I think areas are great for organizing spaces, but for larger spaces they can get a bit crowded in the area list, causing many build owners to utilize sub-areas to trim things down and further organize groups of similar rooms in. One issue with that is in the sub area, the area map and list will default to that of the sub-area, and the parent area can’t see any of the specific rooms of the sub-area.
My proposal is to create “area categories” or “area types,” with the main ones being default and sub-area. A default area is the same as normal, but a sub-area would strip the features of an area and relegate them to the parent area’s information, things like the area description, map, and rules would show as if in the parent area, and the list of rooms would show the same way, signifying the child rooms with an indent underneath the area in the list, something like this mock-up:
The containing area in the list would be collapsible, and probably default to collapsed unless the player is in the sub-area. I don’t know how feasible sub-sub-areas would work from a visual perspective, but ideally it would be able to chain at least a few layers deep, but probably have some sort of sanity limit.
Thoughts? Ideas? Comments? Jokes?
