Template talk:Infobox Creature

Suggested changes
I feel like the different elements of the infobox aren't sorted as well as they could be. Do other people feel the same?

I have some suggestions to get the conversations started. 1. I would set Unaired to false as the default on the template itself, since I don't know of any reason listed that we would need to set it to anything else. This is very easy to do in a backwards compatible way. 2. The "title" field can be set to PAGENAME as the default. 3. The "AKA" field should be included as a subtitle to the main title. For example, if we were theoretically to have a "Dark elf" page, we could have "Drow" as a subtitle instead of listing it at the bottom. 4. Types, parent race, and subraces should go right at the top. However, I think we should remove reference to "race" and replace it with something else. "Parent race" is very easy to replace with "subtype", (e.g., pallid elves would have humanoid listed as their type and elf as their subtype), although I'm not sure what we would replace "subraces" with – I would say ethnicity, but ethic groups do not seem to be the same as subraces (e.g., Zemnians and Marquesians don't have their own racial abilities; neither do Menagerie Coast elves descending from Marquesian elves and Uthodurn elves descending from Molaesmyr elves). 5. Physiological information would be a section for non-appearance-based characteristics, especially those that affect a character mechanically. However, right away I run into some problems, as I'll list below. 5a. "Size" would be included here because size is more of a mechanical characteristic than an appearance characteristic. After all, creatures such as minotaurs count as large when used as enemies and medium when used as PCs despite no change in height or weight. 5b. Active cycle and diet makes sense to include in physiological information for creatures like animals, but I feel like we might be pigeonholing ourselves in the event that a PC folks appears that is an omnivore by biology and a vegetarian by culture. Actually, this is going to be a reoccurring theme – it's difficult to use the same template to organize information about folks and creatures without being offensive to the folks and not really accurate about creatures. 5c. Speaking of the point at the end of 5b, there is a big difference between having a society that speaks a language (e.g., humans speaking Zemnian or Marquesian is definitely sociocultural) and having a creature that understands a language (e.g., blink dogs understanding Sylvan is more of a physiological trait). This leads me to another argument for the creation of an Infobox Folks – it might be more appropriate for making infoboxes for different ethnic groups, especially if the infobox itself could include some simple historical information. 6. Sociocultural information is appropriate for ethnic groups, but less appropriate for many kinds of creatures. 6a. The inclusion of an ethnicities section would allow for the inclusion of differing lineages and named cultures of various folks (e.g. Marquesian and Zemnian humans). 6b. See number 5 about language, diet, and active cycle. 6c. Location may be appropriate in the sociocultural information in certain cases, especially in the cases of homelands where an ethnic group arose (e.g. Zemni Fields for Zemnian people, Marquet for the Marquesian people) or for folks that are very insular and don't often leave their settlement (e.g. Allowak is the only known yeti society). However, it is less sociocultural in the cases of creatures that have a limited geographic range, such as the Swavain basilisk only living in the waters around the Swavain Islands.

GamesWithGrace (talk) 18:22, June 28, 2020 (UTC)