Titling locations

[pyremius]

Edit - I completely missed that what I was asking for was already present. {sigh}

I'm beginning to enter data for Skulls & Shackles (just got asked to run it for another group), and have come to a stumbling block. What are some suggestions for titling the various locations on board the ships? For instance, many of the ships are going to have a Foredeck, and many encounters will reference that location, relative to the ship the players are currently on. by the time I've entered locations for the tenth ship there will be a lot of Foredecks to sort through as I'm creating links. To make matters more difficult it is expected that during the AP the players will rename ships one or more times, so I'm not sure I want to include the ship's name in the location titles (as I'll have 10-15 topics to fix each time they rename a ship, plus all the links to repair).

Suggestions are truly appreciated.

[Mystic Lemur]

The first thing that pops into my mind is to have a single topic per ship and do the rooms as Sections instead of separate Topics. I haven't experienced Skull and Shackles, so I don't know if the Foredeck of every ship so important that it needs its own topic.

[Cornelius]

Mystic Lemur's suggestion is one I would make as well. I think that is the best option.

Other option would be to use the suffix or Prefix and give each ship a separate unique code. Even if the ship itself changes name the code remains the same. That way you could see which Foredeck belongs to which ship (although you need to now the specific code).

You can also use the containing option (linking the decks to the ship topic). If you set the Topic view to show containment in nested hierarchy, the topic list view shows which decks belong to which ship.

[Farling]

I've used the name of the ship as a prefix in the actual topic title, and then used the prefix to contain the actual location reference (prefixing with book number in front of the section/area number).

I hadn't thought about them renaming the ship, perhaps their new name will be entered as an alias, thus keeping all the existing links correct between topics.

[pyremius]

Probably not every ship, but a significant portion of the AP involves ship combat, boarding ships, and stealing ships. There are two ships with deck plans and room descriptions in the first 2/3 of book 1 alone, and I know that one of the expectations is that the players will build up a fleet of their own.

I did the first ship by prefixing the ship's name, but then remembered the players will be renaming ships. As a test, I jumped ahead a bit and started working on ship #2 to see what would happen. First I renamed the Captain's Cabin from Ship #1 to get rid of the prefix, and made sure that all locations were contained within the ship topic. After creating a second ship, I created a new topic "Captain's Cabin", placed it within the container for the second ship, and attempted to save it. I got the popup "The name "Captain's Cabin" is in use by another topic in this category. Use it anyway?". I clicked yes, and the new topic was created, nested under the the topic for ship #2. Finally, I created an Event, which referenced the location "Captain's Cabin", and "Ship #2" (not it's real name, but I'd like to leave specifics out for those who might be a player in someone else's game). I also made sure the Event was contained within the Topic "Ship #2". When I went to save the Topic, I got a warning "Name Re-used: Select Desired Target" - but both choices have the same name.

[Farling]

I've only broken down the important ships into separate locations.
The other ships are single topics since there's no point in breaking them down further.

A generic set of locations can be created for a "ship's boat" or "Longship" type of ship if you want to be able to have information for each location selectable from a map pin.

[Cornelius]

Pyremius, you describe the behaviour the database should do. This way you can use the same name for atopic, like the captain's cabin. Unfortunately this introduces the problem that you cannot distinguish between them. That is the reason the prefix/suffix was introduced as a feature.
The containing option is mostly a way to show in the nested hierarchy. It still has two topics with the same name.

[pyremius]

{Sigh}
Thanks for mentioning that, Cornelius. Somehow I never noticed that field, which appears to solve my problem perfectly.