I bounce between a couple of different tools:

VoodooPad
Scrivener

I started out using VoodooPad six or seven years ago to great success. But as I've gained more time with Scrivener writing the manuscript for my own game I've drifted more in its direction for almost all of my writing projects including campaign design.

No matter which tool I use, I break things into Personalities, Regions, Towns, Locations, and Things. From there I can drill down to specifics.

I also add an organization section for research bits like web pages for language translation, etc. That way I don't have to dig through bookmarks in the browser. This is especially handy if you don't always stick with one browser.

A couple more tools that I've used for decently large writing projects are:

MultiMarkdown Composer
Marked

With these tools I'm able to work with plain text in a pretty sophisticated manner while keeping things simple on the backend making the use of git extremely easy.

This word "organize", what does it mean?

I half-expected everyone to use MS Word or OpenOffice. I stand quite corrected, and you all have my sincere apology.

beejazz, TristramEvans, The Butcher, you make a good point. It's far too easy to complicate things, tool-wise, to no gain. Writing things down is the fundamental tool here. (Though I imagine The Butcher working solely from memory and/or extemporizing--am I wrong? )

That said, on to the shiny stuff!

LordVreeg, wiki seems like a great tool, but how do you tame the chaos?

Eisenmann, I'm glad to hear Scrivener and MultiMarkdown get a mention. I've not spent much time with MultiMarkdown, though it definitely seems more capable than vanilla Markdown. Do you ever find it too limiting or hard to work with?

Quote from: MagesGuild;595238I would have fired a copy-editor that thought hat by having 'Copy' in his job title, he could use the word in repitition for version numbering: That's absurd.

I suppose you had to know him--I worked under him as a typesetter for a year, and he was about as conscientious and competent an editor as I've ever known: of the old guard, worked mostly with pen and paper, accepted the computer as a necessary evil. The "Copy" story was an IT legend.

Quote from: MagesGuild;595238The 'Save as...' menu option exists for a damned good reason, as do off-site backups. A word of warning: keep off-site backups of your work. I've seen on-site backups go up in flames, or crash on the floor, or be chewed on by a dog. If a dog eats your backups...

Duly noted, and thanks for bringing this up. It's a topic that never gets enough attention. (Until it's too late...)

Quote from: MagesGuild;595238The other tools I suggest for working are as follows, and you can take it with the humour intended: tea, a pipe or cigar, some whiskey or ale, and either operatic metal music or audio plays at very low volume, and an oil lamp or candle. Give yourself the mood or atmosphere you want to keep you writing, or to put you in the 'mood of the system'.

Nothing more important to my day than a constant flow of tea.

organize?

I have at the very least 3 different notebooks, 2 different printoffs, and the notepad app on my phone.


organization is a foreign concept to me.

Quote from: Philotomy Jurament;595262Excellent point.  I'd think that most images wouldn't require version control, but if you're saving your writing in Word documents then the binary file issue would definitely be a drawback.  I write text using a text editor and save in text format (e.g. LaTeX or XML, usually), which avoids that issue.

Even if you use a text editor, your versioning system breaks the minute you convert to a print-layout format. If you are writing for yourself, no worries; but mo publisher will handle that unless they are also doing your editing, and then they will use their own versioning system internally.

Quote from: The Traveller;595251Yup, I've a Cross myself, its less utilitarian than a ballpoint but I refuse to write fantasy in anything less. Weird, I know, but it does help, along with some Medieval Babes, Gregorian chant, or Clannad.

My favourites are the (old) Sheaffer fine nib snorkel, and the Parker 51.The fine points permit me my unusual lettering style. I also order those toss-away college fountain pens in the pack of eight-or-thereabout. I don't recall who manufactures them, but they are passable, and far better than a ball-pen, unless you're using a Spirograph or a plotter.

I do still love all the ball-pen ink designs that Tolkien did in the 1960s and 1970s. His geoform crests are superb.

And cheap Russian vodka for cyberpunk. /or how designing an RPG turned me into an alcoholic[/QUOTE]

My Cyberpunk guy is a Romanian, who lived most of his life in England, and deals with the Japanese, now living in Japan. I'm never sure what to drink in that game, but a pint or five usually make the evening roll-along. I do have a fancy for potato-vodka, but the cheap grain types foul my ulcers something terrible.

Quote from: eykd;595346I half-expected everyone to use MS Word or OpenOffice. I stand quite corrected, and you all have my sincere apology.

There is nothing for which you need offer any apologies. They are common utilities for basic writing, to be sure. (Am I the only one that recalls when an 'app'. was a 'utility', a 'programme', or a 'tool'?)

I'm likely a rare case for using Framemaker, as it's a pretty high-end tool that I thankfully never needed to buy, having many versions of it paid out to me by the companies that hired me (as a bonus). It really is wonderful though, and i couldn't imagine editing or writing a 100-plus page manual (and a game system is a manual) without it.

For the record, we use MS Word because everyone that is involved with the project has it and can work with it, providing the most functions for the least money. I'm the one who does the layout-editing, so when it comes down to that, it's FM all the way.

In the past, I used other software: Appleworks/Clarisworks, Wordperfect, Pagestream; whatever was the best on the system I used at that time. I don't care what name they slap on the tin, but only if it will do the job I need of it, and properly, and without hassle or slowdown.

Unfortunately, once I write something in any application, I need to run it through DTP software, primarily Framemaker. I decided to give Scribus a spin, at the behest of DriveThruRPG, but it has too many flaws for any type of big project, meaning anything over around thirty-pages in length, IMHO.

Quote from: eykd;595349I suppose you had to know him--I worked under him as a typesetter for a year, and he was about as conscientious and competent an editor as I've ever known: of the old guard, worked mostly with pen and paper, accepted the computer as a necessary evil. The "Copy" story was an IT legend.

That sounds quite interesting. As long as he did the job and nobody needed to worry about his system (e.g., EIC), then he could do it in whatever ay worked for him. I would only worry if he was a Jr. Editor or had to pass on his screwball numbering on to some poor sod above him that wasn't used to it.

I often seemed to have the Perry Whites of the world, and I well-knew to ensure everything was pristine, so that they could still complain about perfect-copy; but the job of an editor isn't just to do proofing, it is also to polish work, and make it look good; to make everyone look good.

I had a lot of fun (i.e., hell) at a magazine, where one of the staff writers turned in atrocious garbage, filled with the passive voice, 'spellUng errErs', and utterly abhorrent content, and two editors passed it over to some of the rest of us to look over his work. The man photographed a US 'Buffalo Nickel' and referenced it as a 'Dime' in one of his pieces, using it as a size-reference for something else; he did not shoot the photo of the coin next to the object, mind you, as I recall. 'T'was merely the incorrectly annotated disc of metal in the image, and a second, but wholly separate photo of the subject matter.

He lasted a week and a month. (I'm sure that was the minimum in his contract.) Unfortunately, now that most techie magazines have shifted to an Internet format, where they get willing (but terrible) writers at no cost, they don't pay professional writers enough to afford a tin of beans, and they don't bother with copy editors, or any sort of editors. It's really quite sad.

A editor-friend of mine stated this about an article that he read on one of he bigger Internet news websites (possible 'Wired', or something of that nature; I don't recall which, but it was an Apple-related piece): 'Reading that is the literary equivalent of a fit man with perfect vision, walking through a room and stumbling over, and stubbing your toes on, every single piece of furniture humanly possible, including those that aren't there.'.

Now that I am horribly off-topic, I'll hand the controls back over to the kind members here, who are willing to read my drivel, and prepare myself for the rest of today. (X|S)

Quote from: eykd;595346Eisenmann, I'm glad to hear Scrivener and MultiMarkdown get a mention. I've not spent much time with MultiMarkdown, though it definitely seems more capable than vanilla Markdown. Do you ever find it too limiting or hard to work with?

So far, the benefits have outweigh the negatives. I'll put the plain text MMD into a project folder onto Dropbox to not only facilitate collaboration but also so that I can open the files and go to work on my iPad using Daedelus. I've gotten some serious work done that way. Using external syncing in Scrivener I get to keep the project management tools that come as part of the app.

It also helps that Marked renders the MMD in danged near real time using custom CSS.

This approach has worked pretty well for me as my main target has been ePub. In support of this approach I wrote a set of Ruby scripts to convert MMD to XHTML to ePub. Here's the accompanying blog article: From Scrivener to ePub.

Going the ePub route has fed back into how I do other projects. I'm preparing to kick off a Castles & Crusades campaign. So far, it's all in MultiMarkdown.


Edit:

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention using Circus Ponies Notebook when organizing thoughts and concepts. Notebook has been exceptionally handy when doing system design.

Quote from: eykd;595211That makes sense--at least as crucial as the editing process that MagesGuild describes, I would imagine. How do you (and anyone else) prepare for and run playtesting?

As a small company large scale playtesting (like WOTC is doing) isn't really an option, so we have a few things we focus on:

-Running regular in-house playtests. In these we playtest as the rules develop, and usually break sessions into: short scenario followed by specific situations (bunch of combats, brief moments of exploration, etc) after we have done some of these we shift to a campaign while continuing to test specific areas of the game as well. Rotating GMs can be helpful here as can drawing up a list of things that need testing for each session. We have regular meetings after playtests to discuss observations, problems and solutions.

-Send out rules at different stages of development to readers and pkaytest groups. You try to get ad many folks as you can here and assume for every 10 that say yes, one to two people will actually have the time to give feedback.

-Run through hypothetical scenarios with deigners and seek out potential issues in the system. This often involves number crunching and repeating one situation a bunch of times at the table to see how it feels.

Quote from: Eisenmann;595371So far, the benefits have outweigh the negatives. I'll put the plain text MMD into a project folder onto Dropbox to not only facilitate collaboration but also so that I can open the files and go to work on my iPad using Daedelus. I've gotten some serious work done that way. Using external syncing in Scrivener I get to keep the project management tools that come as part of the app.

It also helps that Marked renders the MMD in danged near real time using custom CSS.

This approach has worked pretty well for me as my main target has been ePub. In support of this approach I wrote a set of Ruby scripts to convert MMD to XHTML to ePub. Here's the accompanying blog article: From Scrivener to ePub.

Going the ePub route has fed back into how I do other projects. I'm preparing to kick off a Castles & Crusades campaign. So far, it's all in MultiMarkdown.


Edit:

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention using Circus Ponies Notebook when organizing thoughts and concepts. Notebook has been exceptionally handy when doing system design.

Yeah, looking at daedalus reminds me that I do use dropbox an awful lot on a daily basis.  Work and gaming both.

Quote from: eykd;595211That makes sense--at least as crucial as the editing process that MagesGuild describes, I would imagine. How do you (and anyone else) prepare for and run playtesting?

As BedrockBrendan mentioned, getting feedback can be tough. To increase the amount of feedback and quality we did After Action Reviews as a group after each game event:

• Title
• Date
• Location
• Summary
• Improve
• Sustain

We also prepared one or two interview questions ready for those who were the most engaged throughout the day. The questions were mostly about the latest changes to the system.

Quote from: eykd;595346That said, on to the shiny stuff!

LordVreeg, wiki seems like a great tool, but how do you tame the chaos?

I went with the wiki for a number of reasons.  

One of the things it does well is creating a living document.  I, personally go for the very very long campaigns.  So having a repository that everyone can use (and that can have locked areas) and some can edit is huge.  Campaigns and rulesets grow, and having an authoritative version is much easier.  

Just as an aside, having linkable wiki pages is a huge boon in and of itself.  My PC's character sheets all use links for their spell books.  Finding a spell or weapon or skill is pretty easy when the link is embedded into the character sheet.
As an aside, this cuts down on the rules/rulebooks issue.  And the more you homebrew, the more this ideal helps. As a creator, being able to create a rule or entry, then expand on it, and link it later.

As a GM, I also create pages for special items (which are linkable) or areas.  Our sesions are 100% laptop/tablet compliant (or online), so I can send out a link when they get so such and area or item (examples linked).  And the players can use the links later on embedded into their own sheets.

I do need to know which chaos you are talking about?  In terms of who is woring on what?  the rules are pretty clearcut, only grammar and spelling and formating are to be touched except on player specific pages.  Rules or setting entries are my province only.

Everything written is in Google Docs, the occasional schematic/map/handout is done in Inkscape or just ripped off internet.

Workflow process is basically writing stuff down until my inspiration runs dry, and if by the next game session things aren't finished, I'll wing it when necessary.

Quote from: LordVreeg;595377Just as an aside, having linkable wiki pages is a huge boon in and of itself.  My PC's character sheets all use links for their spell books.  Finding a spell or weapon or skill is pretty easy when the link is embedded into the character sheet.

This really is the next stage in RPG development I think. Having everything easily cross referenceable straight from the sheet is the bridge between the pen and paper world and the world of computers. It needs a crapton of prep work but the first publisher to pull it off will be onto a winner.

Quote from: eykd;595346I half-expected everyone to use MS Word or OpenOffice. I stand quite corrected, and you all have my sincere apology.

beejazz, TristramEvans, The Butcher, you make a good point. It's far too easy to complicate things, tool-wise, to no gain. Writing things down is the fundamental tool here. (Though I imagine The Butcher working solely from memory and/or extemporizing--am I wrong? )

I have a bunch of half-finished notes on MS Word that usually include setting notes, NPCs and the odd houserule. I'd say it's 10% the notes and 90% memory and improvisation.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;595372As a small company large scale playtesting (like WOTC is doing) isn't really an option, so we have a few things we focus on:

-Running regular in-house playtests. In these we playtest as the rules develop, and usually break sessions into: short scenario followed by specific situations (bunch of combats, brief moments of exploration, etc) after we have done some of these we shift to a campaign while continuing to test specific areas of the game as well. Rotating GMs can be helpful here as can drawing up a list of things that need testing for each session. We have regular meetings after playtests to discuss observations, problems and solutions.

-Send out rules at different stages of development to readers and pkaytest groups. You try to get ad many folks as you can here and assume for every 10 that say yes, one to two people will actually have the time to give feedback.

-Run through hypothetical scenarios with deigners and seek out potential issues in the system. This often involves number crunching and repeating one situation a bunch of times at the table to see how it feels.

This essentially sums up the process ofr most people. We, as a group of writers, playtest the work of others, and discus flaws, as well as the good stuff, and make suggestions. Some contribute directly to the system, and others only find it enjoyable, which is in itself a contribution.

From there, we others to playtest it, even if it isn't complete, using the proven areas and adjusting them to player response. It's somewhat like a form of psycho-analysis, but of a product, rather than a person, determining how easy it is to understand, or how easy it could be to corrupt. In an ideal world, a playtest group (players) will have a seasoned GM as a player, a newbie, a good player, a mad payer and a munchkin. That is the 'party' of players that you want, as they all contribute to improving the system in different ways.

Then, we have someone other than the main author run it--anyone not involved witht he creation process, while the writers go through and help with stumbling-points, noting them and making them easier to understand. We get the GM's feedback this way on how to make the system easier to understand from to a potential storyteller.

After this, it's time to get other GMs and their own players to attempt running your system or adventure, without any of the authors present. That way, they can send feedback reports on problems they encounter, either as a storyteller or as a player. In return, they get to have fun with a new product, and free copies when it's over; and with is, they get their name in the contributions section.

The larger or more complex the product, the more playtesting it requires, as a general rule.

We post every update tot he product in a special playtesters area so that the newest version of always available, and send regular supplements as well.

In respect to character-sheet layout, I don't see cross-linking as important. heck, i don't even see auto-fill as important. I still write them out on paper myself... The most-important factor is enuring that we present ll the information in an orderly way, using all the space on a page, without it becoming cumbersome.

The primary things you need to see should always be on the front page, inventory items and detail items on the second. Spells and powers should have their own pages, separating out what they are; any spell or power that you use regularly might be on the main page. (X|S)