Converting PDF to Module Best Practice

[Klandare]

I have some PDFs that I am going to be working on converting into modules and was wondering what type of items are current for best practices? I have done ones in the past making story entries and such but that was before the Reference Section was something that was available.

Is it still best practice to go through and create story entries for different sections of the PDF/rooms/etc and then place Encounters/Parcels/etc in them?

Just looking to be able to streamline the process for myself since I have 5 decently large PDF's to convert.

Thanks.

[LordEntrails]

So the first thing I do is maps. Those are imo most important.
Then I convert items (if there is an appendix of such)
Then NPCs (hopefully from an appendix!)

After that it depends. Story text is not needed, since I can read from the PDF (multiple screens), but FG stories are a great place to store and link everything together. Map pins, encounters, & treasure parcels. So I tend to create stories but not put the text in them. I create the encounters and parcels, link them in the story, and then pin the story to the map.

Final steps will be to put the text into the stories if I get that far.

Converting for a publisher has additional concerns, but is still pretty much the same sequence.

[Zacchaeus]

I'm not sure there is such a thing as best practice if you are doing this for yourself. It's really whatever work flow suits you. If I were doing this for a campaign I'd probably do something similar to what LE says above; I'd just add maps, encounters, and treasure parcels to the campaign and just read the text from the PDF.

If I'm doing it for a commercial module then I start with the reference manual (stories aren't used in official content any longer). As I work through that I also extract and do any processing required for images (including maps) since these are embedded into the ref manual and I need to see where they fit in with the text. I then go back to the beginning and read through each page and do whatever needs to be done to complete that page. This could be adding line of sight, lighting, fx, and pins to a map; creating an encounter (creating any NPC complete with any image and token if artwork is provided if necessary); creating a treasure parcel (and creating any items for that parcel - again with any associated artwork); and linking everything that needs to be linked to that page.

[Klandare]

Thanks for the advice. I was not sure if eventually the story entry section would go away with things being setup through the Reference Manual.

I think I will try the Reference Manual option because although the story entries are easy to do; the organization of them when added to an overall campaign has been much more difficult since the tiering/chapter effect option for the folders in Story was removed way back in Classic.

[Zacchaeus]

Chapters were not removed that I know of; just you do it differently by using groups or just by numbering your story entries (01. Chapter 1, 02. Chapter 2 etc)

[Trenloe]

Yeah, tiering wasn't removed - it just changed from the little coloured tabs along the bottom of the list to the text group categories in the dropdown at the top. And this was done years ago. The data structure didn't change, just the presentation.

[Klandare]

Yeah, tiering wasn't removed - it just changed from the little coloured tabs along the bottom of the list to the text group categories in the dropdown at the top. And this was done years ago. The data structure didn't change, just the presentation.

I might be remembering incorrectly; but I seem to remember where you could make a folder tier and then a folder under that and so forth. This would allow you to make say a folder for the whole module and then subfolders of chapters and so forth. This way you could minimize the module folder level and all of its subfolders would go away.

The issue with lableling things with something like 01 Chapter one. In a campaign when you open more than one module; if each of them has a Chapter one then figuring out which one is which is painful.

[Klandare]

Something I just tested and cant seem to figure out. If I am in a Reference Manual and go to a page (like Magic Item Resilience page in D&D Dungeon Masters Guide) and share that with players. The players are able to see the shared page.


How do I go back later and figure out which pages I am sharing like this? In the past I could go to Story and click on the button until it shows Shared.

[Zacchaeus]

This is true if you set the group to All as in my image below. But if you click the dropdown you can select which module or source that you want to view and then all the story entries are from that one module. So it's the same thing as the tags that Classic had many years ago; except more elegant.

This, and for many other reasons, is why Reference manuals are better. As you mentioned above the indexing is far easier to do as well as moving between chapters and pages.

[Trenloe]

I might be remembering incorrectly; but I seem to remember where you could make a folder tier and then a folder under that and so forth. This would allow you to make say a folder for the whole module and then subfolders of chapters and so forth. This way you could minimize the module folder level and all of its subfolders would go away.
That's never been part of FG functionality. It might have been an extension, but I can't remember one that did that.

[Klandare]

That's never been part of FG functionality. It might have been an extension, but I can't remember one that did that.

I am probably just remembering things incorrectly.

Does anyone know the answer to my other question about where to find Shared items when done from the Reference Manual? This would be for both the Host as well as the Clients.

[Trenloe]

Does anyone know the answer to my other question about where to find Shared items when done from the Reference Manual? This would be for both the Host as well as the Clients.
I don't think there is a way.

[Klandare]

I don't think there is a way.

Wow. If there is no way to see these then how do you Unshare them? And more so, if there are items from the Reference Manual that you want to share for players to use often how can they ever get back to it (like when you start a new gaming session)?

This seems like a big miss in the functionality of the Reference Manual.

[Zacchaeus]

If the player drags the link icon for the shared page either onto the quickbar - or perhaps better - into a note that they create the player can recover any shared reference pages between sessions. You can unshare any shared pages by right clicking on a shared page and selecting sharing > stop sharing sheet. There is, unfortunately, currently no easy way for the DM to know which pages have been shared.