Power2ool has gone dark

[Nemesis Destiny]

I've gotten quite used to using the wonderful resource, known as power2ool, to run and play in 4e games. Unfortunately, the web-based application at www.power2ool.com has gone dark. I keep getting a "connection refused" error, as does everyone in my local group.

The guy responsible has not responded to email in basically forever, and the twitter update feed's last post was in May of 2012, so this was not entirely unexpected, but it still sucks. I had a lot of campaign notes and custom stuff in there that is now basically gone forever.

Anyone else have any insight?

 

[Kelvor Ravenstar]

NOOOO!!!!

Checked myself, server gone. And that's so much of game record gone in monsters, I guess I'll have to move to Word formatting now (LAME!).
It is not unexpected though, as you say he never responded to my emails of suggestion fixes.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yeah, LONG ago I set up my own XWiki-based system to at least keep all my own campaign notes and whatnot. That way when these places go down, I still have all of that. It would SUCK to lose 10 years almost worth of setting stuff.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

Thankfully, I kept detailed notes about what happened during games in a campaign calendar on google docs, so none of the results of gaming sessions were actually lost, only the DM prep side of things. Still a heavy blow, but not a fatal one. If google docs goes dark one day, I'll eat my hat.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Thankfully, I kept detailed notes about what happened during games in a campaign calendar on google docs, so none of the results of gaming sessions were actually lost, only the DM prep side of things. Still a heavy blow, but not a fatal one. If google docs goes dark one day, I'll eat my hat.

Yeah, though I mirror everything that I have on GDocs. Its VERY handy. What I do is upload all my PDFs there, and use it to take notes. Then I can go back and copy the text into my XWiki and organize it so that each time anything happens more lore accrues to the campaign setting. Its gotten massive. Back before computers it was up to about 10 three-ring binders. MOST of that got entered in the XWiki, though thankfully a lot of stuff was pretty obsolete.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

I started using a wordpress blog to keep track of that stuff in a reference-like format, but I don't get to updating it often enough, unfortunately. I originally wanted a wiki, but hadn't found a suitable one. I'd be interested in the details of your setup...

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I started using a wordpress blog to keep track of that stuff in a reference-like format, but I don't get to updating it often enough, unfortunately. I originally wanted a wiki, but hadn't found a suitable one. I'd be interested in the details of your setup...

Well, if you don't mind hacking around...

First I used TWiki, which is very nice in some ways, but a lot of work to use. Then I decided to try out XWiki, which was able to parse and injest TWiki pages (with a little work). So I started using that. XWiki can be kinda clunky too though, it has a lot of cruft that isn't really super useful. OTOH it can also do a few clever things.

You could of course use other things. WordPress is a little more flexible, but it lacks the 'wiki features' that make editing pretty quick.

My problem now is that XWiki is kind of a pig and won't run on an AWS micro instance well enough. So its now sitting on my hard drive awaiting a couple hours to turn it into a docker image. Then I can at least run it locally. Maybe I can work out some sort of outside access without TOO much trouble. I expect my ISP won't open port 80, but i can always go for some other port... sigh.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

I forgot that you're quite technically handy (moreso than I).

That's... a fair bit more 'hacking around' than I'm prepared to do, unless it's easier than it sounds, haha.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I forgot that you're quite technically handy (moreso than I).

That's... a fair bit more 'hacking around' than I'm prepared to do, unless it's easier than it sounds, haha.

Yeah, its probably a bit more than your average person would do. I don't really recommend it, though its worked out OK for me. MediaWiki would be a possible choice I guess. Never really used it myself, but its pretty common. Guessing its not the hardest thing to set up.

 

[Gilladian]

I've used PBwiki for years (now pbworks). It is still free for a smaller wiki: I think my massive thing is grandfathered in... It's much simpler to use than the hack AA is using. Obsidian portal is another good tool, tho not free.