfinder Mummy's Mask Part 1 adventure, the Group names are "Adventure Outline", "Part 1", "Part 2" and "Part 3". If multiple modules are open it would be very confusing to work out which modules each group refers to.

https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=22690

[Trenloe]

An additional idea would be to also allow sorting by group name first. But this won't give too many improvements if a lot of modules are open - as the same entries will be at the top of the list all the time (the group name with the first sorted name).

[LordEntrails]

Ok, yea, the group names should definitely have it. Guess the object names would be... distasteful is they all had it.

[Talyn]

I still prefer having everything inside one master product, say Lost Mines of Phandelver or Shanghai Bullets above. Unless it's one of those rare cases where you have multiple separate adventures contained within a single module, in which case, have a group for each adventure, but still contain every single scene, etc. for that adventure within its group.

I think in the case of the 5E stuff is that PAR5E creates a group every time you make a new chapter. That feature should be a toggle for the developer to choose or not.

[Zacchaeus]

The option exists to just have one long huge list of story entries by simply not creating chapters in par5e which is what creates the group. I can accept that we don’t necessarily need encounters, items etc broken down by chapter but I do think the Story does.

[GavinRuneblade]

It seems like everyone understands what I was asking and so I'll just chill out and watch. Thank you all for tackling this!