Adventure Module Creation Best Practices

Hi,

I've just started building my first adventure module (it's based around Cellar of Death but for 5th Level, to take my players from LMoP through to ToA) and I'm trying to minimise the number of modules I need open when running it. To this end I'd like to have copies of all the NPCs I need within the module, and not to need the original modules open (MM, Tome of Beasts etc). So, my question is this, do I need to make a copy of each NPC before dragging it to my module's NPC list, or should the act of dragging from say the Monster Manual to my Beyond Phandelver NPCs list automatically create a copy? In my testing it seems like I do need to specifically make a copy of the NPC before dragging that copy to my module, but was just wondering if I was doing something wrong to need this step, or whether this is in fact the best practice? I have been looking around for the answer in the forums, Wiki and manual but only seem to find the instruction to drag the NPC over, but this NPC, not being a copy, vanishes when I subsequently close the MM for example.

I hope this makes sense and thanks for your help in advance.

Simon

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ludd_G

I've just started building my first adventure module (it's based around Cellar of Death but for 5th Level, to take my players from LMoP through to ToA) and I'm trying to minimise the number of modules I need open when running it. To this end I'd like to have copies of all the NPCs I need within the module, and not to need the original modules open (MM, Tome of Beasts etc). So, my question is this, do I need to make a copy of each NPC before dragging it to my module's NPC list, or should the act of dragging from say the Monster Manual to my Beyond Phandelver NPCs list automatically create a copy? In my testing it seems like I do need to specifically make a copy of the NPC before dragging that copy to my module, but was just wondering if I was doing something wrong to need this step, or whether this is in fact the best practice? I have been looking around for the answer in the forums, Wiki and manual but only seem to find the instruction to drag the NPC over, but this NPC, not being a copy, vanishes when I subsequently close the MM for example.

---

Manually create a copy first, then drag to your group. Dragging a NPC record to a new group just reassigns the group to the NPC record, it doesn't make a copy.

That's what I suspected, thanks load for the speedy reply!

Quick question - I recently saw a suggested "order" to enter things where the poster (I think it was a video, but can't remember for sure) said that would enter things, add NPC's, items, etc., go back through the story entries edit/add links for certain items. The order itself sounded like a bit of a flowchart - go back up and do this step again, etc. For the life of me, my Google-fu is failing me. Does anyone recognize what I'm trying to describe? Can you point me to it? Anyone have a step-by-step that they find useful to remember everything that needs to be done when entering an adventure/sourcebook?

Ppost #1 in this thread?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by pno_mn

Quick question - I recently saw a suggested "order" to enter things where the poster (I think it was a video, but can't remember for sure) said that would enter things, add NPC's, items, etc., go back through the story entries edit/add links for certain items. The order itself sounded like a bit of a flowchart - go back up and do this step again, etc. For the life of me, my Google-fu is failing me. Does anyone recognize what I'm trying to describe? Can you point me to it? Anyone have a step-by-step that they find useful to remember everything that needs to be done when entering an adventure/sourcebook?

---

Rob2e/Rob Twohy has a YouTube video where he talks about this. No flowchart that I'm aware of though (he does talk about it like that). IMO, Rob's process is describing how to convert a published adventure. It's not necessarily the process for new content creation.

When it comes to new content, the question to me is how are you going to create this? Do you create it in OneNote, Word, or straight into FG? I've done it several different ways, right now I usually enter it straight into FG, and that process is going to be very different than converting it from something else.

• Image file names should not contain special characters or have more than one consecutive space in them.

Added in response to the post; https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forum...l=1#post491562

still helpful after all these months...

Hi All, Looking for some advise wasn't sure if here or a new post would be better, decided here as people may benefit from it in best practices more than reading thru many pages of search returns.

Story/content ordering. I have used the recommended order of simple 0.0, 0.0.1, 1.0, 2.0 ... etc But having an issue when I to 10.0 and higher as they order after 1.0 and before 2.0. How can I address more than 9 sections of a topic or more than 9 topics ? screen shot to help explain where I am at:

Attachment 34011

Thanks for any help!

Cheers.

Number 01.01, 02.01 etc. And then 10.01 and up will be in the right order.