TiddlyWiki, not TikiWIki; the latter is a conventional PHP-based Wiki that’s designed to be edited by multiple users, whereas TiddlyWiki is nothing but an ingenious hack based on a single file of HTML and JavaScript, and was originally intended as a highly portable personal wiki-based notebook. There has been some work on multiuser edits and federation, but those aren’t use cases that are driving it strongly.
I’ve been using it as something akin to a logbook, or for organising my thoughts about games that I’m running (a campaign notebook, effectively). As an example of how I’ve so used it, here are my notes for a series of CoC games that I ran a couple of years back:
The Shadow Over Walmington
The question of how I’ve decided what to include in my Traveller TW is interesting, in that it’s been driven both what I’ve needed for my games, and by what TW can comfortably support. I’d had a previous attempt at a Traveller TW using the previous version of the software, which wasn’t entirely satisfactory because I had no principled way of getting world data into it. When TW5 came out, I decided to migrate/rewrite my code and make a concerted effort to use T5SS as the glue which could tie together the rest of the entries. This wasn’t a great success; the way that I use TW templates and macros for rendering means that TW struggles with much over a sector or two, let alone the 11,000 3I worlds and those of neighbouring states.
I’ve decided to keep the full gazetteer of sectors and subsectors, and only go down to system data for a) the sector in which I’ve set a scenario and b) “important” worlds elsewhere (capitals of large polities, homeworlds of major races).
On top of that, there’s some general framing that’s useful for players to help them understand the system data: explanations of governments, installations, tech levels and trade codes; information about allegiances and sophonts (minor races from the chosen sector, plus some background on all major races).
After that, I’ve tried to pull in general information about the organisation and history of the 3I, and for large neighbouring polities where appropriate. Basically, the sort of thing that I’d expect to find in a single-volume paper encyclopaedia or something like the CIA World Factbook. So, high level information on government and armed forces, diplomatic relations and history (conflicts, succession of rulers, etc).
Your characterisation of it as a campaign guide is spot-on, but I’m pitching this primarily at my players (and if it helps me get the background sorted out in my head during the process of compiling it, so much the better). What I want is something with enough breadth that there’s a little about anything they might be interested in, enough depth to satisfy most of their questions, and enough entries that I can hide plot hooks and clues for later use without them sticking out because the library data is too sparse.
