MUD Architecture Question

[Aaron Vienneau]

I've been thinking there are two ways for a room to "hold" items, mobs and players.

1) There could be a world object where items are mapped to VNUMs, mobs are mapped to VNUMs and players are mapped to VNUMs, each with their own map. Rooms could then simply have a vector of VNUMS in reference to the items, mobs and players they hold.

2) The rooms could literally have data members (vectors) of items, mobs and players - but then I feel that uniqueness would be a problem.

Is there a way I can achieve both uniqueness of items mobs and players while still implementing a system that's maintainable? Do items, mobs and players even need to be totally unique? Unique from one another or unique in their own domain? Lots of questions...