forum Two questions: How to define an organization? When is Timeline coming?

Started January 23, 2023 by @bbottema book

tune

I'm still trying out the platform before upgrading to premium. Two questions:

1. If I want to define some shadowy organization, a corporation or a cult or the like. Would I use the Group type (without linking members) or the Government type for that?
2. What's your plan for adding a timeline type? It's the one thing I'm still missing. I saw an old thread from 2017 about this, but not much more. I think there are lots of novel writer tools out there that nailed the timeline component (but there I can't link world stuff), or you could have a look of course at Kanka, Campfire or WorldAnvil. But I think in this case it's best to start small and simple to cover 80% of the use cases. Single timeline, add events, no custom calendar stuff. To begin with. It would already largely cover my need as a writer just using this tool for world building.

Probably a group, that defines basically any organization or faction, describing goals and their hierarchy. Government is more for an actual government body, as it has things like economy, and all stuff like that. Really just for defining an actual political body. I don't know anything about timeline stuff though.

Good questions! The pages are intentionally designed to be configurable and open-ended to let you use whichever you prefer, but I'd personally probably go with a Group for your shadowy organization/corporation/cult/etc. Governments are a little more tailored towards actual governments and political groups, while Groups are more general. You can preview the default fields for Group pages and Government pages, but you can also edit them however you'd like.

As for timelines, we have a rudimentary timeline system already that covers the basics (under Writing > Timelines in the sidebar), but the functionality is pretty limited (single timeline, add events, and linking characters/etc to those events) and the UI is more clunky than I'd like. I'm working on a big site redesign right now that focuses on making everything easier to use and giving me a lot more room to add new features, and a new timeline editor is a part of that – however, I don't have an ETA yet for when it'll be ready to release. Of course, any timelines created in our current editor will transfer in just fine when it's ready. :)