RPG Tool: Way to manage world factions and events

Question

I'm searching for a tool to organize the events in my sandbox oriented RPG world.

I have a loosely interconnected world where news travel slowly, but steadily so when a trader from a far off place comes visiting your place, what does he know? Whats his latest perspective on that far away place?

There are various factions that sometimes interact. The group already has met some of them but not all of them.

My goal is to check what goes on in the various groups with a random chart (I can do that myself) and then keep track of each of the factions. I need a way to manage that consistently somehow.

I need to have a way to structure connections between key actors (Mayor of the city, some major traders, etc.) and a way to structure connections between places.

Some events that I would want to manage:

01.st day Planned Event: Traveller Caravan starts move from City A to City B.
14.th day Random Event: Mayor of City B got shot, currently warring factions within the city.
16.th day Playergroup: had fight with biker gang, nobody won. Disengaged after serious harm on both sides.
16.th day New faction: Biker Gang, roaming outskirts of City A. Plots against Playergroup.
28.th day Random Event: City C is struck by Tornado, old skyscrapers topple and destroy market.
...

My Problem is that I would want to have that as chronological element as presented above, but at the same time only for each of the factions. And a list of all the factions so that I can check upon them (enemies of the past!)

I thought about writing a program for that, so that I could drop an event, a date and a list of factions into it and get result lists or graphs out of it, but I thought maybe someone else already has a better way of doing just that.

Price: I don't really care, if its good and costs money, so be it. My books were expensive as well, so is my roll20 subscription.

OS: Online or Linux (the latter preferred)

Note: I asked this question on RPG.SE as well, but it was closed there as off-topic. After posting it here, there started a discussion about its topicality.

Answer 1

This looks like something that Scabard can do.

I used it to build a whole town, with areas, factions, faction leaders, events, hidden events. Once you have everything setup, you can hide everything, and then "reveal" things as your players discover parts, allowing them to go back and look at the history as well, making notes and comments, etc.

Since it's web based, there is nothing to download, so it will work with your online/linux preference.

Answer 2

I have used ikiwiki in the past for keeping track of places, people, and large plots. It is a wiki based of git which allows for off line collaborative work. Most files are in markdown format and converted into html on git push commands. You can use some clever css tricks to make the wiki prettier. It does not take long to install at all and the documentation is good.

Because it is git, you can add any files to the repository: images, SVG, PNG... Whatever. Even photos of the game sessions if you so wished.

Pros are that it's simple to use (markdown), can be worked on by many sources at once (git merge is good), and produces a wiki that can be read online. Also, because of all the links, it is easy to refer to something and fill that later.

Cons are that it is markdown, git, and unless you are a developer those are quiet a learning curve to use. Of course, you can use the web interface but that requires a connection. I had planned to let my players update it but all of them preferred to keep their notes in dead trees format.