How to manage unsituated places

[MNBlockHead]

Okay, in the real world, "unsituated locations" would be a contradiction in terms. But in sandbox/open-world styles of campaigning, it is very helpful to have locations, especially villages stocked up that you can provide to players.

My home-brew campaign world is huge. I will never have every village and hamlet mapped out. For those times when I need to have some detail to a village, I like to keep some ready. Same idea as having stock NPCs ready to use when needed.

I'm curious how others are organizing such "places."

My current thinking is, I have a village, with some back story, NPCs, a map, descriptions of the main buildings, and some hooks. Everything is written so that it can be dropped anywhere within a certain region.

I might create location topics for some of the more interesting locations in the village with these locations being contained by the community topic.

I will create a number of "Other Lists", such as "Villages-Menskriki", "Villages-Rasane", "Orc Strongholds", "Villages-Any Human, etc. I select the appropriate "Other Lists" topic to be the container for my drop-in village.

What I've not decided yet, is whether I keep all these drop-in community "other lists" in the "Other Lists" category or if I file them under the appropriate "Region:Political" category (e.g. put the "Villages-Menskriki" topic under the "Kingdom of Menskriki" topic.

Currently, I'm leaving them all in the "Other Lists" category since it is less filing busy work and during the game I always know where to look. Also, in a pinch I may still steal a Menskriki village and re-purpose as a Rasane village with the help of random-name generators.

Interested in learning how others are handling this.