Homebrew World Shared Online

[el-remmen]

I'll be sure to check in on your progress.

 

[el-remmen]

If you can wait until 4E, sure thing! Until then, I'm tinkering and planning stuff!

Cheers, LT.

Patience is my middle name.

 

[jdrakeh]

I like the setting material, though I think that the Blogspot GUI looks far better than the Wikispaces set-up in terms of not making my eyes bleed. I think that you had it right the first time Wikis are great in terms of facilitating interaction, though in terms of pleasing aesthetics and facilitating easy printing/offline access, they're crap.

I would advise that you simply take a quickie course in CSS and then set up your own webpage and forums. This way you get interaction and aesthetics, as well as easy to print pages. You'll lose some of the hyperlinked functionality of wiki, though to be fair, this is the main draw of such an interface and I rarely see gaming sites make use of it.

Of course, that's just me -- it is based on actual experience of using a wiki for my own site, however. I used PBWiki and TiddlyWiki for about six months each. I found that the vast majority of visitors (including my players) wanted an easy to print page and full-function forums, rather than lots of hyperlinks and crippled wiki discussion areas.

 

[Ry]

I've played around a lot with different formats, PBWikis, hosted wikis, blogs, etc.

Tying in with what James said, I find wikis tend to grow a lot of stubs (very short articles) and material like this benefits a lot from a Monster Manual - style presentation, i.e. "Here's my cool idea, it's developed enough to require a full page but brief enough to fit on a full page."

That's a very readable, visitor-friendly format, which is important because you want to put the cool stuff in without requiring the reader to invest a lot of time into understanding why your setting is cool.

 

[el-remmen]

. I found that the vast majority of visitors (including my players) wanted an easy to print page and full-function forums, rather than lots of hyperlinks and crippled wiki discussion areas.

I don't know about the wikis you tried, but wikispaces has a "print view" function.

 

[jdrakeh]

I don't know about the wikis you tried, but wikispaces has a "print view" function.

Sure. Lots of apps have a "print screen" function but rarely (if ever) does the output look anywhere near as good as a document that is actually formatted for printing (something that no wiki is, to the best of my knowledge).

 

[Altalazar]

Sure. Lots of apps have a "print screen" function but rarely (if ever) does the output look anywhere near as good as a document that is actually formatted for printing (something that no wiki is, to the best of my knowledge).

I'm sure that's true, but then, if one REALLY wanted to, one could make a nicely formatted word document and post it. As it is, I have a lot of material already nicely formatted in word documents and I just pasted them in (with adjustments, ongoing) to the wiki - so printing was never the issue - I can print all of my material out very nicely - and I have and I handed it out to players like that, but it was not dynamic that way.

I much prefer the wiki - and if anyone wants a printout, there are always the word documents.

 

[jdrakeh]

I much prefer the wiki - and if anyone wants a printout, there are always the word documents.

Hey, if you post word documents, that solves the problem. Thing is, for some reason, 98% of the setting/campaign wikis put there are wiki-only without any print-friendly options. Look at the RPGnet Wiki's free setting collection, for example.

At any rate, all I know is that I got literally dozens of complaints about the TiddlyWiki and PBWiki interfaces that I fooled around with. Multiple requests were made for a plain HTML/CSS frontend with linked PDFs for printing and forums for discussions.

 

[Altalazar]

I may have to post word documents, though I wasn't planning on it. I mean, I don't really see much need for it for most of the entries. Except for the deities - that could be useful for players who want to print it.

Oh, and I just wanted to mention that I have set it up almost completely now - in the sense that everything I had down on paper somewhere is pretty much on the site now, with the exception of some handwritten notes.

There are additional details I have only in my head that probably exceed by far what is already there, and I'll work on adding that next.

But basically, the skeleton and a good chunk of the flesh is there now, at least for the core areas I've used (and use) for my campaigns.

I'd be curious to hear any feedback or if anyone besides me decides to use this.

 

[Ry]

Hmm...

Well, looking at the Wiki I think is a difficult prospect for someone who isn't at your campaign: Right away we get into facts and you get the sense that to find the "zing" you really have to read every article and take notes.

If you're amenable to a suggestion, what about changing that tiny blurb on the front page to 500 words on why this world is special? What's the pitch? What makes it different?

I say 500 words because that's enough to make it extremely readable to first timers and it challenges the writer to put in only the very best stuff.