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View Full Version : Anyone have experience with using a Campaign Wiki?



MalinGenie
2010-07-19, 08:37 PM
I have a campaign setting in evolution, and I'm interested in porting it to the web from my handwritten notes. It seems like a wiki would be a good way to do it, but I haven't used one before.

I'd appreciate any advice people could offer as to which sites/software might be suitable for the job, particularly if any of you have run one yourself?

Peregrine
2010-07-19, 09:07 PM
I discovered Epic Words (http://epicwords.com) in this year's ENnie nominations. I'm still in the process of putting my campaign up, but it's working out quite nicely so far. (We especially like the calendar. Our scheduling has always been a problem.)

I might have more to say if and when all my players have started using it; I'm still struggling to imagine them using the option to write in-character game journals. Well, one of them might. But you asked about wikis, and it's definitely got that part down. It even highlights names and words that you put on the "References" page, so people can mouse over them and get a short reminder of who Jobood was or what happend in Tobleira.

IdleMuse
2010-07-19, 09:24 PM
I use Wikispaces for my campaign setting. It's not tremendously fancy, but it has everything you need. It Works. Unlike other wikis I've tried (Wikidot?).

bartman
2010-07-19, 09:25 PM
One of the members of my gaming group has a wiki set up, and we mainly use it for recording campaign ideas, things we will need before we start character creation, info the DM has to pass along to us about the world, and campaign journals for some of us. It works out pretty well

valadil
2010-07-19, 10:38 PM
I use a wiki for notes. It's cool but not as good as I expected. The thing that's weird about wikis for me is how they grow. Something that starts as a paragraph gets expanded on until it demands its own page. But topics that seemed equally important remain single paragraphs. And I have to come up with titles for everything, unless my plots are all named plot1, plot2, etc.

For a campaign I find wikis difficult. It's hard to get the PCs to contribute. The only time I found a wiki useful was when we were rotating through DMs and everyone had to post their contributions to the game world.

Runeclaw
2010-07-21, 08:02 PM
pbworks.com is fantastic for this.

We use one for all our campaigns, with articles on PCs, NPCs, items, locations, organizations, etc. And game summaries - putting a summary of each game, typed up while its fresh in your mind, on the wiki greatly aids memory - we frequently go back to refresh our memories on things.

Venerable
2010-07-22, 12:30 AM
My experiences with campaign wikis is mixed. I've used two, for D&D and Call of Cthulhu campaigns that each ran 30+ sessions.

On the pro side, wikis are a great place to keep track of stuff: campaign history, session notes, loot, XP, maps, NPCs, character sheets, etc. They give players a place to write in-character journals. Also, they can help in scheduling.

On the con side, some people don't grok wiki. These players won't even look at one, much less contribute. Important tip: never assume that what you wrote on a wiki was read by anyone else in your group. :smallannoyed: ("Didn't you see it? It was on the wiki!" gets old fast.) And don't assume that all your players will contribute to a wiki.

The best use of the wiki for my groups was as a repository for session notes. One guy put his notes for each session into the wiki, and it's really useful to be able to go back and refresh one's memory about an old session. Also, two players keep in-character journals, which are fun to read.

As for which wiki to choose, I can't help you. Our wikis were customized and run on local hardware. Easy enough if you're a PHP/Perl/Python/whatever hacker with ssh & CGI privs, not so easy otherwise.

[edit] Another use: two co-DMs in one campaign use a private wiki to bounce story ideas off one another.

subject42
2010-07-22, 06:51 AM
Our DM tried to get our group to use Obsidian portal once. It was largely used for two things after that.


The guy that perpetually lost his character sheet made a wiki version.
The rest of us used it to write incredibly detailed "slashfiction" involving the DM and random pages from the Monster Manual.