Campaign-organizing software

[Keran]

Is there any software you'd particularly recommend (or
otherwise) for managing a campaign?

I became convinced of the virtues of using a wiki, with its
fast markup (much faster than building HTML pages), for
keeping track of my sprawling, ever-expanding campaign
notes. I started off using Tiddlywiki,
http://www.tiddlywiki.com/
which isn't actually a wiki server, but a free wiki-like
Javascript-based individual 'notebook', to be run in a
browser. Unfortunately, I had to abandon it and transfer my
notes out of it. It works quite well as long as the
file size is small, but as my notes expanded, I hit a point
where it couldn't save reliably without corruption.

I'm presently using ProjectForum,
http://http://www.projectforum.com/
with a basic license. It is a wiki server, and I'm finding
it highly satisfactory. There are Windows, Mac, Linux, and
FreeBSD versions, and various licenses available, from the
free version to expensive commercial licenses. It's very
easy to set up, not requiring any other software, and I
haven't encountered a bug since I started using it about a
year ago. It's also extremely easy to back up. All the
data is stored in the Group Data directory, so all I have
to do is back that up and I can easily restore my
installation.

I have the basic license, which usually goes for $79 but is
available for $49 until the end of March 2007. The basic
license allows me to add images, which means I can keep use
Projectforum to display my maps. The only thing I don't
have with this license that I want is multigroup
capability; but I'd have to shell out a lot more for that,
and it's easy enough to work around, considering the
self-contained nature of the Group Data directory. At the
point where I want to run a campaign in a different
setting, I'll simply archive my current Group Data
directory and start anew.

The only feature ProjectForum doesn't have at all that I
want is an extra indexing feature called 'tagging' on
Tiddlywiki. It would make some categorization faster and
neater.

I use ProjectForum both to keep my campaign notes, and to
make the maps, timeline, session logs, lexicon, and text of
my homebrew available for download. Since I don't have a
static IP address and don't want to pay for one, or for
server space, this means my procedure is to start the ProjectForum
server before a game, announce the current IP (and the usual
port) to the players, and to take my router's firewall off
stealth mode temporarily. Obviously, it'd be more
convenient if I had a static IP address and were willing to
leave my firewall unstealthed.

I could allow other people to edit the data -- for instance, if
players wanted to maintain their own characters' entries and
sheets -- although at present I'm doing all the editing, my homebrew
calling for very little in the way of bookkeeping for the characters.
I've warned the players that the notes may have spoilers in them,
whereas the maps, logs, timeline, and lexicon are generally safe.
More elaborate security than I have bothered with is possible.

All in all, ProjectForum is one of the most thoroughly satisfactory
pieces of software I've ever used.

I am still searching for charting software that would allow
me quickly and easily to make extensively annotated charts
of genealogies and alliances: an at-a-glance visual
representation would be a useful adjunct to my hypertext
notes. So far my best attempt has been Inspiration,
http://www.inspiration.com/
but it wasn't created with genealogies in mind and doesn't
handle the format with an efficient workflow.

Keran
***@sbcglobal.xnet
Remove the extraneous 'x' to email me.

[Mary K. Kuhner]

Post by Keran
I am still searching for charting software that would allow
me quickly and easily to make extensively annotated charts
of genealogies and alliances: an at-a-glance visual
representation would be a useful adjunct to my hypertext
notes. So far my best attempt has been Inspiration,
http://www.inspiration.com/
but it wasn't created with genealogies in mind and doesn't
handle the format with an efficient workflow.

For genealogies, it seems as though a specialized tool made
for people who are tracing their own family tree would be
appropriate: I haven't used such software but there is a lot of
it out there.

My husband keeps his notes in flat files, displayed in multiple
windows while he's running, and gets a lot of use out of
text-editor searching tools and "grep". He was intensely
frustrated when our laptop died and he had to run from paper--
he missed "grep" badly:

grep motive athys -- What is Athys' Sense Motive score?

I haven't adopted this system yet myself; I still run from
bits of paper. But his does seem to have considerable
advantages. I can well imagine that a wiki would be even
better once you learned to use it.

Mary Kuhner ***@eskimo.com

[Keran]

On Thu, 15 Mar 2007 21:38:20 +0000 (UTC),

Post by Mary K. Kuhner

Post by Keran
I am still searching for charting software that would allow
me quickly and easily to make extensively annotated charts
of genealogies and alliances: an at-a-glance visual
representation would be a useful adjunct to my hypertext
notes. So far my best attempt has been Inspiration,
http://www.inspiration.com/
but it wasn't created with genealogies in mind and doesn't
handle the format with an efficient workflow.

For genealogies, it seems as though a specialized tool made
for people who are tracing their own family tree would be
appropriate: I haven't used such software but there is a lot of
it out there.

I looked through a few programs, but the ones I turned up had a
diagram format that didn't accomplish what I was after. They were ...
more designed to store information in fixed slots than to make
complicated and varying relationships clear at a glance. (I realize
that's not a good description of the problem, but I'd have to look at
the screens again before I could be more specific without fear of
inaccuracy.)

Not to say that I know that none of the genealogical programs would
serve my purpose -- only that I didn't turn up any obvious hits while
looking through shareware that had working demos. I'll probably give
it another try, though ... this was a while back.

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
My husband keeps his notes in flat files, displayed in multiple
windows while he's running, and gets a lot of use out of
text-editor searching tools and "grep". He was intensely
frustrated when our laptop died and he had to run from paper--
grep motive athys -- What is Athys' Sense Motive score?
I haven't adopted this system yet myself; I still run from
bits of paper. But his does seem to have considerable
advantages. I can well imagine that a wiki would be even
better once you learned to use it.

Which is pretty easy, with ProjectForum. The installation sets up
with 'This is what you do next' in the default screen; there are menus
along the page footers; and the editing window has a cheatsheet of the
common markups. I was very pleased with this, because I was trying to
rescue my campaign notes from the corrupted file they were in in a
hurry and didn't want to spend a lot of time wrestling with obscure
software.

Hypertext allows me to write in snippets, without either an
overarching thesis or flow of thought, and still make sense out of the
result. If I wrote like that in a flat file my head would explode
from the sense of incoherence it'd generate.

Keran
***@sbcglobal.xnet
Remove the extraneous 'x' to email me.

[gleichman]

Post by Keran
Is there any software you'd particularly recommend (or
otherwise) for managing a campaign?

Not anything significant given your needs.

I do use a number of tools and methods. Frontpage for example is used
to define house rules, time lines and other information of interest to
players in my group, I toss out all that onto my website where they
have access to it. Bunch of stuff there, but in practical terms it's
only really used by me as a reference.

Execl holds the character sheets (together with extensive forumlas and
coding that makes it work as a semi-character generator). Word has my
rules.

Almost everything else is plain paper although I have used Access in
the pass to hold adventure summaries.

It helps greatly that I do really do whole cloth settings, but rather
use modified existing ones.