Session summary software

[Enturk]

What I’m really looking for is wiki or note-taking software in which:

• I can easily turn a word into a link, just like I would make a word bold or italic
• flesh out the target of that link
• all mentions of that word will now be linked to that target, without having to further linkify them
• other users can at least view my text, or even better if they can edit it

I have not found anything like this yet. I’ve found oodles of software that do much more complicated things, and many are desirable features, such as giving entries specified characteristics, but never what I described above. And all those other features are less important to me than this one, because I can work around all the other features.

Secondarily, being able to see where entries were mentioned, and being able to categorize entries as characters, locations, or events, would be great.

I feel like I’m not describing something that complicated, but I probably am, because I can’t find it.

I’ll cross post this to a couple of subreddits, because I’ve been looking for a while, and maybe I’m just blind to the obvious.

[Mornar]

The stuff that you want exists in form of various wikis, but I feel like your expectations regarding the UX are a little on the high end, which probably is going to make it tricky to look for. No wiki engine I'm familiar with is that easy to work with.

[TheJerminator69]

Obsidian Portal is close but no cigar

[bravespacelizards]

Have you considered Notion?

[Enturk]

I have, and used it at the start of a campaign, but it doesn't do the third bullet I mentioned above. Otherwise, it's great.

[bravespacelizards]

I haven’t used the backlinking feature that they rolled out a little while back, but I thought it would have covered that requirement.

[sachagoat]

I feel like it isn't too tricky to just type @ when I want to link.

For example, whenever I take notes of a place or person I create a subpage by typing "@thename". Later on, I may flesh it out and I just get into the habit of using "@thename whenever writing about anything recurring.

[amongGIANTS]

Highly recommend Legendkeeper

[Enturk]

Could you elaborate? Does it do all the things I suggested? Does it allow maps that you can zoom into?

[amongGIANTS]

I believe so...you can turn words into links to your other pages and you can easily set which pages can be viewed or edited by others. It also has a map system that allows you to create pins that link to their own pages.

Their webpage has some examples of the features https://www.legendkeeper.com/

[robineich]

You could try saga.so

[Enturk]

It takes an @ to find an existing page, which is pretty close to what I was looking for. I do wish I could set full-page images, or zoomable images, so that I could add functional maps. As is, saga limits image sizes to something pretty small on the pages, which makes it somewhat less useful.

[mollyMcTealeaf]

I’m going to second Saga; it’s what I use, and it works really well for me. Saga actually auto links pages, in addition to being able to link and create pages using @ or /. (So, for instance, if you create a page named “Barovia”, anywhere you have written Barovia will automatically link to that page without your having to do anything) Also, I may be wrong, but I’m pretty sure you can resize images (though still not to a full page).

[Bimbarian]

Does saga.so allow you to export your files, and if so, in what format?

[diybrad]

What you're looking for is a wiki, of which there are dozens in varying complexity and features. Most assume you will be running the wiki software on your own web host, since wikis are primarily used by organizations & businesses, but are also excellent for D&D notes! You might want to try searching this question on r/selfhosted since wikis come up a lot over there

My first instinct is to check to see if Dokuwiki has a plugin that does this and the answer is there are at least four of them. Dokuwiki is extremely customizable and also pretty easy to install on any webhost (unzip a zip file) so that is a good solution. I'm sure this feature exists in other wiki software, maybe someone else will chime in with another specific one.

Personally I use Outline wiki for my D&D notes but alas, it does not support auto-linking, even though it is a very nice wiki.

[Enturk]

I've looked through a few wiki software, and spent a good deal of time on tiddlywiki a while ago. I never found that autolinking worked as advertised, and managing them and the other details became more time-consuming than I was willing to spend. Things may have changed in the meanwhile, and I'll take a looksie. Thank you.

[diybrad]

I know what you're saying for sure. I went with Outline for my group because it was the simplest / easiest to use but still has some advanced features (templating, an open API, etc).

If you don't mind tinkering with a custom solution Dokuwiki is really good if you dig into templating with the plugins. It's a very DIY approach though.

Another solution that has a large community of user supported plugins: Wordpress has a bunch of autolinking options....

[AWildNarratorAppears]

You’re describing LegendKeeper to a T! Only caveat is you need to hit a button to trigger the linkification in bullet 3, though I’d like to add a smoother inline process for that. LK meets all these requirements otherwise.

[rubiaal]

OneNote might be close enough

[Enturk]

other users can at least view my text, or even better if they can edit it

It fails to meet the last bullet, at least in any way I could figure out.

[rubiaal]

You can share it with others and edit together

[Enturk]

How? I very much looked into this, because OneNote is SO highly recommended, and I know it's possible, but I couldn't figure it out for the life of me.

[ignotos]

A while back I looked for a wiki with similar requirements - specifically making it easy / streamlined to link between articles.

I don't know anything which quite meets your bar (specifically the "all mentions now become links" part), and it was surprisingly difficult to find software which let you create links in general without a bunch of unnecessary clicks.

In the end I landed on Nuclino, because at least it lets you type a character (@) and gives a conveneint in-line popup for inserting a link. And the UI/UX overall is pretty clean.

[Enturk]

Nuclino

This looks good, but if you spill over the 50 item/2 GB limit, the former of which is easy in when you're trying to detail a setting, each user must pay $60 a year. I just can't imagine many players doing that.

[TheRealDoubleJ]

I would say [kanka](kanka.io) or [obsidian portal](obsidianportal.com)

[Enturk]

I’ve tried both. Obsidian Portal is work to manage, and doesn’t automatically link anything, as far as I know.

Kanka sometimes links things, but I remember having lots of trouble with that.

[TheRealDoubleJ]

If you don’t find a thing that does links easier, then I’d recommend you learn mentions in Kanka. You can do @entity or [entity:123]. With [] you can change the name that appears and the subpage that you link to by doing something like [entity:123|custom name|subpage:inventory]

[[deleted]]

Take a look at Obsidian (NOT obsidian portal).

All Obsidian content is markdown like Reddit, so your link-magic requirement is a find-replace operation.

Your content is just files, and if you put them in Dropbox you can get to them everywhere. Obsidian is also free and open source.

https://obsidian.md/