Sorting planets via tags, views, or both

[Sword_of_Spirit]

The background will be a bit long, so bear with me.

In my D&D game I'm going to have an entire multiverse, and we're going to deal with various worlds (Krynn, Oerth, Toril, etc).

I'm intending (unless I change my mind) to set up everything concrete in a hierarchical view, with multiverse at the top containing planes, then the Material Plane containing worlds, etc. I figure I can list pretty much any unique topic by the highest level where it falls. So if a merchant lives in the Free City of Greyhawk, I can put him in the Greyhawk Denizen's cast list, which I can contain within the Free City of Greyhawk. If a merchant travels around the Flanaess, I can stick him in the Flanaess Denizen's cast list, which would be reserved for anyone not found in a more localized list (I think community level is the lowest level I would generally make for a cast list).

But, some topics that might pop up would be multi-planet abstract topics. Like "orcs." Some worlds have 'em, some worlds don't. These aren't the sorts of topics that that go in the heirarchy, since they are abstract rather than concrete. Now, I could just make links between these topics and whichever planets they are found on, but that might eventually end up cluttering up the link list for the planets and making them unwieldy.

So the thought occurred to me that perhaps I should just make a "setting" or "planet" type of multi-tag that I can insert into any topics where it might make sense. That way the topics themselves will tell you which planets they are found on. I could also then sort by the tag for an individual planet, and see whatever abstract topics are associated with that planet.

So that's one thought. The other thought I've had is that I'd like to create views for each important planet. That way, when a party goes there, I can just switch over to that view and I won't have to see anything that isn't relevant to the setting they are in.

It seems easy enough to update a view of a planet/setting by filtering for the tag and then just adding everything shown to the view I've created for that planet.

I know there are multiple "right ways" to do things in Realm Works, but is this one of them, or is there a much better way to do what I'm trying to do?

(I'm at the point now where I've played around with the software and experimented with some techniques, and I'm setting up my top level framework for my world, so I'm trying to a least get the big picture looking how it should so I shouldn't require any massive restructuring down the line.)

[Farling]

I've never used the link list for navigation. Although from the Orc topic it would provide a nice long list of links to all the planets (and other topics) which reference Orcs.

Even if the Orc topic isn't in a particular view, the link will still work to the topic which resides in the main list of topics.

If there isn't any political/factional information in the Orc topic, then it might be better suited in the Mechanics section anyway.

[AEIOU]

Perhaps split the entry:

Create "orc" in Mechanics for the crunch. This is pretty universal and has the stat blocks and maybe multiple entries if there are different types of orcs. This is a high level view.

Create "orc" in Ethnicity for each setting/planet. This is culture, history, etc. Each world may have a different path taken. Perhaps use prefixes to identify which setting/planet for simplicity sake.

[Zaphod Beebledoc]

Originally Posted by AEIOU

Create "orc" in Ethnicity for each setting/planet. This is culture, history, etc. Each world may have a different path taken. Perhaps use prefixes to identify which setting/planet for simplicity sake.

And have each of those link to generic "Orc," if there is such a thing.

[AEIOU]

Yes, Zaphod, I'd link all orcs to the Mechanics section entry if the crunch is applicable to them all.

I have a Region tag that I use to track general locales for most things. It's added to Individuals, Cast Lists, Merchants, Towns, Scenes.... And some entries have multiple tags -- for example a person may have tags for country, town and district. Or maybe they have a summer residence. You may want to do something similar for multiverses. When I want to deal with a specific country (or town or district or dungeon), I can sort on a specific tag and create a custom view of everything that is related quickly and easily.