Best Practices - Editing official modules/campaign organization

[doredras]

Please forgive me, I'm sure this has been asked and answered a million times but I couldn't find just the right search queries to figure out what I want to know. Thanks in advance for the pointers.

So, I am getting ready to run ToA in a month or so. I'm going to do a bunch of addition/subtraction/modification to the content as-written. In addition, I want to re-work many of the official Story entries - add some, remove some, split some, edit some, etc. - to make them easier to parse on the fly during gameplay. I was hoping to make a copy of the official module I could mess with in a prep campaign and then export as a custom module that I could load in the actual campaign without needing to load the official module.

Of course, I've sense learned this is impossible - no bulk copy, images can't be copied, files encrypted, etc. Copyright, I get it. Image theft is why we can't have nice things.

So, I am definitely not the first one to have this problem. What are the best practices when one wants to make significant changes to an official module and wants to avoid having any of the unused official content cluttering up the menus and making it hard to find things? Or, I suppose, best practices for campaign prep in general?

Thanks in advance for the tips!

[LordEntrails]

Not sure their is a single best practice, there are two ways, each with their own pros and cons. In short;

Method 1: Create a Adaptation Module
This method you create a 'development' campaign. Load the official module in here, then copy anything you want to modify. When done, export this to a module. When using in your play campaign, you will need the official module and your module loaded.
Pros: allows you full control, prevents official module updates from inadvertently impacting your changes, you can use your adaptation module in many campaigns
Cons: More work, and you have to manage and navigate two modules in your play campaign. It can be easy to get lost in which story entry etc to use.


Method 2: Modify the Module in the Campaign
This method you load the official module in your play campaign, then unlock the stories and entries you want to change and modify them. A few things you may have to copy, but in general you can just modify most object types.
Pros: Quicker to do, Usually easier to navigate as you only have one module of content
Cons: not reusable in other campaigns, If the official module gets updates, its hard to incorporate them as you risk losing any changes you made

[doredras]

Helpful things!

Thanks, that is helpful. In terms of the second method, what happens if something I've changed gets an official update of some kind? Am I prompted to overwrite, or does that happen automatically?

[LordEntrails]

No, it doesn't happen automatically if you have changed the entry, you will have to Revert Changes.

If you look in a story list, on the right side you will see a scroll & quill icon on any entries you have modified locally in that campaign. Anything you have not modified will automatically get updated, but anything you have modified will not. You can update those items you have changed in two ways, either select the individual entry and right click and select Revert Changes and just that one item will be updated, or on the Module Activation screen select the module and Revert Changes and all entries will be updated.

The problem/challenge is, you won't know the exact changes to the item, so you might have to open the entry in another instance of FG and visually compare to know.

[doredras]

Ok cool.

It seems like what I might end up doing is a hybrid of the two:
* Make changes in a development campaign, export as a module
* Import both custom and official modules into the play campaign
* Delete extraneous entries from the official module that are no longer needed to avoid navigation challenges during play.

This has the downside of being the most work up-front but maybe the most usable and re-usable in play.

Thanks for the help and info.

[LordEntrails]

Sounds like you have a solid plan. Have fun :)