Ask the Experts - Locations and Regions

[rob]

As @jkthomsen9 indicated, I will often NOT have separate topics for minor NPCs and the like. Do you really need a full topic dedicated to the woman who runs the local bakery? If she's integral to the plot, of course you do. But if she adds color to the game and will only be found inside the bakery, just detail her within the bakery topic.

As a general rule of thumb, if you have only two snippets worth of story text for something, it doesn't justify having it's own topic IMHO. If you have a handful or more, it usually does justify it's own topic. For anything in between, it's really a judgement call. The basic question that you need to ask yourself is whether creating a separate topic entry will improve organization and access for you or if it will just add more clutter to the list of topics.

Oh, and if you need to create a link to Suzy who runs the local bakery in one place, you can very easily add an alias to the bakery for Suzy. That way, you can leave Suzy in the bakery topic and still use automatic link detection to hook up references to her from other topics.

[Bidmaron]

A couple of thoughts on this:
1) I make most rivers and roads a custom category called thoroughfare because it seems to me to be very useful to search for these separately. Plus, things that are ribbon-like I just have a hard time calling a region, which seems to be less one-dimensional.
2) I've been thinking for a long time that links should have the option to be more granular than just an entire topic, especially when the topic is huge. They should have two features:
a) You click on a link that isn't the name of a topic (an alias) and the program automatically highlights that word/phrase in the topic so you can easily find where the baker is buried in the topic.
b) You have the ability to target a link in a more specific way (like the '#' tack-on to a URL that places you at a specific spot in the topic).

[Dark Lord Galen]

Originally Posted by Bidmaron

A couple of thoughts on this:
1) I make most rivers and roads a custom category called thoroughfare because it seems to me to be very useful to search for these separately. Plus, things that are ribbon-like I just have a hard time calling a region, which seems to be less one-dimensional.
2) I've been thinking for a long time that links should have the option to be more granular than just an entire topic, especially when the topic is huge. They should have two features:
a) You click on a link that isn't the name of a topic (an alias) and the program automatically highlights that word/phrase in the topic so you can easily find where the baker is buried in the topic.
b) You have the ability to target a link in a more specific way (like the '#' tack-on to a URL that places you at a specific spot in the topic).

1-I do almost exactly the same thing! IMC Demi-human races do not define "borders" as their human community counterparts. The humans defining their control by road & lines on a map. The Demihumans ( elves, dwarves, ect) are more inclined to define their borders with more "permanent" features (ie mountain ridges, forest edges, swamps, etc). But from the human point of view a forest might overlap several "kingdoms".
2- I agree, though the best method for this I'm ignorant of.

[AEIOU]

Great answers and more variety than I expected.

@jkthomsen9 missed my meaning as did Rob on NPC's. Tracking and interacting with NPC's is going to be another topic to start discussions on hopefully next week in a similar format to cover a variety of situations.

@Teresa and @Rob your responses for locations were very interesting and insightful. The item I particularly found useful was Rob's explanation on locations vs adventure areas for things like a lighthouse with a clear indication that it's not etched in stone as a simple location could very well become a full-fledged adventure area at some point.

For others that are reading along, the Gencon 2014 video about packaging content is a goldmine of information. After watching, go back and pause the video and look at how things have been categorized.

[CorzatTheGray]

Originally Posted by AEIOU

For others that are reading along, the Gencon 2014 video about packaging content is a goldmine of information. After watching, go back and pause the video and look at how things have been categorized.

Cannot agree more!!

I told my buddies to do the same after watching that video as they input their own realms.