Thoughts on doing away with Story entries on new products?

[celestian]

I was having a chat in discord the other day and the discussion came up with Ref-manual and story entries and it got me thinking how to eliminate Story entries in converted products.

Now that we have a fairly easy method of building ref-manuals all that needs done is to change the way pop-out linked ref-manual pages display (so you can resize freely) and I can't see a reason why we'd need to link Story entries on maps any longer.

The fix for the ref-manual page popout took me about 2 minutes to apply.

Doesn't break any previous work and seems to give a migration path to no longer needing Story records in new products?

For older content you can create a ref-manual using Author to import the Story data into Builder if you want to update?

I'm mostly wondering with Doug/JPG's thoughts are and if I could possibly use this method on new conversions (and re-works for older content being brought up to FGU features).

[Zacchaeus]

There is a very good case for not doing story entries for adventures. I'd hesitate to go back and redo older products that I've done (I couldn't anyway since there's no way to link a refmanual page to an image easily in par5e) but going forward it would certainly save a lot of work having to duplicate everything.

The refmanual pages would however need to shrink down a bit since they take up a lot more room that a story page does. I think that unless they did users with limited screen space would be most unhappy.

[LordEntrails]

As a user I would be highly skeptical... Other than screen space, I expect a "Story" entry that I can use. Maybe cause I'm old, I don't run using the Ref Man, I use it to pre-read an adventure, but them always use stories. Also, how would the ability to (copy)/edit modules entries be impacted?

But, it almost seems like the entries could be one in the same? Formatted in the Ref Man and listed in the Story list? I'm not opposed to learning new things, but I would like to see an example before passing judgement.

[Moon Wizard]

Please don't make any changes to the way adventures are created at this time. We have some thoughts along these lines; but as @LordEntrails alluded to, there are other considerations about use cases and workflows that need to be ironed out.

Regards,
JPG

[celestian]

As a user I would be highly skeptical... Other than screen space, I expect a "Story" entry that I can use. Maybe cause I'm old, I don't run using the Ref Man, I use it to pre-read an adventure, but them always use stories. Also, how would the ability to (copy)/edit modules entries be impacted?

But, it almost seems like the entries could be one in the same? Formatted in the Ref Man and listed in the Story list? I'm not opposed to learning new things, but I would like to see an example before passing judgement.

It wouldn't change how you play your games really. You'd still click on the pins and bring up a page, it would just load the page from ref-records and not a Story but look the same.

The only difference otherwise would be instead of opening Story records to read a page manually is you'd open the ref-manual.

I do not know what the future plans are in this regard I just would love to get rid of one or the other as it's not necessary. The downsides to ref-manual use is... almost nil?

[damned]

I think SmiteWorks are probably exploring that option... :pirate:

[Valyar]

Whatever the future approach is, it should eliminate the double work of maintaining a RefMan and Story pages with duplicate content. RefMan and its formatting are much better and the only issue is the fixed size of the refman page.

The only usage of Story entries I have is during map crawling and opening the individual pins. Otherwise I keep the RefMan as it provides an outline.

[rtrm]

I don't develop modules for FG, but I do referee (5th, Traveller, PF2 & Starfinder). I hardly ever use the reference manual, mainly because it's just not as usable as Story entries. My biggest issue is that I frequently copy text from story entries to paste in chat (descriptions, names, and suchlike), which is not something you can't do from the reference manual (afaik). The reference manual window is also clunker than the story windows - it has a minimum width, which story windows do not, and you can only have one instance open.

I can see the benefits of combining both, but don't cut the story windows loose until the reference manual is fully able to replace their current functionality.

[Zacchaeus]

I don't develop modules for FG, but I do referee (5th, Traveller, PF2 & Starfinder). I hardly ever use the reference manual, mainly because it's just not as usable as Story entries. My biggest issue is that I frequently copy text from story entries to paste in chat (descriptions, names, and suchlike), which is not something you can't do from the reference manual (afaik). The reference manual window is also clunker than the story windows - it has a minimum width, which story windows do not, and you can only have one instance open.

I can see the benefits of combining both, but don't cut the story windows loose until the reference manual is fully able to replace their current functionality.

The new reference builder does everything that story entries do; you can have more than one page open (which you can do now actually by clicking the link on the top left of a page to pop it out), you can edit them or copy text from them - unless they are locked - which they wouldn't be if it were an adventure. You can also link them (which you can do now as well). But I agree the main problem is page size.

[rtrm]

which you can do now actually by clicking the link on the top left of a page to pop it out


Live and learn, thanks :)

[spoofer]

Hey all,

I am playing around with Builder to learn what it can do. It is very easy to use. Thank you for creating such an amazing tool. I noticed one other difference between RefMan content and Story content---image sharing. In a RefMan entry, an image is embedded and cannot be easily shared with players. You need to find that image in the Images folder inside Campaign and then share that record. In the case of Story content, a link to the record in the Image folder is provided, allowing the host to quickly share the image. Hopefully this will also be ironed out, or content developers remember to also add a link to the Image folder record when they embed an image in a RefMan entry.

[Zacchaeus]

Hey all,

I am playing around with Builder to learn what it can do. It is very easy to use. Thank you for creating such an amazing tool. I noticed one other difference between RefMan content and Story content---image sharing. In a RefMan entry, an image is embedded and cannot be easily shared with players. You need to find that image in the Images folder inside Campaign and then share that record. In the case of Story content, a link to the record in the Image folder is provided, allowing the host to quickly share the image. Hopefully this will also be ironed out, or content developers remember to also add a link to the Image folder record when they embed an image in a RefMan entry.

This is incorrect. If the images have been correctly added to the refmanual then you can click on the image to pop it out and then share it as normal. See video Twenty-Eight here https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?55797-How-do-I-in-Unity&p=492112#post492112

[Nick Frost]

As I mentioned on the Discord...

As a GM I usually like changing stuff (art, descriptions, sound links, additional material...) to the stories during prep. I make copies of the story sections I modify IOT be able to export my additions to different campaigns while at the same time be "safe" from reverting my changes. Being able to edit the ref. manual is nice, but I can't export my "customization" to use it in several campaigns yet (and copying the content from a ref. manual "page" even if it's unlocked is not as simple as "dragging and dropping" like with current story entries).

Of course, I'm talking too early about a "problem" that probably won't exist �� . But I just wanted know if the possibility of copying ref. manual pages via drag&drop to the ref. builder would be a sensible request in the idea informer (wishlist), or if some other idea was actually in the works to not make prepping clunkier and longer for GMs that like customizing content to their own taste...

[Zacchaeus]

I think in many ways we should be looking at this from the other way around. Instead of removing story pages, remove the reference manual and make story pages act like reference pages with embedded graphics, sidebars, frames etc. Whichever way it goes what I think we would like is the functionality of story pages with the elegance of reference pages.

[celestian]

I think in many ways we should be looking at this from the other way around. Instead of removing story pages, remove the reference manual and make story pages act like reference pages with embedded graphics, sidebars, frames etc. Whichever way it goes what I think we would like is the functionality of story pages with the elegance of reference pages.

I think the reason ref-manuals are useful for me is they can contain chapter/sub-chapter (i.e. nested layout) instead of just 1 simple "category". If they could make Story records able to function in that way and make it "look" good it would be a viable alternative.

[Valyar]

The platform needs good component to represent the book, structured and formatted as close as possible to the original product. This is what the reference manual is. It will be ridiculous to deal with single pages and closing opening them while reading rules or something. And the indexing …

Make refmanual export to story marked for export content to suit the current needs and this will be enough. No need to maintain twice a content.

[celestian]

The platform needs good component to represent the book, structured and formatted as close as possible to the original product. This is what the reference manual is. It will be ridiculous to deal with single pages and closing opening them while reading rules or something. And the indexing …

Make refmanual export to story marked for export content to suit the current needs and this will be enough. No need to maintain twice a content.

Yeah I don't think anyone wants to have to maintain or even have both.

If they can come up with a way to display story entries in a way that works/looks like ref-manual "book" style (and they should be able too) as well as make story entries content the same as a ref-manual (inline images) it would solve it. Basically it would be a dynamic view of Story entries that has a more complex version of category/grouping. This has a example of what im talking about.

https://storybook.js.org/

"Bookmark" Tree on the left with "content" on the right. The bookmark tree has containers of for books so you could easily navigate/find a module (phb, dmg/etc).

That's what I'd envision, whether it happens... /shrug

Cheers!

[spoofer]

Thank you for the correction. In my mind, reference manuals are now perfect for building story content.

Edit... I tried again and I was not able to get images to work, but then I stumbled on the answer. The problem was that after 11 years of using FG, I never imagined that you double click to share the image instead of right click.

Double click the image. :o

[Blackfoot]

You guys would use these for actual play? The window seems too big and clunky... I never even considered it.

[HywelPhillips]

I'd also put in a bid to maintain the functionality to allow editing module entries (whether those end up being stories or ref manual pages).

I rarely run modules entirely out-of-the-box and I prefer to make my notes and changes to the pinned story entries attached to the maps so as to have everything in one place.

Read-only ref manuals would make that a huge pain. Ideally I like to just unlock the story entry pinned to the map in the module and edit that rather than having to make a copy and re-pin everything, but the latter would be an OK half-way house.

Cheers, Hywel

[damned]

I'd also put in a bid to maintain the functionality to allow editing module entries (whether those end up being stories or ref manual pages).

I rarely run modules entirely out-of-the-box and I prefer to make my notes and changes to the pinned story entries attached to the maps so as to have everything in one place.

Read-only ref manuals would make that a huge pain. Ideally I like to just unlock the story entry pinned to the map in the module and edit that rather than having to make a copy and re-pin everything, but the latter would be an OK half-way house.

Cheers, Hywel

Adventure Modules would be created as Editable.