Help displaying a dynamic list on a page

Okay, I give up.

I've got a group of characters and a list of locations. Based on how far my players have progressed with each character's plot, each character could be in a different place, and who the character may have to visit to continue a specific character's plot may change.

I am trying to build something that will generate this list automatically. Each location could either be empty, have a character present, and talking to that character would progress THAT character's plot, or have a character present, and talking to that character would progress ANOTHER character's plot.

Right now, what I have is a whole ugly mess of if statements that is horrible to work with. Ideally what I would like is something where I can put the plot states in one place and have a widget or something refer to that to see who is where when as it builds the list, but I have no idea how to do that. I've been playing around with various ways to do this, but I haven't found a solution that works. I can finagle something, but it always seems to end up being if/then statements somewhere instead of a clean loop referencing something like an array.

I can provide code when I'm not about to run out the door if anyone has suggestions or questions.

Thanks in advance!