Thanks for having this conversation. It's tricky stuff. And it's important. I know
@Gary F is frustrated as well with figuring out structures.
Truth is, we've created a sandbox type app on purpose. Twitter meets Wiki to help game masters make and find notes fast.
Version 1 of CL was created with minimal structure based on our vision of how GMs could manage their game inofrmation. There are many modes of thinking, and we wanted the app to work for each GM's way of doing things.
Since the release of CL in 2015, one consistent piece of feedback was the limited character count for Log Entries.
We made Log Entries limited to roughly 300-400 words for several important reasons, chief being the tag feature. If tags are buried in long entries, it becomes difficult for the Twitter slash fast-reference philosophy to succeed.
Imagine a long web page. When you hit CTRL+F it comes back with several hits. That forces you to CTRL+G through each hit until you find the section you need to reference.
By slicing and dicing your campaign data into small bits, you can find what you need almost instantly in CL.
However, we agreed that longer entries are advantageous. I wanted them myself as singular library entries for backstories, adventure plans, and anything that was hard to read when broken up into small chunks.
Thus Campaign Entries were born. With 250,000 characters, that should be enough space to input any kind of long-entry article of information.
However, this poses a new problem. Or, actually, it resurfaces an old problem that made us create CL in the first place: lightning fast searches and references.
I don't want to sit at the game table and hit CTRL+G again and again to find a stat block, encounter, or detail in a long entry.
The Campaign Entry feature is just a baby right now. We built it without a specific use case in mind. We need everyone's help to share how they're using CL vNext, and where the friction points are. There's no single best way to use this tool. We need to invent best practices and cool uses and hacks for it now.
Unlike CL 1, where we had a specific vision that we delivered on, this 250K character Campaign Entry feature is new to us too, and we created it to meet demand and deliver it in a way that does not defeat our still existing vision of Twitter meets Wiki.
What we have today for this beta state tool are these known and hard-coded factors:
- A GM can have multiple Campaigns
- A Campaign can have multiple Logs
- A Log has multiple Log Entries
This gives us a basic hierarchy:
CL vNext introduces this new hard-coded factor:
- Every Log Entry has one - just one - Campaign Entry, which is optional:
Where our mental model gets funky is with this addition new hard-coded factor:
- A Campaign can have multiple Campaign Entries (the 250K character entries)
This means Campaign Entries live within Campaigns and across many Logs.
A Campaign Entry for
@JohnnFour can be referenced in a planning Log, an adventure module Log, a world Log, an ideas Log, and an SRD rules rule for example.
@JohnnFour's Campaign Entry can be referenced by all those Logs, which is pretty handy.
Thus, we called items in Logs, Log Entries. And items in Campaigns that are shared by multiple Logs of a Campaign, Campaign Entries.
We can rename all these things if desired. But it seems different GMs think of the tool in different ways, and have different definitions or semantics for word.s So it's been a tricky exercise.
Evernote is my primary notes tool for things outside of my campaigns. It's for business, personal, writing, and so on.
But I rejected Evernote three times over four years because I did not understand its design philosophy.
I like to nagivate by lists, menus, and nested hierarchies of things. I like to see the visual relationships of my information:
Evernote back then didn't work like this, so I didn't understand it.
Only until a friend said to use Evernote more like Google than an Encyclopedia did I get it.
"Oh, I see. I Tag notes then use search to bring up the information I need by tag or string."
Apparently, other evernote users struggled too. Because they introduced Notebooks and a side bar with vertical, linear, hierarchical navigation. They also added Recent Notes and Tags listings. Then they added Bookmarks.
That definitely made me happier. I was ok managing my information and Notes in a "pool" and using search and scrolling to find specific Notes. But adding a vertical, hiercarchical nav really helped.
I think CL vNext needs the same.
Many people's brains remember an "image" of information
location based on where it sits within a hierarchy or list. Even if that location is imaginary. The brain wants visual + static location to orient itself.
Just having a pool of Campaign Entries and Log Entries at your finger tips with search and alphabetical listings is to ethereal for many folks. I'd prefer a hierchical navigation too.
So I think that's what vNext needs the most right now. Some way to list Log Entries and Campaign Entries together in a vertical navigation where you can group and nest them as desired.
@JochenL and I have chatted about this. I'm not sure if it's possible. But it's a feature I'd vote for.
As for naming things, we're looking for more suggestions. Articles and Library items did not get overwhelming support.
We have the hard-coded rules listed above.
We have Campaigns and Logs. And we have "entries" with rules related to each "container" of Campaign or Log.
We need more naming suggestions.