what i want from a d&d wiki

I want a system in which my players can keep logs of the adventures. I want them to be in a clear sequence so you can click “next” and “previous” without having to set the links up yourself. I want it to be possible to have multiple summaries. One unbiased log, a per-player (or per-character) log, and maybe others.

I want some pages to be read-only (like house rules) and some pages to be hidden. For example, I don’t want the players to see my notes on the game’s secrets. I would like players to be able to create pages that only they can see, but I want to be able to see them all.

I’d like to structure pages so that any page can include content with the above access controls. I’d like really like parameterized transclusion so I can make many kinds of page look similar to one another.

I like tagging, so I want that, and I love the way that TiddlyWiki does it: when you tag a page with X, you are just saying that the page has a relationship with the page X. You can then click from the tag to the page for X to read about what it is or what the tag means.

That might be it.

I really don’t need much of anything that’s D&D-specific. The fact that some pages are “characters” and some are “locations” is sort of a user-specific layer on top of the generic structured wiki. I think making something D&D-specific is probably more about writing a workflow for using a wiki tool, and that’s fine with me. By not building the RPG logic into the software, I can use it in different ways. For example, Obsidian Portal codes in its assumptions about gaming, so you can’t have one campaign with two parties of PCs.

If I wanted to take this tool and make it something for many campaigns to use, then I’d also want workspaces. A workspace would just be a namespace with default permissions, and would probably represent a campaign. Nested workspaces would make multiple parties easy, but at that point it’s probably overkill. I’m not sure.

I’m going to try installing Wagn, which looks pretty suited to my needs. I’m not certain about one or two parts, but I think that if I get most of what I want, I’ll be satisfied enough to just use that. My experience has been that I’m very spoiled by CPAN, and that installing Wagn is going to be a pain. I’m looking forward to being proven wrong.

Written on July 12, 2009
🏷 dnd
⚔️ rpg
💾 software
🏷 wiki