With the winter holidays coming up, I will have some extra free time to work on my campaign. One of the things that I wanted to do was set up a Wiki to communicate game information (e.g., dramatis personae, known gods, maps, etc.) to my players. So I am looking to the collective for any suggestions. Thanks in advance.

Our GM used The Brain (mind mapping software), to keep the campaign information documented, and with links between NPC's, places, artifacts, rumours, quest hooks, ...
It's a Licenced tool (which he also uses for work and other things), so he was the only one who would edit the data,
but maybe you can find a comparable freeware somewhere.

I prefer to use a single campaign page, eg http://frloudwater.blogspot.com/2020/08/faerun-adventures-beginner-5e-d-game.html or https://simonsprimevalthule.blogspot.com/2019/01/primeval-thule-campaign.html - and post excerpts/updates to places the players may actually read it, eg Discord. A friend did this https://primevalthuleplanb.blogspot.com/ - but personally I like to have all the info in one place rather than browse a Wiki.

Quote from: Godfather Punk on November 07, 2021, 08:10:51 AM
Our GM used The Brain (mind mapping software), to keep the campaign information documented, and with links between NPC's, places, artifacts, rumours, quest hooks, ...
It's a Licenced tool (which he also uses for work and other things), so he was the only one who would edit the data,
but maybe you can find a comparable freeware somewhere.

I use Labyrinth, but there are several free mind mapping tools

https://people.gnome.org/~dscorgie/labyrinth.html

The people who developed Herolab offer a campaign management software, but it's payware.

Obsidian Portal might be an option.

Finally, even a shared OneNote notebook might work.

Quote from: dkabq on November 07, 2021, 08:04:31 AM
With the winter holidays coming up, I will have some extra free time to work on my campaign. One of the things that I wanted to do was set up a Wiki to communicate game information (e.g., dramatis personae, known gods, maps, etc.) to my players. So I am looking to the collective for any suggestions. Thanks in advance.

The point of a wiki is collaboration -- it allows multiple people to work on and contribute to the same set of documents.

If your goal is to present information to your players for which you are the only provider, any form of publishing works fine, the easiest is probably something like Google Drive.

Quote from: Zalman on November 07, 2021, 09:47:30 AM

Quote from: dkabq on November 07, 2021, 08:04:31 AM
With the winter holidays coming up, I will have some extra free time to work on my campaign. One of the things that I wanted to do was set up a Wiki to communicate game information (e.g., dramatis personae, known gods, maps, etc.) to my players. So I am looking to the collective for any suggestions. Thanks in advance.

The point of a wiki is collaboration -- it allows multiple people to work on and contribute to the same set of documents.

If your goal is to present information to your players for which you are the only provider, any form of publishing works fine, the easiest is probably something like Google Drive.

The ability for players to collaborative would be great.

If "Wiki" ends up being the answer, the next question is where/how to set one up. Free would be nice, but I am will to drop a modest amount of coin if need be.

Quote from: dkabq on November 07, 2021, 10:07:43 AM

Quote from: Zalman on November 07, 2021, 09:47:30 AM

Quote from: dkabq on November 07, 2021, 08:04:31 AM
With the winter holidays coming up, I will have some extra free time to work on my campaign. One of the things that I wanted to do was set up a Wiki to communicate game information (e.g., dramatis personae, known gods, maps, etc.) to my players. So I am looking to the collective for any suggestions. Thanks in advance.

The point of a wiki is collaboration -- it allows multiple people to work on and contribute to the same set of documents.

If your goal is to present information to your players for which you are the only provider, any form of publishing works fine, the easiest is probably something like Google Drive.

The ability for players to collaborative would be great.

If "Wiki" ends up being the answer, the next question is where/how to set one up. Free would be nice, but I am will to drop a modest amount of coin if need be.

There are plenty of free ones. I've used MediaWiki professionally, and it's fine, though I suspect there are better options out there if ease-of-setup is important to you.

You can of course use Google Docs collaboratively as well -- it's designed for it.

If you have existing webhosting (& MySQL database) a wiki is pretty easy to set up. Most web-hosting services probably have a single-click install for MediaWiki.

Alternatives:

* Google Docs (Probably easiest)
* Third Party Wiki Hosting (https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Hosting_services)

In the past I created a wiki for my own games with lots of custom rules and background material. It was really good when I was actively involved with it, but what I found several years later was that the database ended up getting hacked and it wasn't possible for me to back up that material easily. Partially my own fault, but really unfortunate. If I were doing this type of thing today, what I would do is this:

* Create Git / Source control of choice
* Use a static site generator to generate pages. This avoids reliance on complex dependencies that might change in the hosting or create vulnerabilities
* Manage site locally and push pages whenever

My business Paradigma Software uses dokuwiki for our documentation site. In general it is good, but it has the virtue that it actually doesn't require a database.

Unfortunately, I've found that if you give players more than two double-sided pages of information on the campaign setting that they will ignore it or go off on a bizarre tangent from it. Google Docs or a Wiki would be an invitation for frustration for the GM.