Ability to change/edit the Item Categories

dragondreams
dragondreams

I apologize if I missed a relevant post that was already on this - maybe my search-foo has left this week, :-).  

I wanted to edit the list of categories in the dropdown lists on the Item pages.  

 

Comments

  • thaen
    thaen
    Posts: 1,064

    Thanks for the request!

    Can you give us some background?  What would you use this for?

    Obsidian Portal Developer

  • UselessTriviaMan
    UselessTriviaMan
    Posts: 546

    This is something I've also been interested in.

    If there were a way to make this dropdown editable, there are a lot of campaign-specific things I could do with this. I have lists of various chaositech devices and ancient arcana that I'm adding to my Ptolus campaign, for example.


    Ptolus, City by the Spire - 2016 Campaign of the Year

    "Please pay attention very carefully, because this is the truest thing a stranger will ever say to you: In the face of such hopelessness as our eventual, unavoidable death, there is little sense in not at least TRYING to accomplish all your wildest dreams in life."  - - Kevin Smith

  • thaen
    thaen
    Posts: 1,064

    @UselessTriviaMan, can you elaborate?  What benefit would you get from setting an Item's category as "chaositech device" or "ancient arcana"?

    I ask because I think the only place the "Category" is used is to be displayed on the full view of the Item.  It seems like you could get virtually the same effect by making the first line of the Description be "Category: Chaositech Device", or something like that and then start the rest of the Description a line below that.  And then use CSS to hide the existing "Category" section.

     

    Obsidian Portal Developer

  • UselessTriviaMan
    UselessTriviaMan
    Posts: 546

    Well then, I guess I don't need that custom category at all. My own workaround was a Tag for for those specific categories, and that's doing the job just fine.


    Ptolus, City by the Spire - 2016 Campaign of the Year

    "Please pay attention very carefully, because this is the truest thing a stranger will ever say to you: In the face of such hopelessness as our eventual, unavoidable death, there is little sense in not at least TRYING to accomplish all your wildest dreams in life."  - - Kevin Smith

  • thaen
    thaen
    Posts: 1,064

    Oh yeah, Tags are a great solution too since they enable filtering by the "Item Quick Search".

    Obsidian Portal Developer

  • dragondreams
    dragondreams
    Posts: 24

    Hello!

    Thank for all the suggestions/responses. 

    I attached a picture of the Items page from my last campaign as an example.  There are about 60 items and I use tags extensively across items, characters, etc., already, so using them for items categories would not work as well, :-). 

    It's not a big deal, :-).  I do like the Category and selecting it from a dropdown.  I'd also would like searching by category separate from searching by tag on the items page, :-).   Certainly I do love to organize things ("CDO"  - OCD in the right alphabetical order... :-).) 

    Does that make sense?

    https://constellations-of-duplicity.obsidianportal.com/items

     

  • thaen
    thaen
    Posts: 1,064

    @dragondreams, thanks for sharing some details!  I think I'm missing some context.  Can you give a scenario where you would use the ability to search by category in your game, and why it wouldn't work to use tags for item categories for that?

    If it's just that there are a lot of tags arleady, you could prefix your "item category" tags with "Item Category", so for example you could have "Item Category Armor", "Item Category Weapon", "Item Category Ring", etc.  Then they would all be grouped alphabetically in the filters listing.

     

    Obsidian Portal Developer

  • dragondreams
    dragondreams
    Posts: 24

    You can see how I love tags - :-) - a bit too much?  They did work great for those labels across everything.  (and therefor my wish for using the category in Items to categorize Items.)  I do like the Items as a separate thing and would like to do more with them, :-).  I totally understand if this is not a high priority.   

     

  • thaen
    thaen
    Posts: 1,064

    Items is currently a lower priority.  Though if a number of community members wanted a particular Item feature, that would raise its priority.  (So chime in if you are reading this ...)

    I'd still like to understand the scenario you want this for.  When are you wanting to search Item Categories in your game?  The tag list you posted doesn't look bad to me, so I feel like I'm missing something.  Feel free to spell it out like I'm a 5 year old if it's staring me in the face and I'm just not seeing it.

    Obsidian Portal Developer

  • UselessTriviaMan
    UselessTriviaMan
    Posts: 546

    I think the Tags issue is probably what needs a bigger focus, rather than the item categories. If we had more functionality from the Tags, I think this problem would fix itself.

    I'd dearly love to be able to use multiple Tags to sort my site search results, but we've only ever been able to sort by a single Tag at a time. I'm pretty sure that's been a long-standing request, but I have zero comprehension of the size/scope that fix would need. From the past discussions, it seems it's a pretty hefty beast (if I remember correctly).


    Ptolus, City by the Spire - 2016 Campaign of the Year

    "Please pay attention very carefully, because this is the truest thing a stranger will ever say to you: In the face of such hopelessness as our eventual, unavoidable death, there is little sense in not at least TRYING to accomplish all your wildest dreams in life."  - - Kevin Smith

  • dragondreams
    dragondreams
    Posts: 24

    Hello!

    To me, tags are wonderful qualifying labels that can be relevant across different entities, like characters, items, wiki, and adventure logs, etc.  For example, in the Constellations of Duplicity campaign, there were different cultures, different groupings, who and what items participated in certain historic events, etc. 

    The number of tags on an entity, is one thing, but to me when the number of tags on that Character page gets that large, it starts to be too many to see to find the one you want to filter on.  It basically takes up the 'whole viewable page'.  Again - just my opinion, :-).  

    For Character - One could argue that why aren't NPC and PC just tags? Like categories for Items. It is a categorization that is specific to items.  (I'm also in the groups that would like the ability to have chracters have Race and Class, not have to be a tag, :-) ).  

    To me there is a balance between a category or two that is very specific to an entity type, characters or items, then tags for that cross entity function, or for cases where a character or an item could be in more than one category type (like Guilds as has been discussed, potentially, could be.)  

    I do agree that filter by with separate sort option that could be group sort by tag (duplicating entity if in diff selected tags) would be nice.  

    This request does not seem too popular so I certainly understand it might not make any prioritization cut, :-).  Thanks for listening, though!

     

     

     

     

  • thaen
    thaen
    Posts: 1,064

    @UselessTriviaMan, you should assume any long standing request that hasn't been discussed recently has been lost to the void, and feel free to bring any of them up again if they are still relevant.  I added this one to the list, but can you give me a specific instance of when you would have used this ability to filter by multiple tags?

    Just to make sure I'm on the same page ... my understanding is the ability to search on multiple tags would happen on the "search" screen, which is not the same as the Items/Charaters "filters" panel in dragondreams's screenshot.

    @dragondreams, same question, but for Categories ... can you give me a specific instance when you would have used this ability to filter by Categories?

    As far as taking up the whole page ... adding an additional section for "Categories" as well probably isn't going to make that issue better.  : )  But we could make that window "scrollable" when the number of Tags got past a certain height.  Would that help what you're trying to fix?  (I don't really understand exactly what issue you're trying to fix, which is why I am asking for a specific scenario so I can ground my understanding in a specific example.)

    Obsidian Portal Developer

  • dragondreams
    dragondreams
    Posts: 24

    For me I would allow sorting by Tags (which needs to choose the tags to filter and sort by) in just the Character or Items Sections - not the general Search.  

    Like so:

  • UselessTriviaMan
    UselessTriviaMan
    Posts: 546

    I currently have over 1400 separate wiki pages with the "Monster" tag, along with CR levels and 5E creature types. I'd dearly love to be able to do a search for (for example) CR2 Undead.


    Ptolus, City by the Spire - 2016 Campaign of the Year

    "Please pay attention very carefully, because this is the truest thing a stranger will ever say to you: In the face of such hopelessness as our eventual, unavoidable death, there is little sense in not at least TRYING to accomplish all your wildest dreams in life."  - - Kevin Smith

  • thaen
    thaen
    Posts: 1,064

    I'd dearly love to be able to do a search for (for example) CR2 Undead.

     

    @UselessTriviaMan, cool, I'm following so far.  What happens after that?  Are you using the results to plan encounters for your "crypt" dungeon that you want to run your level 3 party through?  I'm trying to get specific so I fully understand how this would be used and how it would benefit your game.

    Obsidian Portal Developer

  • UselessTriviaMan
    UselessTriviaMan
    Posts: 546

    Pretty much. When I'm running a pre-written adventure, I like to substitute new and never-before-seen monsters in place of the same old humdrum bad guys. Gnolls are cool, but how 'bout using some quaggoths or shadowfolk instead?

    Or if I want to sort through all my Chaositech items to get just a list of rare weapons, as another example.


    Ptolus, City by the Spire - 2016 Campaign of the Year

    "Please pay attention very carefully, because this is the truest thing a stranger will ever say to you: In the face of such hopelessness as our eventual, unavoidable death, there is little sense in not at least TRYING to accomplish all your wildest dreams in life."  - - Kevin Smith

  • thaen
    thaen
    Posts: 1,064

    @UselessTriviaMan, that bit about substituting monsters in pre-written adventures is great.  I hadn't considered that usage.  Excellent idea!

    The current search tool is fairly old and we're working on replacing it with something newer, but we have a number of technical hurdles in front of us, so I don't have an ETA on when that will be done.  But as above, I added the "filter by multiple tags" feature request to the list.

    Obsidian Portal Developer

  • dragondreams
    dragondreams
    Posts: 24

    @UselessTriviaMan

    > 1400 separate wiki pages with the "Monster" tag...

    THAT IS SOOOO COOOL!!!  

  • dragondreams
    dragondreams
    Posts: 24

    For me, its about organizing my items as a GM - especially when I next run a fantasy genre with lots of books, sword, rings, etc.  I very much like having a dropdown in Items to choose the Item category(like I'd really like a 'race' and 'class' in the characters, ;-) ) I would like to search and sort on that page but without the messing up using tags for the other cross entity attributes.  Same with Characters - would love to search by Race or Class without messing up the cross-entity tags. 

    I think there is a balance - how many 'special attributes' - like GM/Public, PC/NPC, Item Category, Character Class, Character Race - versus general tags. [

    This would be my wish - see how the categories are separated and easy to filter/sort like GM/Public and PC versus Nonplayer Character in Characters?:

     Using tags - for a category, either gets lost in the (to me real uses of tags across items, characters, Wiki page, adventure logs, etc.:

    or ruins the look and makes the other tags hard to see:

  • dragondreams
    dragondreams
    Posts: 24

    :-) Item Categories in this one is a challenge :-)

  • thaen
    thaen
    Posts: 1,064

    @dragondreams, okay, I think I fully understand where you're coming from now.  Thanks for enduring the questioning here and in the PMs!

    As you are crafting your session, you want to be able to see what Item Categories are available, even if there aren't any Items currently in that Category, similar to the PC/NPC "special attributes" that show up in the Filters whether or not there are PCs or NPCs.

    And further, when creating the Items, you want the field to be there to remind you to select something, unlike tags where you can enter anything, but you have to remember that you want to enter something.

    And then also, as the original purpose of this post indicates, you want a way to Add/Edit/Delete Categories.

    And you'd also like some other "special attributes" on the Characters page to allow similar filtering there, for example like Race and Class.

    No promises that any of that will get done, but just thinking out loud...

    The ability to Filter by Category would probably not be too hard for us to add. 

    I can't think of a light-weight way to provide Add/Edit/Delete for Categories at the moment, so that would be a fair bit harder. 

    Race and Class on the Character pages is already something that lives in the DSTs, so I don't think we would duplicate that.  But we might be able to create a DST tag or something that tells the system which fields should be considered "filterable", and if any of the Characters are using a DST that uses that tag, then we could show those "special attributes" in the filters with whatever values they currently have.  That wouldn't solve the problem of "show the attribute option even if there aren't any Characters/Items using it currently", but it would get closer.

    I'll add these to the list.

    Obsidian Portal Developer

  • UselessTriviaMan
    UselessTriviaMan
    Posts: 546

    Thank you @thaen! :)


    Ptolus, City by the Spire - 2016 Campaign of the Year

    "Please pay attention very carefully, because this is the truest thing a stranger will ever say to you: In the face of such hopelessness as our eventual, unavoidable death, there is little sense in not at least TRYING to accomplish all your wildest dreams in life."  - - Kevin Smith

  • dragondreams
    dragondreams
    Posts: 24

    Thanks again so much!!!

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