Great White Games/Pinnacle Entertainment Group

[Clint]

Hi all,

For those occasions when I can't answer a question right away, I thought we provide some advice and tricks on how to search for an answer that may have been posted before.

First off, the simple stuff. The Search button for the forums is located at the top right side of the page, above the "You have no new messages" or "You have X new messages" button.

Once you click on the Search button, you have two Fields you can restrict your search with; Keywords and Author.

Keywords are the most important. Choose at least one related to the question, but two is usually the best. Pick two separate keywords related to the question, and click the option below to "Search for all terms." This is important as it restricts the search to posts that contain both keywords as opposed to all posts that contain either keyword.

For instance, if you wished to know what happens if a characters action is interrupted and they are Shaken, you might search for, "shaken interrupt" and possibly even add "action" as well.

Now, Author can prove useful as well. Since 99.7% of the answers on the forum come from "Clint" or "Wiggy" you can try the search entering either name to restrict the results. I recommend trying it without this at first since that will allow for results from both or even the other .3%. But if the results are more than a page or so, it might be worth trying to make them more manageable.

There are two more important things to do before pressing the "Search" button at the bottom though, and they are under "Search Options" on the left side.

One is to specify the Forum to search. The biggest advantage to putting all the questions and answers in this one forum is lost if a search isn't restricted to this forum (SW Official Core Rules Questions). This is perhaps the single biggest aid to searching for an answer to a rules question.

The next big aid (and almost as important) is to change the option under "Display results as:" from "Topics" to "Posts." "Topics" will just give a list of each thread that fits the search criteria, but "Posts" will list the actual post and give you a bit of a preview of what is in that post. That makes it much easier to see which result is related to the answer sought.

We hope following these steps...
1. Enter Keywords and choose "Search for all terms"
2. Choose appropriate Forum
3. Click to display results as "Posts"

...will help make searching easier, faster, and more effective for those times when you might need an answer quickly (like just before a game).

Hope this proves useful!
_________________
Clint Black
Savage Worlds Core Rules Brand Manager

www.peginc.com