All posts by ByteBard

Well, it's nice that Bell's Hells finally has a name. Now we need to figure out what we want to do for episodes Featured Characters listing before they received their name, including the Mighty Nein. I had previously led an effort standardizing Featured Characters headers into the forms that were most commonly used. For the Mighty Nein, as well as for any special episodes that don't involve an established campaign party, they are listed as "Player Characters" (example). I see for Bell's Hells people have used "[[Bell's Hells|Adventuring party]]" (example).

Let's come up with a standard format for all of these episodes (that I am happy to help put in place with the help of semi-automated tools). I like this idea of linking to the party even if it isn't named. So how do y'all feel about "[[PARTY NAME|Player Characters]]"? This way, the displayed header remains standardized across all episodes and specials when PCs don't have a campaign party name, but it still links to the party in question. (And obviously this does not apply to Vox Machina as they were named when their first campaign episode aired.)

I think we should be careful and precise in our category tree and and category names about what are actual episodes, and what are related to episodes. I noticed the credit subpages for The Legend of Vox Machina were marked as the category Legend of Vox Machina, so I removed them. Of course then they didn't even have any category, so one was created for credits. Another editor felt it should still link back to the TV show so the credits category was added back to the show category. This categorization makes a lot of sense, but it also means that there is the original problem that the category structure implies that the credit pages are episodes. Campaign episodes, on the other hand, are categorized into e.g. "Campaign One episodes" where every single member is an episode and nothing else pertinent to Campaign One is categorized there.

I have noticed a similar problem for individual issues of comic series. The only category for issue 1 of Vox Machina Origins II is 'Vox Machina Origins'. It is not even directly identified/categorized as a comic, and requires the reader to know that Vox Machina Origins is a comic series, which is itself in the category of Comics.

So here is my proposal. For anything that refers to a type of something—an episode of a campaign or animated series, an issue of a comic book series, etc—its category should both specify type and the larger work it's a part of, and act as a sub-category of both the type and the larger work. Campaign One episodes should really be a subcategory of Campaign One (a currently non-existent category) and Episodes. Then Campaign One can also include existing categories like Characters appearing in Campaign One. There should also be a new category The Legend of Vox Machina episodes which is a subcategory of both The Legend of Vox Machina and Episodes. Credits would still be categorized as TLOVM but now would no longer appear under the 'episode' umbrella. And finally, Issues of Vox Machina Origins (or, Issues of Vox Machina Origins II?) would be in both the categories comics and Vox Machina Origins. Vox Machina Origins could then include a subcategory like "Characters appearing in Vox Machina Origins" which could be part of a new category like "Characters appearing in comics".

Even with these changes, there would still be non-episodes in the category of episodes: episode thumbnails, arcs, and chapters. Not sure how to resolve that one. But very interested in everyone else's thoughts on this and other ideas for how to structure our categories!