Programs to organize campaigns

[barsoomcore]

As a cautionary tale, let me warn everyone away from organizing apps that use proprietary formats.

I've used a couple and I've got burned twice. Propietary binary formats are bad for this kind of work. If something goes wrong and your program is hosed, all your data is lost.

Let me say that again:

ALL YOUR DATA IS LOST

If you haven't experienced this, you don't know what pain is. I will never, never use a program that stores information in any sort of binary format ever again.

Plain text is best -- you can have HTML or XML or whatever. RTF is not bad. Anything more complicated than that and forget about it.

Don't find out the hard way. Your campaign data is precious and you need constant access to it. Consider what might happen if that neat little program suddenly went kablooie and the company that made it went bankrupt three weeks ago. Tears, tears of hot blood I tell you.

Tears of hot blood.

Okay, I'm still bitter.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

Heh, you should have heard me scream when my aging Amiga 500 died! All my game info was on floppies for a machine who's manufacturer had gone out out of business years ago...

I still miss that machine.

The Auld Grump

 

[frugal]

Plain text is best -- you can have HTML or XML or whatever. RTF is not bad. Anything more complicated than that and forget about it.

That is another good point about Treepad, the data is in plain text and there is even a document detailing the structure of the file. Plus you can dump the whole lot to HTML if you so desire.

I managed to write a little java app that read in a treepad file into a nicely structured tree in 150 lines of code in about 30 minutes.

 

[rob_nz]

These are all items I would really like in a good adventure organizer program. The ability to set up auto-hyperlinking would be a lifesaver. It would be great to do a one time set-up for each NPC's name and thereafter everytime you type that name, you would get a link to the NPC's statblock and writeup. The HTML nodes would be great also, as I would like to create image maps within my actual adventure maps so that when you click on a hot spot it would take you right to the node where that locations write-up, encounter, etc. is located.

I like the idea of a non-proprietary format, so that all rtf or html files within the program could be reused in separate programs. Although I believe a good adventure organizer program would need to include its own rtf and html editor as well as the integrated browser for viewing the html nodes. And above all, a simple, fast, and clean intuitive interface is a must.

I use DM Genie. It is a full blown Campaign manager like RPM or DMF; but pretty cheap.

It has almost all of the above, including treeviews, hyperlinks, RTF output, html character sheets, data from the whole SRD, combat manager, feat scripting, map hotspots, random encounters....and a really friendly developer and great community.

Not to mention it's only $29.95

You can get a 60 day trial for free from www.dmgenie.com

 

[evildmguy]

Heh, you should have heard me scream when my aging Amiga 500 died! All my game info was on floppies for a machine who's manufacturer had gone out out of business years ago...

I still miss that machine.

The Auld Grump

I am with you on that one! I really wanted to buy the 3000 when my 500 died. However, I did the research and seeing that it was only in use on the coasts, I am in the midwest, and in Europe, and I went IBM clone.

I really miss how sweet that computer was. Ah, the good old days!

Thanks for the memories! Have a good one!

edg

 

[MaxKaladin]

Well, I've tried Treepad (Business Edition) and its been the best one I've tried so far. I'm still not completely happy with it but I like it better than GSNotes.

I'm having some interface issues with it. For instance, I cut and pasted a table from GSNotes into Treepad and it ran off the right side of the screen, but no horizontal scrollbar appeared and I couldn't find any way to get over to move the right end. Perhaps there is a properties screen that will let me manually edit the size of the table but I really can't understand why it didn't just give me a scrollbar.

One other thing I've noticed is that it doesn't seem to reproduce webpages quite as well as GSNotes did. One of the things I want to do with it is copy in webpages and parts of webpages as a way of keeping track of things I looked up on the web for my campaign. It does this fine except they don't seem to look quite the same. I'll have to try saving in the html format it has instead of the "regular" treepad format and see how that works.

I also can't find a way to edit the toolbars. I'd like to add a command to one of the toolbars, which GSNotes let me do but Treepad won't. In general, I find a number of things in both programs that don't really function intitively (which is unusual as I generally find most applications pretty intuitive).

Treepad wins mostly because it has a more "open" format. That is important for the reasons barsoomcore mentions above. It will let me get my data out more easily even without the program. That's important. I also find it seems to work a bit better than GSNotes in some ways and is a bit less annoying in the quirks of its interface.

I'm still open to other options though. I haven't found a program I'm completely happy with yet.

 

[GentleGiant]

As a cautionary tale, let me warn everyone away from organizing apps that use proprietary formats.

I've used a couple and I've got burned twice. Propietary binary formats are bad for this kind of work. If something goes wrong and your program is hosed, all your data is lost.

Let me say that again:

ALL YOUR DATA IS LOST

If you haven't experienced this, you don't know what pain is. I will never, never use a program that stores information in any sort of binary format ever again.

Plain text is best -- you can have HTML or XML or whatever. RTF is not bad. Anything more complicated than that and forget about it.

Don't find out the hard way. Your campaign data is precious and you need constant access to it. Consider what might happen if that neat little program suddenly went kablooie and the company that made it went bankrupt three weeks ago. Tears, tears of hot blood I tell you.

Tears of hot blood.

Okay, I'm still bitter.

A question for barsoomcore. How does a program go "kablooie" or become "hosed" and thus become beyond repair?
If you have a program installed, let's take GSNotes as an example since it uses a proprietary format, and say a virus infects the program and screws up some of the program files. What do you do? I remove the virus, remove the entire program and re-install it. I always keep the installation files separate from my running programs (usually backed up on a CD). That way I can always re-install any programs if necessary (also handy if you have to re-install your OS). It doesn't matter if the original owners/makers of a given program goes bye-bye, you still have all you need to re-install the program again.
Since the actual information files are separate files (.gso in this case) they shouldn't be affected by any problems with the program proper. So no data is lost.
Of course, you can lose the .gso files themselves e.g. due to bad sectors on your harddrive, but neither plain text nor html files are exempt from such happenstances either.
Granted, if a program ONLY uses plain text or html, then you have the option of opening those files up in other programs, but most of the programs mentioned in this thread can export to .txt or .html files.

On to the rest of you guys (gals?).
It would be really nifty if those of you who have organized your campaign(s) using various programs could put up some screen shots of various pages/trees/configurations/templates/etc. that you use. That would make it easier to gain a better insight into how the various programs can be used when organizing a campaign. Some have already done so, but it would be nifty if more different programs were represented or even the same programs if someone has done it differently than what has already been shown.
What say you? Anyone willing to share?

 

[Tanager]

Another type of program that I find useful, especially in the development phase, is mind-mapping software. It's a great way to visually brainstorm ideas and develop links between them. It gives a greater dimensional representation of info as compared to the more traditional hierarchal view.

MindManager (commercial)
FreeMind (freeware)

Regards

Wombatmaster

Big Mind Manager user here, thanks to my boss. Its got its quirks though. Big bonuses with it though are its ability to export to and import (and map from) MS Word docs and its direct html export, while lackluster in terms of graphic design, is wonderfully useful.

I'm just waiting for it to read from and export to XML.

 

[Mystery Man]

A question for barsoomcore. How does a program go "kablooie" or become "hosed" and thus become beyond repair?

At the drop off hat, at the whim of the gods at any given time without any warning whatsoever.

I too have shed those "tears of hot blood" . which is why I make backups of the backups and beep them on a different machine saved in different formats.
Oh yes, burn me once....

 

[Wrathamon]

Well lets say you want to upgrade your campaign to a new program...

having it in a more open format would let you switch programs no?


My question is on Output... do these programs print out easily?

I want to print parts of my campaign out as handouts easily. Do these programs have good page layout tools?

What if I wanted to make my campaign a website... will I have to redo a lot of the work?