Link Actions
Even when carefully planning an adventure you want to have lots of different options for gamemasters to select or randomly roll. This article explains how links in books can be used and how to create books with your own random tables.
Links
Books and many other rich text descriptions have the ability to link to entries in Shard, even other sections in books. Clicking these links will display the information allowing you to quickly view the information. Note: See Shard Linking in Rich Text on how to create these links.
While quickly viewing this information can be useful, being able to perform actions makes it easy to keep your game moving. In addition to being able to make dice rolls, many of the types allow you to perform actions depending on your context. (See Character Link Actions for link actions to character sheets.)
Add To Encounter
Book actions target “Add To Encounter”, but how that happens varies based on the type of entry.
Monsters and NPCs: monsters are the most common entry to be added. They get added the same as if you used the “Add Monster” action.
Items / Coins: items and coins are all about adding treasure for an encounter. Treasure gets added in a couple of different ways. When adding to a planned encounter or when adding with monsters then the treasure will be added as a treasure token, otherwise you have the option to add the treasure directly to shared treasure. Note: you can change the token or its display status after it is added.
Context
Context is all about where you are when you perform an action. Are you playing a campaign or just preparing encounters? What you want to do with an entry varies based on that context.
There are a couple of base contexts that Shard understands, if you aren’t doing one of these then you won’t see these actions:
Campaign: if you are playing inside a campaign then you will see actions to allow you to add to the current combat encounter. This will allow you to build an encounter on the fly.
Planned Encounter: if you are viewing entries while building a planned encounter then actions will add to the planned encounter. Note: if you edit an encounter in a campaign then the actions will go to the planned encounter not the campaign.
Context also depend on where the link occurs.
Individual Link
Hypertext link inside of text. These links also look for a number or dice roll preceding the link to determine how many.
Table with Links
If a row in a table has links then the dragon icon will allow you to add all of them.
Search Box
Use the search box in campaigns or from the planned encounter header to find monsters, items or coins to add directly.
Hint: the search box history is a great way to repeatedly add the same monsters when building multiple encounters in an adventure.
See Random Tables to see how to use link actions to build complex random tables.