Collections

Every world has things there are many of that no built-in module covers: races, cultures, religions, artifacts, gods, schools of magic. Collections let you make a list of your own for each of them. A collection is a named list — Races, Cultures — whose entries are records with a page, a picture, a description, tags and the fields you choose for that collection. Records behave like any other record in the project: you can mention them, relate them, find them in search and see them on the graph.

How do I make a collection? #

Open Settings → Collections and choose New collection. Pick a template or start blank:

Races — lifespan, average height, homeland, languages, traits and diet.
Cultures — values, customs, homeland, language, social structure and cuisine.
Religions — deities, tenets, holy sites, clergy, followers and when it was founded.
Artifacts — kind, power, current owner, whereabouts, origin and when it was made.
Magic systems — source, cost, limits, practitioners, rarity and whether it is hard magic.
Deities — domains, symbol, alignment, worshippers, pantheon and holy day.
Technologies — field, inventor, when it was invented, availability and requirements.
Professions — guild, skills, typical income, social standing and years of training.

Then name it. A collection has a plural name for its list (Races) and a name for one record (Race), an icon and a colour. The name, icon and colour follow its records everywhere they appear, so a religion reads as a Religion, not a generic record: in search, in mentions, in quick look, in related records (grouped by collection), on the graph and in its legend. A project can have up to thirty collections.

Where do the records live? #

Each collection gets its own row in the sidebar, after your world-building modules, with its icon. To keep a collection out of the sidebar, switch off Show in sidebar beside it in Settings → Collections; its records stay in search, mentions and the creation form. The row opens the collection's list: cards or rows, a search box, a tag filter and filters for its text, number, choice and yes/no fields. New Race (or whatever you called one record) opens the creation form with the collection's fields. The creation form also lists every collection under Collections, so you can add a record from anywhere in the project.

A record's page has the picture, the collection's pill (it opens the list), the author, existence dates when the Timeline module is on, the collection's fields in the Attributes card, the consistency check when the Lens module is on, the description, related records and the record's history.

How do I change a collection's fields? #

In Settings → Collections, open a collection's menu and choose Edit fields, which opens that collection in Settings → Custom fields; the tune button beside New Race on a collection's list leads there too. Fields work exactly like custom fields on characters or locations: text, numbers, choices, tags, dates, links to other records and more, up to fifty per collection. The pencil on a record's Attributes card leads to the same place. Renaming a field keeps every value; deleting one removes its values from the collection's records.

How do I reorder, rename or delete a collection? #

The same menu has Edit collection (name, one record's name, icon, colour and description), Move up and Move down, which set the order of the sidebar rows and the creation form, and Delete. Settings → Modules lists the collections too, where you drag them into order and switch their sidebar rows. Deleting a collection moves it to the archive together with its records. Restoring it brings the records back with it. A record you archived on its own stays archived until you restore it after its collection.

Can I switch collections off? #

Collections are not a module you switch: a project without collections shows nothing for them. To hide one collection's sidebar row, switch off Show in sidebar in Settings → Collections; to remove it, delete it there.

Who can use collections? #

Every collection shares one set of permissions: Read collection records opens collections and their records, Write collection records creates and edits them and fills in their fields, and Delete collection records deletes them. Changing a collection's fields afterwards needs Super. There is no permission per collection. The permissions reference lists the rest.

Tips #

Name records the way the story does. "Race" and "Culture" read better on a record than "Entry".
Start from a template and trim it. Deleting a field you do not need is quicker than inventing six.
Relate records instead of copying text. Relate a culture to its homeland and its language, and the homeland's page lists the culture.
Use a choice field for anything you want to filter by. Lists filter by choices, numbers, yes/no and text fields.

Custom fields — the fields every collection is built from.
Modules — the built-in modules you can switch on and off.
Relations — link records to characters, places and each other.
Archive — where deleted collections and records wait.
Search — find records across the project.