Less D&D Specific & Other Suggestions

RobJustice

RobJustice

I know us Non-D&D campaigns are clearly in the minority here but I for one would like a little less D&D Focused site. Things like Race and Level don't really translate over well for NPCs in other systems. Perhaps the ability to have custom fields that allow the GM to decide what information their showing is.

Also the ability to sort and group NPCs would be great. I'm running a cyberpunk themed game and some of my major NPCs are actually large corporations. I currently have no way of differentiating between a character and a corporation in my NPC tracker.

A place to upload a campaign logo or banner would be spiffy too, seeing as how I've noticed a few campaigns with them.

Perhaps making the Adventure Log the second page and having a Campaign Details page come up first. Something that the GM can give a detailed description of the setting, throw a few links to his wiki up on, show off the player characters or iconic NPCs, etc.

If some, or all of this has been mentioned elsewhere I apologize. I started reading posts but decided time was short and I'd just leave my suggestions.

geekevolved

I think custom fields for every game system out there would be a nightmare. I think with the fields provided, you can have whatever details you need or don't need (negative having).

Sorting NPCs are easy, just tag them. You can then click on the tag names to the right of the page on the NPC Tracker and you can get what you need. You can do the same for grouping. Say you have 5 characters who consist of a guard detail (bob, mary sue, billy joe, jimbob, and jack the ripper) when you create them, just use the tag to "group" them together. ("The guards of freaktown") Now that you have them all tagged, just click on the tag to the right called "The Guards of Freaktown" and walla!

Use photobucket/flickr/whatever for uploading campaign logos and banners is a good idea. I remember Micah was having problems hosting the maps in house, so they had to move to a different host for the maps. (That gets expensive) Photobucket/Flickr is free and takes 3 minutes to sign up.

RobJustice

I didn't mean that Obsidian Portal provides fields for every system out there, I ment more like user defined fields. So we enter in what the field is called and what information is stored in that field. So instead of Level: [Textbox] it's [TextBox]: [Textbox] where the user can define the first box as "Level" and the second box as "10th" or whatever they desire. And Obsidian Portal simply provides a set number of custom fields that the user can define.

I must have missed the tagging thing. Thanks!

As far as a banner image, maybe not having Obsidian Portal hosting the images but a place to put a banner other then the Adventure Log would be spiffy.

Micah

User uploaded images are on the todo list. It might be a while, though, and will probably be a little of a disappointment once it's done. This is because there are lots of other services out there (as geekevolved noted) that already do this, and do it well. Creating a good image organizer is tough, and it's not our core area of expertise.

Still, like you say, it's a gaping hole in our current offerings, and we hope to fill it.

As for the user-defined fields, it's an interesting idea. I'm still sitting on the fence about how much structure I want to enforce (or enable) for the character data. More structure means better searching and better display formatting. Less structure means easier to implement and more generally applicable to all game systems.

For now, I'm leaning toward less structure, mainly because it seems to be working for most people. Still, I'll think on your idea of self-defined structure. It's a good idea and I'd like to puzzle out a way to do something like that.

TroyAlford

If I were to approach something like this, here is what I would try to implement:

By adding a special tag - perhaps something like [[Name|Troy]] - you could allow a particular article, NPC, etc to have an "Attribute" defined - in this case, the attribute would be "Name" and its value would be "Troy". By setting this like a variable, you could then access the particulars of that entry on another page, using something like [[npc-slug:Name]], and have the parser replace it with "Troy" in the text...

Usability:
The reason I think this would be valuable is this: Imagine that you wanted to have a character who had a title. In some contexts - you may refer to that character by their title, and in some by their name. Still in others, by their first and last name, or by a nickname. Using the proposed syntax, you could specify exactly which version of the name to use - rather than having to type it all in - and draw it straight out of that character's article. Similarly - if you wanted to link the character's stats, their equipment block, etc - that, too, would be very easy.

Think also of a setting... perhaps you have an inn - and you wanted to create [[Bartender:John Diggs]] - you could now link the bartender's name externally - and if the name changed in the source document - it could be propagated to all linked documents as well.

Currently, I know that you are "precompiling" the pages - I imagine this is in order to increase speed... however - if the links were able to be generated on the fly, it would be blazingly useful... propagating changes throughout linked pages would be very helpful - and, of course, if the link already had an alternate text specified, that text would still remain. However, you could then use the character's title, nickname, etc rather than typing alternate text (and changing the nickname could propagate as well).

Implementation:
This really wouldn't be all that hard to implement, if you used a metabase concept or a serialized XML data store. By "compiling" the list of attributes on save - you could then store them in an XML document, and whenever a link needed to access - pull them using xQuery (or something similar) almost instantly. ArticleName->AttributeName->Value.

What I imagine is that you would have an "attributes" section somewhere on the editor for a particular page - so that you could add, specify, update, etc the various attributes of that entry... This could also be very useful for searching, tagging, etc - as you could even copy/paste the "attribute block" for a game's NPC into other NPCs for that game - providing things like "Class" "Level" "City" etc - and thereby creating a somewhat more robust version of the Tagging system that is currently in place. Not only would you have the tag itself - you would also have an inherent description of what that tag refers to.

What do you think?

geekevolved

Honestly, i think its a little complicated for the average user. Tags accomplish exactly what you are describing and they are more user friendly. With the NPC slug provided, you can link however many times you want and change the name a million times and it'll still be there.

RobJustice

This might sound harsher then I intend it to, so I apologise on the front and hope you'll read it in a non-aggressive fashion.

Thats the line of thought that bothers me. Yes, its more complicated but that doesn't mean it isn't useful. You don't need to pander to the lowest common denominator and penalize the more advanced users because of it. You can keep the basic tagging around and still allow the option for us more tech savvy users to do advanced attribute tags. The more things I can do with this site the more likely I am to continue to use it. The more limits that are imposed the more likely I am to let my portion of this site fall into disuse.

geekevolved

I've been around the internet long enough to know a flame from a good post :D

I do see what your saying and it makes sense. Your post has reminded me of back in the day when I used Livejournal, where you could have the pre-made templates and the average user could just point and click and that was their blog, but then there the scary advanced section with CSS formatting. The system worked good, but there was always the people who wanted to get more out of their design and couldn't seem to grasp the concept the advanced section.

Now I understand all that, I'm just not seeing the need here. I can see the need for what Troy is describing if this was more like a mediawiki, but thats not how things seem to be turning out to be. Truly the only cross posting I see going on is on the front page and the forum, and that seems to work as it is.

RobJustice

True, and I agree. i don't think cross-linking is important to the site now, but depending on how the site grows from here it might become something that is needed/wanted later on and someone ends up kicking themselves for not implementing it easily early on.

The main thing I want is the Race/Level fields to be more flexible. Now this might just mean removal of them and rolling that information into the Stat section but they have no use for other systems and would really muck up searching if I started using them more abstractly. Like if I put the template type (for World of Darkness) into the Race slot and how many XP the character has in the Level slot. Sure, it'll work in a pinch but I'd have to make it clear thats what I'm doing as to not confuse people. Plus it'd lead to people searching for D&D "Vampire" and coming across my characters; which lack the stats their interested in. I know that D20 is the huge system but the site just feels a little to geared towards D20 and not towards whatever RPG you might be playing.

A friend of mine also pointed out a couple things. The Description and Bio sections could be renamed to ease confusion. When I hear Description I think of physical description, what type of clothing they where, and perhaps their personality. Then Biography would sum up their "story" and background flavors. Perhaps a better title could be Stats for whichever is suppose to be the crunchy one.

TroyAlford

All of the responses are very valid points. Let me explain why I suggested what I did, from the perspective of a software engineer.

I agree wholeheartedly with the idea that complexity is not for the average user - and I was never intending that my suggestion would imply removal any of the current features, or alter them in any way, but instead to add further functionality.

As a software engineer, it is much easier - long term - to keep the end-goal in mind, and design for it from the start. If the eventual goal of the site will allow for cross linking and so on, it would make the most sense to design that into the core from the start, rather than going back later to try to add it. Redoing your core code is usually not easy, and can often cause serious complications as a system grows.

That said... the suggestion also comes from the fact that I have already run into situations in my own wiki which would be greatly benefitted by having something like an attribute-markup ability very useful. The specific example coming to my mind is that of titles. I have several royals in my game who have multiple titles... In some instances, the emperor is known simply as "Phaedreon" - in others, "Phaedreon, the Conqueror" - in others, "High-Emperor Phaedreon" - etc. By being able to specify a series of titles ([[ :phaedreon>Name ]], [[ :phaedreon>OfficialTitle ]], [[ :phaedreon>CommonReference ]]) my ability to link and update would be greatly enhanced - and if for some reason I had to correct a misspelling, or alter a title - I would love to see it automatically propagate through my site. Right now, I am typing something like [[ :phaedreon|High-Emperor Phaedreon ]] repeatedly - and while this serves the purpose, it is also highly prone to typos and inconsistency in the formatting.

The other benefit for what I was suggesting was that dynamic link generation - while slightly harder to produce - is exponentially more useful. As an example, imagine for a moment that you have an NPC who the players have known by a false name for 30 sessions. At a pivotal moment, they realize that the NPC is actually the badguy they've been seeking for a long time. The ability to alter the name - even to something like "John Riggs (really Mister Doom)" would potentially be very useful in updating links throughout your wiki - to avoid player confusion. At the same time, having automatic updates to your adventure log might be problematic - because anyone reading the game in sequence would get a spoiler otherwise...

Finally, I would say - please note that it is only a series of suggestions, and I'm certainly not trying to tout it as fully thought out or perfect for every use. I am only offering an idea for a set of features which I, myself, have wished was available several times.

Micah

I'm real busy right now, and I haven't had a chance to read this thread. I'll take a look at it as soon as I get a chance. I just wanted people to know that I'm still here, lurking.

RobJustice

Good to know your still lurking :D

Its also worth mentioning that I am also in the software development field and I suppose I'm looking at things from a similar viewpoint to Troy. Which could explain why I tend to agree with what he's saying :D