Programs to organize campaigns

The Brain

Ok, for all those wanting software to organinze your campaign/thoughts the software you are looking for is called "The Brain". http://www.thebrain.com/

The problem I have with most systems is I'm always changing the ways I want to store my information. In different formats, different programs. To link all these together in some sort of accessible fassion is the real trick.

The Brain is sort of like a personal web sever for your computer, but unlike a web server it is much more intuitive to navigate. Basically every link is organized into thoughts. Each thought can be a note, a word document, a image, powerpoint presentation, a text file, pdf, etc... You can link to any file located anywhere on your system, intranet or network pretty much regardless of the format. And each thought can be related to other thoughts. Thus you can create independant campaigns, encounters or adventures, and then link them as needed.

Like said above, I try not to tie my adventures together in any linear fashion, thus when the PC move from one area to another you can quickly navigate to the desired information.

Check it out.

PS: It also has a cool interface.

I don't think that I can test this - but I would be interested in what other people think of this program.

I use MyInfo and find it awesome. I haven't used The Journal or the other PIMs mentioned in the thread, but these are some of the MyInfo features I like and some of the ways I use them:

* Templates for NPCs, places, etc. You just type up your stuff, lay it out, and then tell MyInfo it's a template. Then it's available any time in the menu.

* Copying nodes. I like to create a blank node tree for various things and then copy the whole thing each time I need a new instance of it. For example, I used to have a "Kingdom" tree with nodes for Politics, Art, Archecture, Ruling Agency, etc. Any time related information came to light (in-game or while planning) I'd just go to the appropriate node and add it in. Over time, the tree would slowly flesh out and become a great knowledge base. Whenever I created a new kingdom for my world, I'd just grab the blank node tree, copy it, and re-name it to my Kingdom's name and I had an instant skeleton to work with.

* HTML export. You can export nodes into HTML format and into entire web sites. This is how I created my last campaign web site. You can designate which nodes are non-exportable as well (i.e. so you don't publish GM only information).

* Hyperlinks. As mentioned before in this thread, an easy way to create links to pics, sound files, and other docs.

* Node links. I also like the node links (i.e. shortcuts to other nodes), where you can drop a link to a node in any other node. This lets me organize my main tree by "objects", i.e. NPCs, Locations, Magic Items, etc. Then, when I refer to those objects in my other writing, I just create a shortcut to them.

This helps me centralize info so I'm only updating one copy and everything else links to that. Does that make sense? Probably not, I'm starting to confuse myself.

For example, between each game I create a new node for the upcoming session. i.e. Session #45. Within that, I create nodes for each encounter I have planned. And, within each encounter I'll create shortcuts to the NPCs, critters, and locations involved.

I moved recently and lost my campaign data unfortunately, otherwise I'd just post my data file and quit my rambling. Here's a diagram instead:

+ Locations
...+ Grey Kingdom
......+ Castle Bleak
.........+ Throne Room
.........+ Alchemist's Room
............- description
............- shortcut to Alchemist NPC node
+ NPCs
...+ Alchemist
......- stats
......- description
......- shortcut to Alchemist's Room node
+ Sessions
...+ Session 45
......+ Confrontation with Alchemist
.........- encounter details
.........- shortcut to Alchemist NPC node
.........- shortcut to Alchemist's Room node


I've started using RoleplayingMaster. It's awesome too. It's definitely a gem in the rough, with GUI and documentation still being perfected. But custom HTML reporting (with variables and logic scripting), combined with pre-fab and custom table generators, 3.5 database, and wizards make it a long-term, open-ended D&D tool.


Another thing I discovered recently was MS Word's outline view. If you already have MS Word, check that out.


I also use WeatherMaster. It allows you to generate custom game world calendars and weather charts. Once you set your world up, you can generate weather for years in advance. What I do is generate weather for one year and then re-use it for every other year. The players don't remember and it saves having to shuffle through reams of weather reports as the campaign advances. Just change-up the weather for special times of the year where the players would grow suspicious. i.e. "How come it always rains on harvest day!" http://www.milieusim.com/

The only thing about WeatherMaster, I feel, is that the GUI is backwards. Weather gets 90% of screen real estate, and the campaign log gets 10%. If it were the other way around it would be such a wonderful logging tool! The software already generates weather reports for different times of the day and remembers it in your campaign database. Being able to record IC and OOC events along with this would make it an awesome tool.


I think RoleplayingMaster's outline tool, crunchy bits tools, and mappping tool are going to take care of my design tasks from now on. What I need now is a time management tool. Something like WeatherMaster that lets me create a custom calendar to log past, present (in-game), and future events in it. Anyone know of any good game blog software that lets you create custom calendars to suit your game world's calendar to synch your logs to?

So far I have tried:

GSNotes:

• Too propriatory
• Can not export to anything other than GSNote format. Been burnt that way too many times...

Jreepad:

• Pre alpha software.
• Only works with plain text note, no linking

MyInfo:

• Propriatory format
• Can import files, but only 1 at a time
• Moving text between nodes looses all of the formatting information.
• Internal links to other nodes appear as "file::Bless#7" to link to a node called "Bless" which is just ugly.
• Export to HTML looses all of the link information and just displays the text "file::Bless#7" with no link...

Treepad

• Propriatory format
• Good import facility
• HTML import ignores stylesheets
• Moving data between nodes is easy
• Good hyper linking facilities
• Export to HTML refers to all hyperlinks as "nodeid://317" rather than converting them to href links
• Importing HTML that has been exported does not keep the "nodeid://317" link elements.
• Adding a link turns html into rtf.

The Journal

• Proriatory format
• no way to export to any other format.

What I am looking for is a way to have the whole of the SRD plus any other class / feat/ spell information I haev in one easily searched place.

Having everything as one big 2000 page doc file is a pain and I have never found a HTML system that is searchable over multiple files.

what I am looking for are the following features:

• Ability to import data from HTML files and keep the formatting (this includes stylesheets
• Ability to create a new html node from a stylesheet and template
• Ability to search over all of the nodes.
• Ability to link to nodes
• Ability to dump the whole lot as a set of HTML pages (including stylesheets and links)
• Abiltiy to move information around between nodes and not loose information (i.e. move the Bless spell from the SpellsA-B node into it's own node easily and retain formatting).
• Abiltiy to drag and drop selected text into a new node
• And most importantly: Auto hyper linking. I want any occurance of the word "bless" to be linked to the node "bless".

Treepad is close but it does not satisfy the stylesheet/template requirements and it handles links badly. If it did not convert html to rtf when I added a link I would consider writing some perl to add the links in for me

frugal said:

The Journal

• Proriatory format
• no way to export to any other format.

Click to expand...

I've found that The Journal is able to export the following types of files: txt, rtf, htm, and jnx (its native format) and import txt, rtf, and jnx. It also offers batch import of these file formats as well as synchronizing journal files (i.e. only imported if a newer entry). Batch export is well served also: one can export by date, selected entries or selected categories. The exported data can be in one single file, a file for each category, or a file for each entry - so there's quite a degree of flexibility.


Like another poster mentioned, I'd love to hear on more tips in using these types of PIMs to manage D&D sessions. I did try using DM Genie for a while (my favourite in the current crop of D&D game managers) but I didn't feel as in control as I'd like (and I missed rolling all those dice!). Johnn Four had a few excellent articles on this subject at www.roleplayingtips.com but I'd love to hear more (I'm greedy, what can i say? )


Regards


Wombatmaster

Has anyone used MS OneNote yet or even seen it, I have only read about it? Still the cost is high but I have a feeling that it will replace MS Works as default MS application on a PC/laptop.

wombatmaster said:

I've found that The Journal is able to export the following types of files: txt, rtf, htm, and jnx (its native format) and import txt, rtf, and jnx. It also offers batch import of these file formats as well as synchronizing journal files (i.e. only imported if a newer entry). Batch export is well served also: one can export by date, selected entries or selected categories. The exported data can be in one single file, a file for each category, or a file for each entry - so there's quite a degree of flexibility.

Click to expand...

Are you are indeed right. Under "Entries" where I was not expecting it...

Nope, still broken It will export to HTML, but if you try to use '\' as the path separator it hangs the program and when you do give up and use '-' as the path separator so every file will be in the same directory all of the links are broken: They all get exported as: journal:Notebook[SpellsA-B.rtf\Bane] rather than a http: link.

Now I could cope with this using a bit of perl to rewrite the links after I exported it. I could even cope with it with a bit of perl to add new links in automatically. However

• You can not import HTML back into the journal program, only TXT, RTf and Journal files.
• If you move a node from one location in the tree to another loction in the tree it does not update any links pointing to the node... So after you do a move all of the links are broken

wombatmaster said:

Like another poster mentioned, I'd love to hear on more tips in using these types of PIMs to manage D&D sessions. I did try using DM Genie for a while (my favourite in the current crop of D&D game managers) but I didn't feel as in control as I'd like (and I missed rolling all those dice!). Johnn Four had a few excellent articles on this subject at www.roleplayingtips.com but I'd love to hear more (I'm greedy, what can i say? )

Click to expand...

I shall have a look.

The more I think about it the more I feel the need for an auto linking feature: when a node is displayed it searches for any non linked word(s) that are the same as a node name and then dynamically inserts a link to that node. Just having the name of an NPC in the text would automatically cerate a link to the NPCs node. If you do it dynamically then you can mention the NPC, then create a node for him, then the next time you look at the node that mentioned him there would be a link already there for you.

All of the PIM systems are very limited by how you can move between the nodes. I can do most of what they do just with a series of HTML files in a directory structure.

Well, I have large amounts of egg on my face

I did some more exploration with TreePad and it turns out that there are 2 kinds of tree pad files. by default it stores the nodes as RTF, but if you select the "htlhjt" file kind instead of the "hjt" file kind when you create the project all of the information is stored as HTML in the file.

I also found out what I was doing wrong with the export. If you export the subtree as a series of HTML files the links are not present. If you export the subtree to a "website" then it creates all of the same files (plus a couple of extra ones) but all of the links work fine....

The only wrinkle is that for some reason with the HTML projects you can not include images, but with the RTF ones you can (and you can export the images as part of the HTML export... Do I want to go a little bit further and parse RTF to do my automatic link insertion...

anyway I think I am going to have to get buy a full copy of TreePad. $40 is abuot £25 at the moment so that is not very expensive at all.

Hand of Evil said:

Has anyone used MS OneNote yet or even seen it, I have only read about it? Still the cost is high but I have a feeling that it will replace MS Works as default MS application on a PC/laptop.

Click to expand...

It's best when used with a TabletPC, which l do use. However I'm not a big fan of the program. I have however, found that using a TabletPC to GM a game is absolutely invaluable.

Interesting discussion.

I use DM's Familiar (since I wrote it). It has a tree view and notes - I use a 3rd party tool to do it and I'm not overly happy with it. It's not as powerful as some of these tools you guys are mentioning. But, I really like the combat manager and the reference library in DMF. They are worth more to me than the tree and my tree can is integrated with that stuff which is vital.

Glancing at all of these programs mentioned, they are all stand-alone programs near as I can tell. Anyone know a good tool like this that can be incorporated into other programs (COM object, ActiveX control, etc.)?