I work mostly in Fandom and mainly in the Wizarding World universe. I have multiple fans stories in this realm and so far, it has been difficult connecting these stories with sheets because I seem to have to repeat the Sheets process for each story that I do. Am I missing something? Is there a way to have one Sheets database for this universe and connect it to multiple story projects without having to redo the whole thing?
I wanted to work with the Sheets database in the story because I not only use JKR’s universe of characters, things and places etc, but I also incorporate my own and want to differentiate between the two, but because the universe is so large, it seems like a lot of time is wasted when I have to redo sheets for different stories even if they are in the same universe.
You can connect all your projects into the same Character Database - that way, whenever you edit or add to it, it’s automatically updated in the other projects as well.
Here’s how:
Open the project you want to connect the database to.
Go ‘Author’ → ‘My Project’ → ‘Path to My Characters…’.
Click the ‘Select…’ button and navigate to the old project’s ‘My Characters’ folder.
Double-click on ‘My Characters.pb’.
→ Now these two projects share the same “My Characters” database, and you can do this as many times as you want.
Super cool idea! Makes sense to separate the canon characters and original content - I’ve never thought of that before.
I think I’ve got a way for doing it smoothly:
You can make new sheet categories with right-clicking on a name, and going “Connect a Sheet” → “New Sheet Category”:
you can also change the categories’ names in the Character Database view by clicking on the Masks-icon in the top toolbar, and going “Table” → “Change/Add Tables”.
With this workflow, you could have something like this:
The Character Database is saved with the rest of your project in the “My Characters” folder, so no worries - no surprise changes will happen there.
I always recommend setting Papyrus Author to take backups - here’s a good video on how to get the most of the backup features, and how to store an extra one in your cloud, for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bK6HZbi43U
Okay, I KIND OF got things working… but then I ran into another problem today.
Is it possible to make the databases too large? I’m asking because now, in my document, when I hover over things, the highlight sheet that pops up is wrong, but when I double click to pull up the sheet editor, its correct. Is there a way to sync the sheets again so that they are correct? I have tried saving and shutting down Papyrus Author and restarting it. I have also tried deleting the sheets and tables and recreating them. Still the problem persists.
I am only 54 pages into my story in Papyrus Author with 9 chapters. I’d like to fix this issue with the sheet highlighting matching the database sheets that ARE correct. LOL I have OCD and this will drive me crazy if its not working right. HAHA.
The first picture shows the open entry is correct for the highlighted word, just not when you highlight it.
The second supposed to be my entry about goblins, but when you hover over goblins, it shows up Harry Potter. Earlier when I was trying to fix that, it was butterbeer. I removed both the goblin entry and the butterbeer entry and it went to Harry Potter.
I’m confident you’ve done everything right, but rather this is a run-of-the-mill bug you’ve found!
Because of the bug, the preview mixes up your first character in the Character Database with the first entry in your “Creature” database, and shows the wrong sheet.
I think if you’ve got more entries in the databases, most of the previews look right, but if you go from the first character to the first creature, the preview gets confused.
Thanks to your excellent, detailed post with the explaining pictures, I was able to replicate the bug on my side as well, and I’ve reported it!
The databases are super robust, and you can make an almost infinite number of characters without any issues!
Aaah! I’ll put some extra mustard on that bug report - let’s hope it’s a quick fix!
you can also change the categories’ names in the Character Database view by clicking on the Masks-icon in the top toolbar, and going “Table” → “Change/Add Tables”.
