I used to use obsidian but I found myself lacking motivation and becoming easily distracted when looking at the computer. Now, I do everything in a notebook. I find that my thoughts just flow far easier.
I keep it all in a notebook, though that was mainly so I could bring it to school and worldbuild at school (we aren’t allowed to use our phones during class here). Not sure if I’ll switch to digital now that I’ve graduated and that isn’t a concern.
Nice. Notebooks rule.
Bold of you to assume I’m organized.
But for real I usually keep it in text docs and try to gather what I have from there, sometimes retriving stuff me and a friend did from old discord servers. I’m actually planning to make a full blown wiki for this stuff so others can browse through it, though progress on that has been absurdly slow.
Hey, I’m not any better. At some point I’ll make a wiki for my world but right now, I don’t see any reason to.
I write rough drafts and ideas in a notebook and I solidify and organize them with Google docs
I like that workflow, it’s similar to mine. I typically take bullet point ideas on one page and then write a “wiki article” on another.
I like that format, I just feel weird writing fantasy stuff using modern medium. Like tweets from Alexander the great lol.
That’s amazing lol.
Hey that’s me! I used to solely use google docs, but I found the edits were piling up. Now I mainly write in a notebook and transfer over the ideas that have stuck after a few days
Yeah for me Google docs is more about organizing my ideas rather than being what I write with.
I use a wiki (self hosted DokuWiki) to keep my current dnd campaign world organized. I create a page per NPC, region, settlement, event, faction, and such. I can cross link them together (which people are in which factions, which factions have relationships, which settlements they operate out of…). I find it helps me keep organized. Plus I can upload pictures or maps to add visuals.
I love pen and paper but find cross referencing less effective for me. So I’m not against writing down my ideas where ever (paper, phone, note on computer) and will transcribe to wiki later.
Sounds a lot like obsidian. Cool!
Yeah I the other experience will be familiar. I liked that my data stayed in-house but it did mean I had to run software on a server myself.
Cool
For the first two years all the world building happened on yellow office post-it notes. The organization was taking pictures of them and dumping them in a file on my desktop labeled “scifi thing”.
I actually kinda love that.
For new projects I start with Google docs. If I remain interested in it, then I migrate it over to World Anvil
World Anvil is cool but I don’t want to pay for it personally.
Definitely understandable, and their free tier is pretty limited
Currently I’m writing plain text files and sync them across devices with syncthing. Synchronizing is a chore though, because if I forgot to do it before writing chances are they will get conflicts
nice
I use Joplin.
Never heard of it, i’ll look it up.
For the most part, I use plain text documents. Maybe cell sheets for some stuff.
I used to write on basically any piece of paper that would come my way, up to and including stuff that I should really have kept clean. Stupid amounts of halfway filled notebooks, bills and receits, work memos and sometimes even important docs wrong face up on the desk… Never the proverbial napkin though (pen goes right through that crap). After ending up with huge folders that ate too much space and basically made it impossible to find my way through stuff I got an e-ink tablet. Now it’s just as much of a mess but I can at least cary it around and I don’t have to worry about some kind of work related stuff randomly having alien morphology specs on it. When I’m in good spirits, like most people here it seems, I will try to make sense out of it and put it on an organized Word file.
I love the idea of an e-ink tablet for worldubuilding. What model/brand do you have?
I use a Remarkable 2. It’s a bit pricey, especially when factoring in the cost of the stylus and the keyboard-case accessory. However, for my use which includes taking meeting memos at work on top of my worldbuilding, it’s actually very well suited. I wouldn’t have gotten it just as a hobby device I think. The battery is great, stylus is very close to a paper feel though the tips gets blunt rather quickly… Aaand I’m starting to sound like I’m trying to sell it. Tbh the software is very minimalistic so there are probably more versatile options out there, but for the purpose of having basically a blank page at hand whenever required, I must say that it’s nailing it totally.
This is one my greatest hurdles. I was using obsidian for a while as well and had some success but had similar problems with motivation. I’ve liked Legend Keeper but dislike the pricing model. Currently I’m just disorganized and throwing ideas into the notes app on my phone which is far from ideal.
Try a notebook! It works great for me. I take bullet points in one with ideas and then write a “wiki” page when I’ve finalized ideas.
Self-hosted MediaWiki, the same software as Wikipedia. Not for the tech-unsavvy. It works for me, but may not for you.
I use Notion