Starting on a Wiki?

[earwig]

Hey all.  I'm putting together my first RPG, and I wanted to design the whole thing as a Wiki first.  The pages would be locked at first, until I hash out everything to bring the game into existence.  However, my game deals with a sort of time travel-See my post System with Changing Skills- and I thought that once the game system and background is complete, that by opening up the section of the wiki dealing with various times and places in Earths history, players would be able to add any source material, adventure hooks, scenerios, etc. dealing with those settings.  The biggest trouble with playing a game concerning any kind of time travel is that a lot of us just aren't up on our history and those of thus that are, usually are focused on one or two particular areas in particular.  This way, endless source material could be added, modified, and changed by the players of the game. 

Has any one else designed something in this manner (I'm sure I'm not the first)?  I have seen couple of Wiki RPGs out there, but the games that I saw were entirely collaborative.   My goal at this time is to design the game myself, and then open up the time period/location source material so that GMs have a large pool of information to pull from all in one place. 

I know this might belong in the publishing forum, but this is my first attempt at creating a game, and I'm not really in the position of worrying a whole lot about Publishing at this moment.  I need to get the game together first.   I'm just looking to see if perhaps I am barking up the wrong tree or if this more common that I realize, or if anyone has any warnings or advice on such matters.

Thanks in advance for anything you can pass along!

[Adam Riemenschneider]

I'm sorry to say that I don't have any advice to add. I just wanted to let you know that I've had a wiki idea on the brain as well. Also, I was thinking along the same lines, in that I conceived the wiki as being a place where others can add world/background/setting information (based, in part, on how WOD treated their "city/setting" books).

Personally, I think that opening up such kinds of "open source" world design for your world *timeline* will get pretty tricky, especially as more and more layers get added. You're going to have a lot of "fun" figuring out ways to deal with causality conflicts.

At any rate, I'd be interested to see how your wiki idea develops. Please keep me posted!

-a-

[earwig]

Actually as far as people adding source to timelines go, I will have easier than most.  In a nutshell, the characters are Fragments.  Outside of conventional time and space a soul shatters, creating Fragments.  These Fragments have no knowledge or emotion, and travel through time and space (relative to earth) gaining and sacraficing both.  When they travel through time and space they can only enter the space/time continuum by each taking on a host (much like possession).  The only limitation on the host is that all the hosts must have some emotional tie to one another (due to each fragment is still part of a single, but shattered, soul.  From this host, they are able to pull emotions and knowledge to carry with them to the next host.  If they run out of "room" they can sacrafice knowledge in order to "make room" for the new knowledge.  There's a lot more to it, if you're interested read my other post, but the point is that the Fragments do not always have COMPLETE control of their hosts, who have no idea that a Fragment is along for the ride.  (Ever done something and later wondered, "What was I thinking?" Might have had a Fragment riding along with you who gained control.)  So any number of Fragments may be visiting at any given time or place.  Overall, the Fragments are primarily concerned with the other Fragments from their Whole Soul.  So whatever a Fragment may do in Chicago in 1812 will not entirely effect the game world,  If the GM would like to play around with the idea of Fragments being the cause of signifigant events (The Great Chicago Fire, Assasination of Ceasar, or the creation of Reality Television) he or she may do so, but would have to be careful that history follows its proper timeline without forcing the player's hand (remember the Fragments have no concept or knowledge of History in the linear fashion as we percieve it).  There was a great episode of Quantum Leap where Sam found himself inside of Lee Harvey Oswald, but ultimately learned very little about the Kennedy Assasination and, though he tried, was not able to prevent it.  This would be a lot of work on an extremely carefull GM, but it could be done.  But for the most part, the game is about the stories of the common folks, the ones you never read about in the history books.

[Meadslosh]

A wiki is an excellent idea in that it will get you to focus on "one thing at a time" and on keeping things in a clear format.

I myself prefer to work in a notebook when I have ideas, as I find it more comfortable to switch between physical pages than web pages or tabs.

The one thing I think you need to consider is that you can have a permanently locked wiki for the core rules and an open wiki for adventure seeds, homebrew rules, and assorted miscellaneous knick-knacks.

Ultimately, my advice to you is don't use a wiki just because wikis are the "in" thing to do. Use a wiki because you believe it will help you to organize and fulfill all of your goals for the project, or don't use a wiki because you know that you'll not be able to properly kick ideas around by constantly having to update the site.

As a big fan of Quantum Leap, I'd like also to remind you that Sam's purpose when he became Oswald was not to prevent the assassination of JFK. It was to prevent Jacqueline Kennedy from accidentally being shot in the process, which is why he did a sudden leap into the secret service agent who has become famous for leaping onto the vehicle. Of course, you have already mentioned that Fragments cannot know how history was meant to proceed, just as Sam couldn't know that JFK's assassination was somehow necessary to the course of history.

[earwig]

You're right!  I forgot about that.  (the Quantum Leap thing)  But that almost fits better.  Sam didn't know that Jackie was in danger because he came from a future where Jackie hadn't been shot because of his earlier intervention.  Doctor Who played around with that as well, where they caused some kind of event in the past that led to a change in time that went along perfectly with our knowledge of history, even though this was not the actual way these things turned out originally.  In that sense, a GM could manipulate history in that way, but still runs the risk of being a bit too heavy-handed for some players' tastes.  Also, I would think that this is trick that can only work every once in awhile or it might get old.

[Meadslosh]

Oh, I just wanted to make a correction on some QL canon, not make any comment on your game system or philosophy, but hey, if you can get something out of it, that's good, too.

[David Artman]

A wiki should work well, as you can Protect the "core" (canon, system, etc) pages but allow other pages to be created, for offshoots and expansions.

As someone involved in a couple of larger wikis, I can advise one thing off the bat: ORGANIZE. Come up with a Level 1 navigation (sidebar and Main Page) and Level 2 sub-navigation ASAP, make it extensible, and stick to it. Likewise, you'll probably want to devise a page naming convention (initial caps or sentence case; with or  without forward slashes; general-to-specific or specific only; etc) so that folks who add pages don't create a mess out of  your page names (or so that you don't spend half your time making redirects, or moving pages and redoing links). For example, suppose you name a page "Civil War"--how would someone name an alt-history "Civil War" page? Every project has different organizational needs; and if you don't think about them in advance, you'll be "organized" at random, with whatever strikes individuals' fancies.

In fact... you remind me that I have been meaning to port my site over to a wiki. I might actually finish populating it with content, if I am not wrestling with a CMS and its wonky file editing stuff (Joomla ain't what I thought it would be).

HTH;
David

[earwig]

Thanks for info!  Do you have a wiki that you recommend?  I was starting with PBwiki, but, as I said, I'm new to the whole wiki thing, so I'm up for anything.

[David Artman]

I've only extensively used MediaWiki (ex: Wikipedia), which seems well supported (I suppose because of Wikipedia) and easy to use.

But, hey--it's the Intertubes. Let's see what Wikipedia itself has to say!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_wiki_software

About the only "big" issue you face is what your host provider supports (and how much extra crap you'll have to install or enable to get it working).

Also, the "data backend" matters a bit, to some folks. Many wikis used databases (Mediawiki, for one) while others use flat files (much like "normal" HTML pages). If you can run databases on your server and know a bit about backing them up on occassion (or your host provider does so for you) then cool; otherwise, there's a LOT to be said for flat-file backend: basically, you can just routinely FTP your whole site down to your local computer, overwriting all files with newest versions, to perform backups.

You can even backup progressively--Because any wiki's change log will eventually "bottom out" and not allow rollbacks past a certain period or number of edits, you might want to be able to routinely download and date-stamp (and burn to DVD) your site, so that you can rollback to *any* past revisions with some careful file uploading/swapping. Doing so with a database is much trickier/requires more skills.

Hmm... OK, maybe I'd recommend Twiki for that reason, then. I recall when I last researched them (a bit), I liked its flat-file backend and PERL-based language (easy to tweak, but so is PHP); and its RCS is sufficient for my needs (a semi-private wiki).

SO... it comes down to (a) your host provider, (b) your own comfort level with databases and various languages, and finally (c) what functionality you need for your project/group.

HTH;
David

[dindenver]

Hi!
  I have used
http://pbwiki.com/
  its free and seems to work pretty well. I dunno how much money you want to spend on this, but if you are on a budget, this might be a good starting place...

[earwig]

Unless I am understanding it wrong, pbwiki is free, but there is only one password for editing the entire page.  You cannot grant access to certain areas only, lock certaint pages, etc.  By giving out the 1 password, you give anyone with that password the ability to edit everything.  Not to mention, even if you're okay with that, having only one admin password means that all someone has to do is post it somewhere and its now very public.

But you can upgrade for like $10 a month I believe and gain all of those features.

[dindenver]

Hi!
  No, a user can register on the site for free. And then grant registered users access based on roles. I think the roles are site-wide, but I haven't tested that feature because I wanted to give site-wide privileges on my wiki...
  Anyways, it was just an idea...

[earwig]

Cool.  I'll have to check it out.  Like I said, I'm a bit new to the whole wiji thing, but so far I like it.  pbWiki was the first one I signed up for, and it's pretty easy to use and navigate around in.  My only concern was whenever I tried to lock a page, it told me I had to upgrade to do so.  When I read through the help it said that there was one pagewide password, unless you upgraded to premium, but perhaps I wasn't reading it correctly.  The only thing I wanted to protect was the core pages so that someone couldn't come a long and just delete the text, etc.  As far as source material goes, I want to encourage folks to add to the pages, so those would be fairly open. 

Thanks for the help!  I appreciate it!

[David Artman]

Old Programming Saying: Don't Marry Your Language.

Twiki or MediaWiki are tons more functional than PBwiki, are free and heavily extended and supported, and one or the other gives you a backup means that fits your comfort zone. I would walk away from anything which expected registration, free upgrade or not.

But what I'd *really* advise is to spend some serious research time at that comparison site I linked above. Ignore anecdotes and opinions (mine, too!) and educate yourself so that you make your *own* opinion. In the end, that's a ton easier than migrating once you realize you've gone the wrong way (take it from me: I am LOATHE to have to roll out of Joomla to a wiki format, though I *will* do it one day soon).

David

[earwig]

You know, the deeper I dig into this, the more I think I'm going to wait on the wiki idea for now.  I'm just going to work on the project in PDF format, and research the wiki thing a bit more before I go any further on that route.  There's quite a bit of information out there, and I think I might do better to take my time with it. 

Thanks to everyone for all the help!


Chris