Adding spice to your campaign wiki

Basileus
Basileus
edited April 2014 in General Discussion
Anyone have any tips or tricks they have picked up regarding spicing up your wiki - to keep it engaging and interesting?

I try to use graphics and quotes as often as possible, but I still find that when I am creating large numbers of pages (particularly stubs with only a sentence or two of description), the wiki can start to seem... rather dry.

What kinds of campaign/setting information are the most interesting to you? Is it history, events, culture, religion, politics, geography, specific characters, monsters/enemies, treasure, etc...?

Separate but related, what voice do you find strikes the best balance between informative and engaging for OP wikis? Something "in character" written from a limited perspective, or something more technical with omniscient information?

Lots of technical threads - looking to start a discussion more about content and presentation.

Comments

  • WolfLord
    WolfLord
    Posts: 278
    Well, for me personally, I try to write wiki pages about places and other such things from the point of view of someone in that world who is writing about what people know, or think they know, about that place. So I include lots of rumors and speculation, and clues as to various plots or quests involved in those locations so that it sets itself up for a sandbox experience where the players can easily find rumors and gossip about different locations. Some of them are very accurate, some are very vague, and some are downright wrong.

    "Age of Heroes":https://heroes-of-hellas.obsidianportal.com/
    "Avatar: Conquest of the Imperial Order":https://avatar_adventures.obsidianportal.com/
    "COTM November 2011":http://blog.obsidianportal.com/november-11-campaign-of-the-month-avatar-conquest-of-the-imperial-order/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=november-11-campaign-of-the-month-avatar-conquest-of-the-imperial-order
  • wolfhound
    wolfhound
    Posts: 354
    Based on several months (years?) of Google Analytics... spend your time on your home page. Make it your portal to the stuff you find fascinating/best about your game. You have about 30 seconds to make casual browsers interested. Send them to the pages that you as the site designer are the most proud.

    Then your Adventure log. See if you can embed graphics or spice up the adventure log in any way. This is your #2 biggest traffic draw and your regular fans link there directly when they want to check up on your game.

    By this point, after those two main pages... you've already lost the casual browser. Assuming you've done something right, you have another 1 1/2 minutes with your viewer.

    Your character page is the next big draw. Make sure you have images for everyone and that they're interesting. See if you can reorder your first 3 keywords to make them more informative. Leverage the short description box.

    Finally your wiki, you're getting 50% of the traffic of the main page and even less after people view log and the characters. Most folks just look at the main wiki page. Use graphics where you can and make it interesting because usually the only people that are clicking the buttons are folks that are a) already playing your game or b) really hooked and would read the pages anyway.

    After the 2 minute mark, most folks are gone unless they're reading your Adventure Log(s). Then they'll bail after reading the most recent one, sometimes most recent 2, rarely more (except for the "true fans").

    So to the question you actually asked... my advice is this:
    For the actual text of the Wiki pages themselves... you only audience is your players. Ask THEM what THEY want to see... because they're the only ones reading that matter. If they don't care, put up what YOU want to see because you're the only one reading them. It's your GM notebook. :) Non-PC site browsers will like or read whatever you put up because they wouldn't be there unless they were already into your campaign.
  • Beaumains
    Beaumains
    Posts: 132
    If I could dump from my mind, through some sort of Jarvis (ref. Iron Man), straight into the wiki, there would probably be at least one unique image on almost every page, though rarely very many images. I'm also a big fan of quotes as epigraphs, but only with certain pages or sorts of pages; otherwise it's more of an "as appropriate" sort of thing. There's likely already quite a bit to read, and while quotes are different and spicy, they are also more to read (which, much as we may dismay, we typically can't do forever).

    When it comes to information that just isn't going to have a lot of detail (esp. less than half a page or so), I like to try to group them together and put them all under one page as a category. I like all the stuff you mentioned, but I think events (esp. historical, legends, etc.), geography, creatures/characters, and treasure are the most interesting. When done well, politics religion and culture are also interesting.

    -

    When it comes to what I put into the public space of a wiki, I try to limit that to 1) what a PC could possibly have access to without going on an adventure (and I'm completely with Tolsimir on foggy or false details), and 2) what a reader would most care about (e.g. no mechanics stuff and trivial info as nothing more than flavoring). When in doubt, I make it secret. I like the immersive feel too though, so I try to keep things a bit conversational and story-like, but not so much that [I] can't find something without hunting through a whole page.

    As for content, I like to push towards omniscience, and pull back according to how the information would be shaped by intelligent, interested entities (such as elder dragons). I've yet to find a hard line here, and so I err on the side of caution. I wish that OP would let you update GM only sections without making a public notification about it. What Wolfhound said makes a lot of sense (even if it doesn't describe me personally), and in that light I would look at the deeper wiki as more tool than art, but both functional and aesthetic still.
  • twiggyleaf
    twiggyleaf
    Posts: 2,006
    Firstly, Wolfhound makes some very good points and therefore his last two lines of advice are most important, and generally, I would echo them.

    To answer your question directly, I myself would say Front Page should be colourful, simple and attention-grabbing, Main Wiki Page should be colourful, quickly and easily offering enticing doorways to various sections, which should be illustrated where possible and not too long - Or at least contain a short description or blurb before going into the main body of text. As Wolfhound implies, I believe most people won't even get this far, however as a reader who sometimes does, I myself am always drawn into the history, legends, political systems, gods, etc. presented in a Wiki. How far I travel on the route of each of those depends on clarity of design, pictures, legibility - e.g. list of deities should avoid long bodies of text - list and description with image suits fine.

    Apart from the Wiki, I usually have a quick look at one or two of the characters (never ALL of them) so I believe presentation of characters should be done with uniformity. With regard to the Adventure Logs, this is usually the LAST place that I look, but I do so to get an idea of how long the campaign has been running, and what has most recently happened. Pictures, style and layout are crucial here, as it takes a bit of WOW factor to lure me into textual stuff. However, if the writing is good, I often continue. For this reason, I also encourage editing adventure logs. Pick out those errors, Dudes! The less we find, the better.

    twigs (on holiday at the moment)

    "I met a traveller from an antique land....."

    CotM May 2016: Mysteria: set in Wolfgang Baur’s MIDGARD.

    Previous CotM Aug 2012: Shimring: High Level Multiplanar Campaign

    Inner Council Member

  • Keryth987
    Keryth987
    Posts: 1,047
    I can only echo what the others have said here, wonderful advice given by all, especially, the Master, Wolfhound :)

    The thing I've found that grabs attention is the Main Page. A video and a brief description fo what the campaign is about are great attention grabbers, as is easy access to the rest of the dite. NEVER depend on the default menu from OP to guarantee people get to the rest of your site - a button to the main Wiki and a link to the Adventurer's Log would be musts in my book.

    Keelah Se'lai,
    Keryth
    "Shadows Over New York":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/shadows-over-new-york
    "2013 Campaign of The Year":http://blog.obsidianportal.com/2013-coty-shadows-over-new-york/
    "Campaign of the Month July 2013":http://blog.obsidianportal.com/shadows-over-new-york-julys-campaign-of-the-month/

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