people and groups

[Bobifle]

Hello all.

There something I cannot figure out.

I have a topic "royal family" in the group "groups".
I have an individual "The king" in the group "people".

What link should I create between the 2 ?

I think I have at least 3 solutions:

• a "King" contained by "family"
• b "King" belong to or within "family"
• c Instead of creating "royal familly" in groups, create a cast list in people and add the king to the list

each item makes me wonder the following:

• a problem is that the king does not appear any more in the people group
• b pb with this: on the left panel, the king does not appear as a subitem of "royal family"
• c I don't understand the distinction between a cast list and a group (topic in the "groups" group).

I hope I'm being clear...

Right now I'm tempted to say that the solution b is the best, as it would allow an individual to belong to many different group of people...

Note : the description is difficult because group can actually be 2 different things in realm works, either a topic in the "groups" group, or one the group (people, groups, places etc...)

[AEIOU]

I'd recommend one cast list to hold the people of the realm (kingdom. county, town, whatever). I'd recommend using relationships to create the royal family.

[Vargr]

Well, this might not be a direct answer to your question, but maybe you can use it none-the-less.

Normally I create Houses under Groups. Each House is a family and those belonging to the House (men-at-arms, servants, stable boys, Lord of the House, his children, etc.).

I would let the individuals be contained by the appropriate House.

I would thus have:

GROUPS
- House Arryn

- Lysa Arryn

- Robin Arryn

- House Barathyon

- House Barathyon of King's Landing

- Robert Barathyon

- Cersei Lannister

- Joffrey Barathyon

- House Barathyon of Dragonstone

- Stannis Barathyon

- Selyse Florent

- Shireen Barathyon

- House Bolton

- Roose Bolton

- Ramsay Bolton

The advantage of this approach is that a House might not have the throne at all times and you can easily see, who "belong together".

It is also easy to move one individual from one House to another - or outside Houses.

You can add other "Houses" that are not really Houses per se. This could be the Church, a notorious band of criminals, a merchant house, mercenary companies, etc.

When making topics with references to the King, it should simply reference back to the individual contained by the House he belongs to.

If the King in your world has a chosen name as King and a different one as "civilian" (perhaps given him by his parents) then you could make an Alias with the Kingly name - or a new individual and make a simple connection as equivalence.

[Bobifle]

@Aeiou : seems reasonable, but in which situation(s) are you using groups?
@Vargr : I like this approach, except for one thing, your characters do not appear in the people group.

[Vargr]

@Bobifle:

I don't see this as a problem. I have un-affliated individuals under People and it works fine.

I locate individuals through links, relationships or searches.

But we all have different ways of doing things, so what works for me might not work for you and vice versa :-)

Anyways, it is often helpful to see other people's approach; sometime you see things you want to imitate :-)

[MaxSupernova]

I usually get called out as doing things "not normally" when I explain my system, but here goes...

Bibifle, under "Groups" I have topics for all the groups and companies and governments and organizations and such, with topics about each with details and information about the group.

Under "People" I have "[group name] Personnel" topics and then people under each.

For example, under "Groups" I have "Maelstrom Corporation" and that topic has all sorts of information about the corporation and its activities. Sub topics are created as necessary to organize information about the company.

Then, under "People" I have a topic called "Maelstrom Corporation Personnel" and I list all the people, with sub groups as necessary to organize them.

I don't do a lot of tagging, and I like the way I can scan through my list of "People" and see the groups people belong to. The "Containing Topics" and "Content Links" list on the right hand side give me any more context that I need.

There are usually lots of cross-links between the two which makes things easy to navigate. For example, the CEO of the Maelstrom Corporation will have the words "Maelstrom Corporation" in the text somewhere linked automatically to the Group Topic, and the group topic will probably list the CEO of the Corporation, which ends up being a link to the Person topic.

I know I could probably use Relationships and some of the other features, but I am used to just organizing in folders so that's what I applied here and it works for me.

[AEIOU]

My methods are purposefully redundant. I find that my eyes are naturally drawn to the middle column where the content is. I can look at the right hand column but it takes effort to decipher due to the amount of data there as I have a lot of interlinkages.

I use Groups to describe organizations, families, cults, military units, etc.

I do not use Groups as containers. This is because people frequently belong to multiple Groups and/or may change affiliations.

Within my Groups, I sometimes create a list of members. Since each member has it's own entry, these automatically become links back to them.

For my people, I will normally create a Relationship between them and the Groups they belong to.

For my people, if they are a member of a group, I will add a text line to their profile noting the Group name so I have a link back to the Group.

[Bobifle]

I see, thanks all for your insights.