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.



refman-example.jpg

[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.

refman-example.jpg

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/featu...ualVsStory.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.