Geek^2

[morsla]

aeliel and I are writing some background material for an Exalted game. It draws heavily on archetypes from Greek myth, and mixes them up with any other influences that have caught our eyes... At the moment, we have a twisting, tangled mass of relationships between the Gods - the beginnings of a creation story, a (highly subjective) celestial heirarchy, and stories that tie the gods and mortals together.

The main characters in the game will be the Chosen - mortal heroes, exalted by the Gods. Any action they take will have the potential to anger one or more Gods (by harming their interests/children/land), but may let the characters gain the favour of rival Gods. Godly favour is a good thing to have - you can call on it when you need help, and you need it to learn Charms that fall into that God's domain.

We're also likely to run a freeform at Arcanacon or Conquest, where the characters will be the 25 Gods :) There's far too much intrigue there to let it go to waste.

I'd like to use a Wiki to build the background material for the game, giving the players a chance to add their own detail (adding or expanding on locations, characters, etc) as the game comes together.

There seem to be dozens of free Wiki sites out there, and I have absolutely no experience using any of them... can anyone recommend one?

The plan is to have a publically viewable wiki, with a password needed to edit material. The password will be available to anyone with an interest in adding content to the game - primarily the players, but also anyone who likes this kind of thing. I'm looking for a free site on a wikifarm, as it seems easier than hosting one myself.

WYSIWYG editing isn't particularly important, although it could help to encourage people to add content...

So far I've had a quick look at:
http://www.wikidot.com/ - seems to have a lot of features.
http://pbwiki.com/ - I've seen a few sites use it, but I've also heard complaints about a lack of features
http://www.wetpaint.com/ - looks interesting
http://www.wikispaces.com/ - don't know anything about this one
http://www.schtuff.com/ - includes tagging, custom permissions, etc
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki - the Wikipedia interface. Software only (not a free host).

Comments

[morsla.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. That might be the easiest solution...

RPG.net use MediaWiki, which has a pretty straightforward interface. I'm not especially keen on the skins they use, but content is more important than appearance at the moment.

I've just had a friend on WAU offer to host a TikiWiki, but it's not nearly as intuitive as the MediaWiki interface. My head hurts from trying to learn two types of syntax at once.

Major advantage to RPGnet is the context: the game would sit amongst many other game-related pages, and has a better chance of being relevant to the people who randomly chance upon it.

No option for password-protected edits, but I guess I can always revert to earlier versions if we get hit by spammers.

[kirby1024.livejournal.com]

Might want to look at either UseMod or OddMuse. Usemod is a bit of a pain to fiddle around with, but I'm fairly certain that OddMuse definitely has a password-edit system built in.

Further, the OddMuse site has a bunch of info for people wanting to start up wikis.

If you just need hosting space, I'm more than willing to set you up a wiki on my webspace, since I'm doing absolutely nothing else with it at the moment.

[morsla.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the offer - I've started putting things together on RPGnet, though, to take advantage of the interlinking pages from other Exalted games. I think the wiki will be more useful (and attract random passers-by more easily) on RPGnet, which will help things in the long run.