Forums » Smalltalk » On using Google Drive for lore docs...

I've been copying and doing some general fix-up work on my group in a new Google Drive folder on my public-facing Google account. Eventually I will likely use this as a de-facto lore page for the group, because it would be easier to share on Discord and have backups of, as well as allow me to organize information better than group pages might. (There will always be basic info on the group site though.)

However, I've never made docs specifically in Google. I've only ever used it for backups on my private (main) account, or for online character sheets for running TTRPGs online without relying on a VTT such as Roll20. (God I hate Roll20...) So my "organization" right now is a bunch of text docs without hyperlinks that are just in folders.

The more I add to it, the less... organized this seems to be.

Anyway, here's my question in a nutshell: How do you all organize larger lore docs? I know there are other people besides myself here who use Google Drive in this way and I'm looking for practical examples.

Also, uh, when do you find it better to use a Google Doc, a Sheet, or a Slide? I don't even know what a Slide is, except some TTRPG resources are Google Slides. The only Google Sheet I've ever made was a backlog of all the video games I might want to stream someday.

A standard organization method is simply having a table of contents at the start, ideally linking to the sections.

For most general usage, Docs will be best. Sheets are basically just Excel sheets, meant for lists and a bit of info processing (for example, I built a battle odds calculator in Sheets for a little Discord game I used to play a lot); basic lists and tables can still be easily displayed in Docs, though. Slides are basically PowerPoint, intended to provide visual accompaniment to presentations.

I'll also mention that while I do certainly appreciate how useful Google Drive can be for keeping or sharing info, I personally strongly prefer to only use it for things I keep to myself since it attaches the name you used for your Google account to it. Even when looking at documents set up by others, it still displays a little icon for everyone looking at that document at that moment, and anyone logged into a Google service will be identified by name to everyone else looking at it at the same time.

The privacy concern is an issue to me, but as far as I've been able to tell, it just shows people as anonymous if a folder is set to "anyone with the link", viewing a public file with both my accounts showed the other as things like "anonymous rhino" for example. I don't know if it always does that or if it's a setting I can enable, but I'm hoping it just does that by default.

I originally thought it'd do that, but there's a few documents I have access to that's open to anyone with the think, and I'll see some people as anon and others identified all on the same document at the same time. I've also looked at docs awhile logged into different accounts and both were identified to both.

+1 index page rec

and put linkbacks to the index in case readers don't want two windows open i guess

(the gdocs folders opt is... frustrating. probably could just get a webbed site for it all, like a, like one of them freebs, squarespace or wordpress sommat, idk what's up to date for format)

There's actually services more directly geared at, like, worldbuilding stuff by now, like World Anvil. I know there's others, too, but not recalling them offhand. Down side is setting up requires a new account (if a person hasn't already signed up with the relevant service). They tend to have some features locked behind paywalls, too. (Then again, there's that concept of "if it's free, you're the product." But paid services will datamine too, often, so... it can be tricky.)

not at all Google docs related, but dropping a recommendation of toyhouse for organizing your worlds and world building.

there's a small entry level barrier of needing to know basic html to edit templates, BUT ive found it much more user friendly. i tried organizing my world building in docs a few years ago and it was awful lmfao

i haven't utilized any of the forums or extra pages, but here's an example of a world building setup i have there: *bonk*

unless you're insistent on css, all the features are free. just gotta hunt down someone with codes i suppose.

I'm allergic to HTML myself, but thanks for the resource. I like plain text, sensible folder hierarchies, and simple BBcode. The most complicated programming I can do with any competence is like, Twine games. (Which use some javascript at worst.) Dunno why but HTML is black magic to me.

The privacy concern is a big enough deal to me that I'm re-evaluating using docs as a public repo though. I could realistically just pay for pages on RPR and sort my group that way, I was just looking for a free way to contain the info instead. (Sorry Kim. ) I'm not sure I want to sign up to one more site that paygates features like World Anvil does either. To me, it's taking a worse service than Drive can offer me for the sake of privacy, that's what the cost ends up being to me.

I could also probably just make lore channels in a Discord server but Discord itself has a lot of privacy concerns...

google lets you have subaccounts under your main one, so one solution (if it's the real name/personal details you're concerned about) would be to use one of those. you can enter a sort of "pen name" instead of your legal one, like Aard Bei or something similar lol. i use one for editing purposes. shows up as "Luscin" and the subaccount's email under who owns the document. no identifying information

afaik the only way to have total privacy is to set your doc to restricted/authorized, which...isn't really plausible, as you'd have to get the email of and authorize every single person individually. you can use "only people with the link can access", but that means anyone - regardless of if they got it from you or their friend's friend - with it can hop on.

whaaaat, not a fan of accidentally deleting one <div> tag and having the whole thing go to shit?

I'm not worried about it for me, I do actually have a sub-account I do everything with (although Google forces me to see others' docs with my main account instead of my sub account which becomes a bother when looking at others' docs.) so that's less the issue than my concern about others' privacy.

Also... No I can't say I'm a terribly huge fan of that haha. The people who get by on HTML/CSS are a different kind of wizard...

BBCode is pretty much based on HTML, just less necessarily repetitive. JavaScript is considered significantly more advanced (being an actual scripting language) than HTML or CSS.

ok tbf though css is literally a descent into insanity, i will code html all day before i even consider breathing in the general direction of css

Will admit, CSS is weird to first learn, and has some odd quirks... but it starts getting pretty easy once you get the hang of it, so long as you maintain practice with it (like any other skill). For awhile, it was pretty much second nature to me (at least the stuff that didn't get into animation aspects and whatnot, that was introduced a little late for me to get much chance to play with it). HTML and CSS were a breeze once I got the concepts. I was getting there with JS & jQuery, but... lordy it's been awhile... I used to be a tutor, actually. Though, the most common issue people had was getting link/file structure (for relative linking) down... I actually ended up creating a worksheet to share since it was just such a common problem. @_@

But very few things require a person work with any of those, especially CSS and JS. Visual editors abound, and some of them seem like they're maybe not total garbage (also been awhile since I tried just about any of them).

...y'all aren't talking about dealing with in-line CSS, are you? Because... yeah, that's definitely something to avoid whenever possible.