Organazing Roleplay-Related Stuff in a Wiki

A few weeks ago I talked with my boss about documenting stuff and doing it in a better way with revision control and so on. He asked for ideas and I said a Wiki should do the trick. He told me to look into Wikis and I was exemplary enough to do it in my free time, but I didn't go as far as documenting work related stuff in my free time.

But I wanted to bring more order into my notes about role playing for a long time. I have notes in a dozen of notebooks, I have session records on my hard disk and on the blogs of the game masters and I did a lot of brainstorming on some loose sheets of paper. It's high time to bring all of it together. So I got a topic for my Wiki-project. Since I play a lot oft BoL (Barbarians of Lemuria) I startet a digital "Book of Lemuria".

The pros are:

• having all notes in one place
• being able to search trough all the resources
• being able to link the contents together in some "multidimensional way"
• sharing contents with befriended players in a readable form
• exporting articles in different file formats or even the whole Wiki as an e-book

Still I will further use my notebooks and loose sheets of paper, my pens and pencils. I'm playing Pen and Paper and not files and bytes and I firmly believe, that some degree of chaos enhances creativity. But the Wiki shall become a further arrow in my quiver.

• a Computer
• a Wiki-software (e.g. DokuWiki with MicroApache to make it portible)
• a lot of notes and ideas

After looking around, DokuWiki looked just fine to me. The things I need are possible without the software being to bloated and if I need some extra functions later on, there are a ton of plugins. At this point it is a Wiki of personal notes, so I included the MicroApache as local web server in the download to run it local. After unzipping the folder it is ready to use.

I copied the file "DokuWikiStick" into the public folder of my PC. If I use the personal folder, I have to give rights to the browser, if I want to edit the files there. To start the Wiki just open the run.cmd file. A terminal window pops and tells, that the browser will open the Wiki. After working on or with the Wiki you can close DokuWiki on a Stick by entering any key in the terminal window. This will stop the MicroApache.

When you open the DokuWiki for the first time, it opens the installer. If you want to share it with people who are not supposed to read everything you might want to set up the ACL Access-controll list to give different rights to different people. I didn't do so. Even if I share it with my players, I will trust, that they will not look in my planed adventures.

If you want to publish your Wiki online, you might want to put some thought to the license under which you publish. I also skipped this step at this point of time.

Next you get to the welcome page. There are red links to the pages "Start" and "Sidebar". This means the pages are already planed but not created. Just follow the links, to do so. I opened them in different tabs.

Following the link to the start page, I'm told, that this topic is not created jet. You can create it by pressing the Edit button, filling it with content and save it. I looked through my notes what kind of content I have, brought some structure to it and tried to show it on my start page. It freatures links to:

• Lists of adventures (those I played, I mastered, I plan for the future)
• Characters and Creatures (Player Characters, Non Player Characters, Monsters, ...)
• Lists of Places (Cities, Landscapes, Ruins, ...)
• Rules (I often need, I often forget, House Rules, ...)
• Ideas I get from films, books, ..., that seem somehow useful, but I can't put my finger on how to use them yet

The sidebar can be created in the same way, as the start page and any other page. Since the start page gets crowded soon, I used the sidebar for links to sites I want to find at any time in the fastest possible way.

Links to sites not created yet, are good place holders. You always know, that you wanted to write something about this topic.
Also it is nice to utilize the name spaces. A link is constructed in the following way:

"[[name_space:file_name|Link Text]]"

When you create a page a text file with the file name will be generated and it is put in a the folder with the name of the name space. If the folder doesn't exit yet, it is created. So you can also work quite well with text editors it is easy to find your files. You can safe your pictures in the media folder using a similar folder structure and notation.

As you fill your Wiki with content more and more links turn from red to green (using the standard template) and more and more files and folders are created. Quite the satisfying feeling.

You can create templates for new pages in your name spaces. Just name a text file in the referring folder _template.txt and fill it with the structural elements using an editor. Every character has stats and it makes perfect sense so always list them in a similar order, to find the things you want to know as fast as possible. Templates are a great tool in such cases.

Now you are prepared for the next adventure to master or any other herculean task, that might approach you. Maybe you can now lead your players from a starting scene along any plot hooks they fancy by just following links and refreshing old ideas asap. Sudden inspirations might find a well deserved place alongside small titbits of seemingly useless information, that waits for it opportunity to shine for a long time.

Taking notes, organizing stuff and preparing for new adventures might make a bit more fun now. And fun is the only thing, that really matters. Prepare and document as much or little, as you feel comfortable with and feels right for you. Role playing is a hobby after all...