Adding races in "Mechanics Reference"

I just want to make sure I'm not missing anything here:

1) I go to "Mechanics Reference", add a new "Characters" group of the type "Race/Species".

2) This did not allow me to select that race for an individual.

3) I had to add a tag for the race by going to Manage > Tags > Race.

4) There seems to be no way (none that I can find anyway) to link the tag to the race. So when I select the new tag as the race for an individual, there's no link back to the topic for that race.

5) What I CAN do is select the tag as the race for the individual, then in the annotation field, add a link for the race's topic.

Am I missing something in not being able to link the tag to the race, or is the method I'm using a reasonable one?

If you put the race name into a text snippet instead of using a tag, then the text snippet will auto-create a link to the topic of the same name.

Farling said:

If you put the race name into a text snippet instead of using a tag, then the text snippet will auto-create a link to the topic of the same name.

Click to expand...

Well, that's basically what I did with the annotation. But the race tag is still there, and I don't really want to break the "individual" template by removing the race tag (even for a single instance) without a more compelling reason.

I appreciate the reply, though. Thanks.

I think the more important point here is that you'd probably want to use both. The Tag isn't really for linking entries, but rather for searching and sorting whereas the snippet will give you the linking. So I've always used both in those situations because they really just do different things.

zarlor said:

I think the more important point here is that you'd probably want to use both. The Tag isn't really for linking entries, but rather for searching and sorting whereas the snippet will give you the linking. So I've always used both in those situations because they really just do different things.

Click to expand...

That's what I figured. I just wanted to make are I wasn't missing something.

One of the things on our todo list is establishing special tag associations with topics, which will essentially provide both the filtering/searching benefits of tags AND the cross-linking. However, that's still on the todo list. Until we get that hybridized capability added, tags and links are separate mechanisms with distinct uses, so both need to be employed.