Bring Back Story Entries

[Haavok]

Recently learned that Smithworks has begun releasing official WotC modules without story entries. I've been running games for a long time and happily paid for each module released until now. The change has done nothing to make my DM life easier. It's just the opposite, it has made it more difficult to run campaigns by being harder to navigate between modules, sections, maps, and takes up even more valuable screen real estate. Story entries were a huge selling point for me, and I gladly paid for the modules to include them. Now they are no longer included because 'Reference Manual is more like the book'. I don't need the RefMan to be more like the books, I own the books. I would expect the tool to work either like it did or to be an actual improvement for running my campaigns. What I didn't expect was to pay for something that requires me to go back and recreate everything, so I can efficiently run games.

I have spoken to several of you, and I know I am not the only one displeased with the exclusion of story entries. I've been told that internally this is an ongoing debate, so let's add our voices and see where it stacks up.

[damned]

Hi Haavok in case you didnt know - when you open a Reference Manual and you want to bookmark a page or keep multiple pages open like you coudl do with Stories you can click the Link Icon on each page and it opens into a window that is functionally equivalent to a Story.

It may be an option that works for you.

https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=57348

57348

[rob2e]

Please bring back story entries. It doesn’t make any sense to TAKE AWAY a thing that so many people rely on. The ref man is cool yes, but why FORCE US to only use that?

[mclancy10006]

The story entries navigation is much better than refman. Unhappy to see this change.
-M

[srbongo]

Hi Haavok in case you didnt know - when you open a Reference Manual and you want to bookmark a page or keep multiple pages open like you coudl do with Stories you can click the Link Icon on each page and it opens into a window that is functionally equivalent to a Story.

It may be an option that works for you.

57348

One issue I've run into using this is that the story entries were unlockable, but the Refman page that opened what I clicked it couldn't be unlocked. So if I was grabbing the text to copy into chat or writing a note, I couldn't.

[GunnarGreybeard]

Personally, I prefer the Refman BUT, the inability to unlock the pop-out story-like entries is an issue.

[Zacchaeus]

Personally, I prefer the Refman BUT, the inability to unlock the pop-out story-like entries is an issue.

The refmanuals in the recent adventure modules are unlocked and the refpages are fully editable. Refmanuals in older modules were not intended as being capable of running adventures and most of them will be locked. Purely reference manuals continue to be read only.

[Dax Doomslayer]

I'm in the camp of story entries. It may be you can't teach an old dog new tricks type of thing but I just find it easier to run adventures with it vs. the refman...

[ddavison]

We have a number of updates coming to reference manual pages that will address some of the differences between story entries and reference manual entries. The goal is for reference manual pages to do everything you can do with story entries, and more. We thought this was the case already, but there has been feedback telling us that there are other features people like better about Story entries than they do Reference Manual pages. We recently had Dominic tackle a few of the most commonly mentioned ones.

If there are still others, we can continue to work on improving that experience to address specific requests. We are very unlikely to go backwards and start releasing products as story entries only. We have moved creation of content out of external tools like PAR5E and into FGU directly. This provides a WYSIWYG (What You See is What You Get) content creation platform instead of a markup driven language that has to be learned, you have to compile into a final product and then reload it to see if the change worked properly. Requiring PAR5E limited the number of content creators, required two tools to continually be updated with new functionality, and increased maintenance costs for modules. There were already a handful of things you could do in FGU directly that you couldn't in PAR5E and it was getting worse. While it is possible to build both Ref Manual versions and Story entry versions directly in FGU, it increases the dev time, duplicates data, and then creates a double maintenance burden.

If you are comparing the two varieties, be sure to look only at recently released products that use Reference Manual pages instead of Story entries. Otherwise, you are not speaking on the current state of affairs. Recent products that use the new features for Reference Manuals are Dragonlance, Keys from the Golden Vault, and I believe Spelljammer.

Current state of Refman pages versus Story entries
https://www.fantasygrounds.com/features/RefManualVsStory.htm

Changes coming soon in TEST build for Reference Manual Pages:

New minimum window size that matches the minimum size for Story entries
Copy Ref Page Link to Clipboard
Duplicate Ref Page from Clipboard
Revert a single ref page if edited from a store bought module
We can repush old ref manual products so they are not read only (for adventures at least, but possibly for everything once the on page revert is an option)


Other changes we're considering for the future releases:

Shrinking the window size for reference manual and pages will stack 2-column layouts on top of each other so they are both visible
Shrinking the window size for reference manual and pages will shrink images to fit into the new width
Create Story Entry for Ref Page
Reference Page/Manual Sidebar navigation


EDIT: Edited by Moon Wizard to refine Test features planned vs. future items.

[LordEntrails]

Thanks Doug, looking forward to the continued improvements.

[Remedeez]

I'm also in the camp that VASTLY preferred Story Entries over ref manuals FOR ADVENTURES/CAMPAIGNS especially. Map location pins with story entries is superior for DM/GM flow (in my humble opinion). Not only that, but the entries were SO MUCH SHORTER compared to the modern (5E) Ref Man with one page just being SWATHS of text. It is so much more parseable (no pun intended) when the text is broken into relevant, smaller chunks. And pinned to the maps (when applicable). Just my 2 cents.

We can get features added to the ref man all day, but unless it works exactly how Story Entries used to work for adventure readability, it will never be the same.

[Zacchaeus]

I'm also in the camp that VASTLY preferred Story Entries over ref manuals FOR ADVENTURES/CAMPAIGNS especially. Map location pins with story entries is superior for DM/GM flow (in my humble opinion). Not only that, but the entries were SO MUCH SHORTER compared to the modern (5E) Ref Man with one page just being SWATHS of text. It is so much more parseable (no pun intended) when the text is broken into relevant, smaller chunks. And pinned to the maps (when applicable). Just my 2 cents.

We can get features added to the ref man all day, but unless it works exactly how Story Entries used to work for adventure readability, it will never be the same.
As ddavison says in his post above you need to look at the adventures which have been produced recently (Golden Keys and Dragonlance). None of the other adventures have a reference manual which is really all that suitable for adventure play; they were incorporated as a sort of extra so that DMs could read the adventure as if it were a book. The more recent adventures have a reference manual which is completely suitable for running the adventure; the maps have pins to each entry and each entry has the text for that room or location and all of the encounters, parcels, images and anything else are linked to that entry. So the recent reference manual are exactly the same as you get with the story entries in older modules. The main pain points that have been mentioned are being addressed as ddavison mentions in his post above as well.

[Moon Wizard]

Do you have an example of a reference manual entry from an adventure that is much more complex?
What about it is cumbersome? Dual columns? Inline images?
How much data is in a page? (Should be the same for adventures in general...)

Maybe there are some adjustments we can make longer term...

Thanks,
JPG

[Haavok]

It is hard to give examples when the modules in question have no story entries to compare the offending refmans to. If we provide an example using older modules, you tell us to focus on only the ones that have no story entries.

I owned both Dragonlance and Key to the Golden Vault (I have since returned both) and even tried to run Keys using the refman and I abhorred every minute of it. You have acknowledged that refman still needs work. It is not what we had but yet you took away the system that actually worked for most of us, before making sure it was up to the task and acceptable to a majority of your paying clients.

Now, we are left without the tool we were all accustomed to, left waiting until you get the new tool there?!

Doesn't seem right, does it?

[ddavison]

The new feature set is fully capable of running the adventure and is capable of doing more than the old method. Designs often move forward and some people will always prefer an older method, even if it is more limited.

If you provide an example of something in the new reference manuals that you don’t like, that will be useful feedback. If you provide an example of something from an earlier version of the reference manual as an example, then we aren’t talking about the same thing anymore.

[Haavok]

The new feature set is fully capable of running the adventure and is capable of doing more than the old method. Designs often move forward and some people will always prefer an older method, even if it is more limited.

If you provide an example of something in the new reference manuals that you don’t like, that will be useful feedback. If you provide an example of something from an earlier version of the reference manual as an example, then we aren’t talking about the same thing anymore.

Anything can be considered capable, Alot of people consider Roll20 capable. You took away what most DM's came to expect from your product and gave them a very nicely formatted pdf... Great Job Dave. As your clients we are telling you it's not better, it could be, but it's not there yet. I like change, I like progress but I'm not about taking off the tires on my car because they are all going to fly one day.

Only people I see in the side of the refman currently are ones that you pay or are creating content. That is not to say it may be great one day, but today isnt that day. shame too.

[ddavison]

Keeping fidelity to a book does not equal a PDF. Ref pages are linked to map shortcuts. Images are visible without following a link, but are openable directly. Content is organized in chapters and sub chapters without having to prefix every title with an alphanumeric code, and content like tables and stat blocks is now styled to make sections more readable when you have things like call outs. You can unlock and edit content, insert or remove content, and reorganize content easily. Most of the examples I read from users who disliked reference manuals were from earlier iterations that existed before we could do any of these things.

Story entries are like running an adventure in notepad with links added. Did you try actually using the reference manual builder and/or creating and editing content in the new modules before you returned them?

My name is Doug, BTW.

[Haavok]

I am well aware of your name d...Dav...ison. keeping fidelity is the actual purpose of a PDF. Nearly everything you listed can be done in a PDF. The rest benefits you. saves your team time, saves you money. It doesn't save the DMs, your clients time, money or effort. Stylized sections, pretty. doesn't save time, I could unlock and edit story entries before. Still no improvement. I could re-organize entries before still no improvement. I returned them 2 weeks ago. So far this is what your people including yourself have had to say...

Maybe there are some adjustments we can make longer term...

pain points that have been mentioned are being addressed...

Changes coming soon in TEST build for Reference Manual Pages:
New minimum window size that matches the minimum size for Story entries
Copy Ref Page Link to Clipboard
Duplicate Ref Page from Clipboard
Revert a single ref page if edited from a store bought module
We can repush old ref manual products so they are not read only (for adventures at least, but possibly for everything once the on page revert is an option)

Other changes we're considering for the future releases:
Shrinking the window size for reference manual and pages will stack 2-column layouts on top of each other so they are both visible
Shrinking the window size for reference manual and pages will shrink images to fit into the new width
Create Story Entry for Ref Page
Reference Page/Manual Sidebar navigation

The downsides of refmanuals is that the page size is bigger; and there's no quick way to open them from the side bar.

We've always wanted to make the FG modules look and feel like the books; rather than a wall of unformatted text with a bunch of links. It's only now that we've been able to do so.

Stories as a whole are not reference manual pages. There are pros and cons for each.

Yes, the size can be an issue. The current reason is that there is no clear logic to change image size to fit the pane. The size fits the minimum width for images currently. That is high on the list.

It's not a mute point for sure as we are investigating more ways to make it more streamlined. So it's not being finalized in it's current state.

My favorite one tho
57357

You fixed all that in a night? because you posted it yesterday, the day before?

Oh yeah, you asked if I tried it running a game... I already answered that, Dave.

In the end as long as you are making/saving money what does it matter if you customers are displeased with it? Right?

[LordEntrails]

I am well aware of your name d...Dav...ison.
<snip>
I already answered that, Dave.
Please BE POLITE. This type of behavior makes you come across as the undesirable. You will not win an argument or persuade anyone on this forum to your view with this type of behavior.

If you can not be polite, please give yourself a day or two time out. So that moderators do not have to.

[ddavison]

We receive refund requests from time to time on various products. At this time, you are the only request for a refund for Keys out of 220 on our website. That represents 0.45% return rate and is very good actually. Not everyone will like our design decisions. We will take constructive criticism into consideration, but we will ignore negativity.

You have been rude in your feedback to our content creators and moderators and now to me. You are not winning anyone over with your approach.

[Haavok]

I'm sorry Mr. Davison, I didn't realize having and voicing my opinion about your product was considered rude. I didn't think I should have to mince words here Mr. Davison, I was also fully unaware that we need to conduct ourselves so formally Mr. Davison. Where I'm from we cut people's names down all the time. Your screen name is DDavison. So, I used Dave. Not to worry it won't happen again Mr. Davison. As for your moderates I am truly unaware of which you have deemed that I addressed rudely Mr. Davison but would offer my apologies if I knew which offense you accuse me of.

As for your staff Mr. Davison, I will stipulate that I may have gotten a bit passionate about the complete elimination of the tools I used for the last 7 years and that I felt made FG a great product so to them I will also offer an apology.

Perhaps it was the disregard to my opinion or the gaslighting one continued to direct at me on top of that that puts me on the defensive and to that individual I will offer no such apology. But that's here nor there Mr. Davison, the refman and the story entries are not the same, not yet anyway.

As one of your more helpful staff members said there are pro and cons to each Mr. Davison. Sadly, I'm in the camp that the cons out weight the pros for DM's.

[Haavok]

You have received an infraction at Fantasy Grounds Message Boards
Dear Haavok,

You have received an infraction at Fantasy Grounds Message Boards.

Reason: Insulted Other Member(s)
-------
Your attitude is rude and disrespectful. Pretending to be formal and such does not conceal your disdain and poor attitude.

Your opinion has not been ignored. You were specifically asked to provide constructive feedback. Instead of doing that you replied with snark.

You were warned to take a break until you could be polite. You chose not to do that either and replied by acting like an ***, again.

Take a brake. Cool down. If in a couple days you feel the same way, then take time to put together a polite, and detailed post that actually provides constructive feedback. Give examples of what you can not do with a Ref Man entry that you find valuable in Story Entries.
-------

This infraction is worth 1 point(s) and may result in restricted access until it expires. Serious infractions will never expire.

I apologized and got an infraction? Because you were offended for someone else? I still waiting to hear who I offended other than the owner for not using his proper name which I corrected. Just seems like you want to silence my opinion at this point.

[damned]

Everyone has the ability to in effect upvote and downvote posts/posters by way of the icons below each message.
Dont sweat it - move on. If you can post more specific things that you think are missing from the RefMan that will be useful.

[Haavok]

Should have also said, not to worry, I'll head back to my little corner now, I will keep my opinions off your forums and out of your discord.

[damned]

Its not my forum/discord. Im just a community member with a couple of extra responsibilities.
I didnt give you the infraction - anyone of the many people that read the post could have done it. I was just giving you some context.

[Haavok]

Wasn't meant for you Damned, you just happen to get your post in right before me. The infraction tells you who gave it to you so no worries I knew who it was before I even read it. I think a lot of good points have been made by people most of you know way better than me so hopefully more of them will speak up and it all comes together. I'm done, I still have games to run for my players and the last thing I need is to get ban from fantasy grounds or something for my snark.

[LordEntrails]

You have received an infraction at Fantasy Grounds Message Boards
Dear Haavok,

You have received an infraction at Fantasy Grounds Message Boards.

<snip>

I apologized and got an infraction? Because you were offended for someone else? I still waiting to hear who I offended other than the owner for not using his proper name which I corrected. Just seems like you want to silence my opinion at this point.

That was not an apology. You are well aware of that. And as you know, I'm the one who gave you the infraction. Had I attempted to pretend such was an apology and my mother heard me she would be ashamed of my behavior.


<snip>I'm done, I still have games to run for my players and the last thing I need is to get ban from fantasy grounds or something for my snark.
And you admit it was not a sincere apology.

If you would like to engage in a sincere discussion about my interpretation of your behavior and/or the infraction, I am happy to do so in private messages. If you feel my behavior was inappropriate you are welcome to contact SmiteWorks directly via the Help link; https://fantasygroundsunity.atlassian.net/servicedesk/customer/portals

At no time have I intended to try and silence you or keep you from politely expressing your opinion. I encourage you to do so, politely and constructively. I actually have an opinion similar to yours, but I have expressed it politely and have moved on. I feel some of the recent improvements to Ref Man pages are in part due to that feedback I provided.

[Haavok]

That was not an apology. You are well aware of that. And as you know, I'm the one who gave you the infraction. Had I attempted to pretend such was an apology and my mother heard me she would be ashamed of my behavior.


And you admit it was not a sincere apology.

I admit no such thing, I apologized to whom i choose to apologize to. If i were being deceitful, I would not have pointed out it was not an apology to everyone. I do believe most had solid intentions and genuinely care and want a better product. i also believe that some just want to defend their choice and others want to line their pockets. And that's fair, make your money, i have no problem spending on a product that has value to me. The current iteration of the refman has no value to me. The points I made albeit poorly by some standards and thankful more adequately articulated by others have also made have been noted. Some are being worked on. I just think it's unreasonable that we have to wait for it to be worked on when we already had something working. What i will not continue to hear is how my opinion is wrong. it is my opinion, and it is the only one that matters when it comes to my money.

[LordEntrails]

Haavok, thank you for responding politely.

[Blakey]

Sorry for the silly question, but is there a reference web page anywhere which explains the difference between these two approaches? I've not bought any new 5E adventures on FG recently (just bought Wildemount Guide) so I'm not sure what all the fuss is about?

Thanks!

[Zacchaeus]

Sorry for the silly question, but is there a reference web page anywhere which explains the difference between these two approaches? I've not bought any new 5E adventures on FG recently (just bought Wildemount Guide) so I'm not sure what all the fuss is about?

Thanks!

No, there isn't. Basically story entries and reference pages are the same in that they contain text, speech bubbles, and links to encounters, treasure parcels and whatever else requires to be linked to them. Reference pages can contain embedded images as well as different coloured text boxes, dual column text, and breakout text which can have different backgrounds. Overall reference pages can look like a pdf or a book page whereas story entries are just text with links.

Reference pages can also be searched more easily and have a better indexing system than story entries do.

The downsides to reference pages at the moment are that the page size is bigger than a story page; it's not so easy to copy the reference page, and there's no button on the sidebar to open up the reference sections of modules. However most of these pain points will be resolved in the next release of the software.

[Nick Frost]

We have a number of updates coming to reference manual pages that will address some of the differences between story entries and reference manual entries. The goal is for reference manual pages to do everything you can do with story entries, and more. We thought this was the case already, but there has been feedback telling us that there are other features people like better about Story entries than they do Reference Manual pages. We recently had Dominic tackle a few of the most commonly mentioned ones.

If there are still others, we can continue to work on improving that experience to address specific requests. We are very unlikely to go backwards and start releasing products as story entries only. We have moved creation of content out of external tools like PAR5E and into FGU directly. This provides a WYSIWYG (What You See is What You Get) content creation platform instead of a markup driven language that has to be learned, you have to compile into a final product and then reload it to see if the change worked properly. Requiring PAR5E limited the number of content creators, required two tools to continually be updated with new functionality, and increased maintenance costs for modules. There were already a handful of things you could do in FGU directly that you couldn't in PAR5E and it was getting worse. While it is possible to build both Ref Manual versions and Story entry versions directly in FGU, it increases the dev time, duplicates data, and then creates a double maintenance burden.

If you are comparing the two varieties, be sure to look only at recently released products that use Reference Manual pages instead of Story entries. Otherwise, you are not speaking on the current state of affairs. Recent products that use the new features for Reference Manuals are Dragonlance, Keys from the Golden Vault, and I believe Spelljammer.

Current state of Refman pages versus Story entries
https://www.fantasygrounds.com/features/RefManualVsStory.htm

Changes coming soon in TEST build for Reference Manual Pages:

New minimum window size that matches the minimum size for Story entries
Copy Ref Page Link to Clipboard
Duplicate Ref Page from Clipboard
Revert a single ref page if edited from a store bought module
We can repush old ref manual products so they are not read only (for adventures at least, but possibly for everything once the on page revert is an option)


Other changes we're considering for the future releases:

Shrinking the window size for reference manual and pages will stack 2-column layouts on top of each other so they are both visible
Shrinking the window size for reference manual and pages will shrink images to fit into the new width
Create Story Entry for Ref Page
Reference Page/Manual Sidebar navigation


EDIT: Edited by Moon Wizard to refine Test features planned vs. future items.

This posts addresses all the concerns I've been expressing on the FG Discord regarding the change to RefMan-only products. Now I'm eager to test the changes :) .

Thank you guys for listening to our feedback.

[Moon Wizard]

As noted in the previous posts, there is a small set of changes in the beta release currently in the Test channel; with potentially more later as we have time.


[CoreRPG+] Reference manual and reference page minimum window size adjusted.
[CoreRPG+] Added button to revert individual reference manual pages when edited in module reference manual.
[CoreRPG+] Added button to copy/paste reference manual pages between each other.


Regards,
JPG