RSS Facebook Twitter Email
Community / Forums / Pathfinder / Pathfinder First Edition / Advice

Anyone ever made a wiki for their game?

Advice

Search Thread

Search this Thread:

As above just wondering if there was any basic advice etc.?

I have a wiki for my game, but I only just started it so unfortunately I have no advice.

Critical role has a wiki.

A wiki can be an awesome way to get players involved in the setting. I wanted to do a prequel for a Kingmaker game and decided to put up a Wiki for the prequel (which is set in Brevoy). Needless to say, I got carried away... but the players really appreciate it. Their reading of it shows in all the interactions they have. Political intrigue has played an appropriately big part in our game already!

kingwiki.wilmann.com

Check it out if you'd like to see what we're up to!

The main categories you see on the main page all have an actual wiki category associated with it, and the pages are all categorized appropriately to make it easy for the players to find and for navigating through it all .

I haven't yet found a way I like for not having everything linked to from the front page. Not sure if I need to at this stage, but as it grows, I'll need to figure that out.

Not a Wiki, but we have a google drive with a quest log, npcs encountered, maps, lists of items found, sold, purchased, and desired, everybody's character sheet, and session logs. We do play online, so a lot of information is easy to extract and make all those convenient documents.

It helps us a lot, but what exactly is needed varies per campaign.

Let your players edit stuff so the work isn't all on you.

In the part of the world where I'm living, wiki is actually used quite a lot for PF and PFS-purposes. I have been using it years with my friends to run some PF campaigns. Fairly versatile board, that, depending on your players, can also offer a venue to do some play-by-posting between sessions. Have found it very useful.

The best advice I can give is to use the linking from and between pages excessively. I don't think you can overdo it. As already mentioned, some thought should be put to organization, as there are many ways data from a campaign can be sub-categorized. If you would be the main admin of your campaign wiki, then of course you would have a final say on this, but you could also first thought about a suggestion how you would like the page organized, then present it to players and then maybe change he plan accordingly. Things will work more smoothly, if everybody shares the same logic (since basically everybody should have the rights to edit and add pages, if desired).

I guess it varies based on wiki, but here we don't have full admin rights, so we can't delete pages.This also means, that if pages are created under certain group, they can't be moved, only duplicated to the new location. In that case it's a good idea consider structuring extra carefully *beforehand*, because later changing will require you duplicating the page already existing. Obviously an extensive amount of duplicates is not desirable. But as said, this is only of consideration, if you can't delete pages.

If you want to check, our wiki is here, although I doubt you'd find it very useful because of the language barrier.
Wilmannator wrote:
I haven't yet found a way I like for not having everything linked to from the front page. Not sure if I need to at this stage, but as it grows, I'll need to figure that out.

Impressive! I wish had the software do do this with my set-up. It would make it a lot easier to find needles in the haystack.

Wilmannator wrote:

A wiki can be an awesome way to get players involved in the setting. I wanted to do a prequel for a Kingmaker game and decided to put up a Wiki for the prequel (which is set in Brevoy). Needless to say, I got carried away... but the players really appreciate it. Their reading of it shows in all the interactions they have. Political intrigue has played an appropriately big part in our game already!

kingwiki.wilmann.com

Check it out if you'd like to see what we're up to!

The main categories you see on the main page all have an actual wiki category associated with it, and the pages are all categorized appropriately to make it easy for the players to find and for navigating through it all .

I haven't yet found a way I like for not having everything linked to from the front page. Not sure if I need to at this stage, but as it grows, I'll need to figure that out.

From a technical point of view, did you program this yourself or are there (online) tools one could use?

I think your wiki is awesome btw :-)

My group has used google drive/docs for a while now, and it does the trick. Drive has the added advantage of giving my group a place to access my PDFs, right alongside campaign information.
Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

Never, but I like the idea. The campaign I'd use it for is in hiatus for a while, so I have time to set one up.

I use Wikidpad for all of mine. It's extremely lightweight and functions as a wikiable notepad.

Thanks for the info all.

My campaign is sandbox style, but set in Magnimar primarily. I keep adding new plot, villains, allies, etc. and I'm losing track. My intent is to use this wiki to allow my players (and myself) a quick access to info and allow us to have persistent notes. That way continuity will be maintained.

I'll look through your various links,

TY
Wilmannator wrote:

A wiki can be an awesome way to get players involved in the setting. I wanted to do a prequel for a Kingmaker game and decided to put up a Wiki for the prequel (which is set in Brevoy). Needless to say, I got carried away... but the players really appreciate it. Their reading of it shows in all the interactions they have. Political intrigue has played an appropriately big part in our game already!

kingwiki.wilmann.com

Check it out if you'd like to see what we're up to!

The main categories you see on the main page all have an actual wiki category associated with it, and the pages are all categorized appropriately to make it easy for the players to find and for navigating through it all .

I haven't yet found a way I like for not having everything linked to from the front page. Not sure if I need to at this stage, but as it grows, I'll need to figure that out.

Actually this is just the format I'm looking for.

What Wiki host are you using? I'm not familiar with Kingwiki
Shadow Lodge

My group has had three, all on wikia.

I use RealmWorks, which is not free but contains tons of extra functions which makes it easier for me to maintain than a wiki. Most importantly, players can't see things there until I reveal them, so I can put all my game notes there in an organized format including things the players don't know yet or might never know (like NPC stats). Then I just reveal things rather than having to write them up or transfer to a wiki after every session.

The main trick I find with the wikis is making sure they are kept up-to-date. It is a bit of extra work in the post-session write up and easy to fall behind on. If you are willing to take on that work yourself, great. Otherwise make sure you have at least one or two players with the time and inclination to do it for you.

Categories are also very useful. I tend to like tagging things with 2-3 categories, one coming from the set of NPC/Country/Settlement/Landmark/Item/Organization/Event and others representing regions or adventure arcs. If you don't want to link to every topic on the front page consider linking to all categories so players can easily navigate to the list of NPCs, or list of things associated with a particular region or adventure.
2 people marked this as a favorite.

I made one back in the late nineties before wiki was a thing and was just really disturbed to find out it's still there.

Edit: Sorry, back on point.

I think wikis are a fantastic player and DM resource. One thing I'd really recommend if you can is to get any interested players involved in creating and maintaining the wiki, kind of like keeping a campaign journal.

Oftentimes as a player, I take copious amounts of notes, and as a fairly creative/writer-type (as many of us are), I wouldn't hesitate if my GM asked me to pop into a group-managed wiki now and then to import my notes.

Edit edit: Gods, it's like traveling back in time. You won't believe this, kids, but that horrible mess up there is what the whole internet used to look like.
Weirdo wrote:
I use RealmWorks, which is not free but contains tons of extra functions which makes it easier for me to maintain than a wiki. Most importantly, players can't see things there until I reveal them, so I can put all my game notes there in an organized format including things the players don't know yet or might never know (like NPC stats). Then I just reveal things rather than having to write them up or transfer to a wiki after every session

Oo, this did look nice. Thanks for bringing it to my notice!

Weirdo wrote:
The main trick I find with the wikis is making sure they are kept up-to-date. It is a bit of extra work in the post-session write up and easy to fall behind on. If you are willing to take on that work yourself, great. Otherwise make sure you have at least one or two players with the time and inclination to do it for you.

This is a very good point. Then again, the burden also depends on what kind and what depth of information you want to store to wiki. Of the several PF campaigns that are running in our wiki atm, I think only my and one run by my friend are recording the session events. Much more common is providing background information of the world, logging the loot inventory, PC's character sheets and the NPC's met during adventures. I *know* this is precisely because writing the session logs is not something you're very keen on after first having prepared and then run the session...It's good if some responsibility can be shared also by players. I haven't tried it yet, but am considering next time giving the session logs to be written by the players, in turns, if no one is particularly interested. But basically, it all really depends on what you agree as a group about the acceptable level of information in wiki.

Regarding Kingwiki (my personal wiki, linked above), what I'm using is MediaWiki, hosted on my own servers at my own domain. Sorry, no instances going for others!

There are places out there that do free Wiki hosting, so you should be able to set one up there if you like. Google is your friend, but this one is pretty decent (and free).

meta.miraheze.org

Better than Wikia, IMO, because Wikia ads drive me crazy.

I also second Brew Bird regarding Google Drive. For disseminating hand outs (using Docs or the upload functionality), interactive maps (using Draw), surveying the group (with Forms) and running our Kingdom spreadsheet (on Google Sheets)... man, it's invaluable.

MediaWiki is powerful, but potentially overkill for most campaigns and requires either a fair amount of technical knowledge to setup, maintain, and customize, or a provider with decent support. (And I say this as an admin for PathfinderWiki, which runs on MediaWiki.) Sandstorm is an easy way to stand up a MediaWiki instance, but configuring and theming the wiki is still a labor-intensive experience. ShoutWiki is another free/ad-supported MediaWiki provider with good support, but doesn't have a the intuitive visualeditor option that Miraheze has.

Google Sites (which d20pfsrd uses) has a more intuitive editor than MediaWiki and better integration with Drive and Docs.

If you're willing to deal with GitHub, are already familiar with git, or prefer Markdown, you can also use a GitHub repo to store campaign files and the repo's built-in wiki.

Note that all of these providers (and Paizo) will have a problem with you if they find out you're using copyrighted images not allowed under the Community Use Policy. PathfinderWiki tracks a lot of CUP-licensed or freely licensed artwork and is a decent source if you're looking for allowed art.

Everyone thank you all very much for your suggestions. I have my homework cut out for me.

I do write session notes and I would like a place to keep them (currently transmitting via a FB group) but I really need the wiki just to keep track of the volume of NPC's, places, and things my players are coming across. This is a homebrew sandbox that is set in Golarion (specifically Magnimar) and has been going on for half a year now (we play bi-weekly) so they've encountered a lot and my notes are becoming impossible to navigate. I used to have such a steel trap that that wasn't a problem, but now so much fantasy (and so much reality) is fighting for space that I'm forgetting characters names and that is unacceptable to me.

I feel like a wiki is going to help a lot.
It'll be labor intensive at first but once it's up and I grant my players access they'll help maintain it.

Again I feel very grateful and very well informed from this discussion. Thank you all.
Garrett Guillotte wrote:


Note that all of these providers (and Paizo) will have a problem with you if they find out you're using copyrighted images not allowed under the Community Use Policy. PathfinderWiki tracks a lot of CUP-licensed or freely licensed artwork and is a decent source if you're looking for allowed art.

Thank you for the link.

I don't intend to post any artwork not done by myself, my wife, or my friend Sarah. Most of the NPC's my players interact with are of my own devising and on the occasion that they meet someone there is official art for I will just show them that picture from my hard copy. (I own Magnimar: City of Monuments, RotRL, and Shattered Star)
Community / Forums / Pathfinder / Pathfinder First Edition / Advice / Anyone ever made a wiki for their game? All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.
Recent threads in Advice