Are there any plans to curate the Monster Codex? It seems like there are roughly three kinds of entries: “serious” monster archetypes, “silly” monster archetypes, and specific NPCs. Perhaps just a field to categorize and filter the entries would be helpful? I know my DW isn’t the same as your DW, but I’d like to be able to filter out monsters that don’t fit my style.
Are there any plans to curate the Monster Codex?
Are there any plans to curate the Monster Codex?
We’re considering the best way to do that. Use tags? Categories? Algorithmic grouping?
We didn’t already have a better solution because we never expected it to be this successful! I had nightmares of everyone just not caring.
Taxonomy is a complex subject that I’m not intimately familiar with. Definitely worth crowdsourcing ideas. The tricky thing about tags is that no one knows what all the tags are! As for my contribution to this effort, I’d like to see the following capabilities:
Filter by where it resides (like in the DW manual)
Filter by “official” monsters endorsed by dev/mods
Other filters: silly, npc
A style guide for entries
The ability to flag entries
If the site is written in Rails I’d be happy to lend a hand.
Tags would work best; you could tag serious, huge, Lovecraft, whatever. Most popular tags would become categories over time.
Something where you could add to your list would be nice.
Uh, Sage LaTorra I’ll volunteer to take it on for a while — curating the museum, that is.
Tags are definitely a good idea. The problem with a “silly” category is that there definitely will be (if there aren’t already) some monsters that the creator (and maybe others) insists is serious while others are saying “Really? No. Just no.” (Which also makes a “serious” category or tag less useful.) So there may not be a practical way to filter those out, although there’s no reason why creators shouldn’t be able to tag their own creations “silly” or “parody” or whatever.
Having a category for NPCs will definitely be needed.
Having thought more about this issue, a simple per-entry “hide” feature may be the most efficient solution. Of course, there would need to be the ability to review hidden entries and “unhide” them. Also, “hide/unhide all by this user” would be a very helpful time saver.
I think it would be nicer if it could add the monsters to your profile, maybe even under certain campaigns/