Flora & Fauna
 

Maybe I've missed something (I did do a few searches for this), but looking at the almanac I'm not seeing where I can enter things like new flora and fauna. I'm not looking for specific ones, but more general species and such, kinda like you'd do for a new type of monster. What's the proper place for that sort of thing? I could place it under "other" but that didn't seem to fit as these are tangible, but non-specific "things".

I'd also like to see a category for this.

"Species", perhaps? I used to have a Species custom category that contained things like monster and PC races, before I moved them to Mechanics articles. I was just contemplating putting that category back, since it seems like it would be useful to convey non-mechanical information about a species (or for species that don't have any mechanical info, just passing fluff). It could cover plants too, of course.

I create a mechanics reference for them and bundle them there.

Such as I have a Monster category for Pathfinder, as well as Poisons, Curses, Afflictions that are all grouped there.

When I have a unique instance I reference the generic one. Such as a named monster.

Species sounds good to me. I would find this useful, for example, to describe a species of birds holy to one of the gods in my campaign. Or the plant which causes the deadly disease which shuts off travel through the jungle for half of the year when it blooms.

I suppose it only complicates things that I have unique minerals as well, lol! That's a non specific "thing" materialistically though, species covers the whole unique flora/fauna range really.

Substances are a good corner case. I had one of these in my campaign which had no mechanical properties - just a particular type of metal one of the NPCs wanted to acquire. I put it in a generic "setting element" category I'd made at the time, but that was way far back - like before the World Almanac existed. Since the sever was implemented, I think I just deleted the entry out of frustration ^^;

With the current category structure, and the emphasis on that structure being shared, I think it's neecessary to provide for materials/substances like that, as well. I wonder if e can think of a good term that encompasses both species and substances, but it still simple and informative? I'm off to thesaurus dive.

Come to think of it, my entire setting is named after a mineral that really should have its own topic entry.

Personally, I just separate substances into "Things the PCs can eat" and "Things the PCs cannot eat".

I like your style, enrious! Though in my game world, a couple of PC races genuinely have the mechanical ability "Eat Anything", so I fear I am back at square one :p

That said, I have been completely unable to find a good term that encompasses metals, minerals, plants, animals, etc. all at once. Well, except "thing", which is no help since it's already in use. I'm thinking "Species" and "Substance" or "Material" are the way to go right now. Associated tag domains might look something like Animal/Plant/Microbe/Supernatural (the last being for things like angels and demons) and Mineral/Metal/Liquid/Gas/Plastic/Wood/Foodstuff/Fabric/Arcane (et cetera - what would you use?), respectively. I realise there's a bit of overlap between the two categories, especially for things like woods and foods, but you could differentiate based on existing distinctions: "Maple", "Maple Wood" and "Maple Syrup", for example, or "Cow", "Leather" and "Beef".

You could also use creature origins as apply to your setting, like Natural/Elemental/Shadow etc. in D&D, since those would regularly apply to non-sentient plants and substances as well as monsters.

Try creating a few categories and seeing how it looks.

Like a section for things that can encounter them, and things they can encounter... as some molds and fungus won't go looking for them, but are still dangerous.

You can split them up further with sub categories or with tags.

Do you have a preference?

the main difference is categories can have a unique symbol, where as tags are something you can search for