Dungeon Decimal
How To Organize A Campaign
2025-08-18
I recently started running a new campaign for my friends. I have used vimwiki to organize my previous two games, and the wiki format has worked really well for me, so I’m using it again this time. It’s really convenient to be able to link easily between documents, and to search quickly.
The challenge with wiki organization in the past has been orphan pages. I might make a quick page to jot down some ideas, but never link it anywhere. And then I’d never find that page again unless I looked at a list of all pages, or suddenly organically remembered to search for that content.
In practice, it’s not that big of a deal. Vimwiki can easily generate a list of all pages to create an index. But I don’t always update the index after creating pages, and so there’s just enough friction there to make it a little difficult.
With this campaign, as I said I’m keeping vimwiki, and as an experiment I’m adding a decimal index a la Johnny Decimal.
00-09 System
00 Index
00.00 Index
01 Inbox
00.01 Random Ideas
02 Someday Maybe
03 Bookmarks
04 Decisions
10-19 Communications Logistics
10 System
10.01 Inbox
10.02 Someday Maybe
10.03 Bookmarks
10.04 Decisions
11 Communications
12 Schedule Cadence
13 Players
14 Safety and Worldbuilding
14.01 Lines Veils
14.02 World Palette
14.03 X-Card
20-29 Characters Groups Factions
20 System
20.01 Inbox
20.02 Someday Maybe
20.03 Bookmarks
20.04 Decisions
21 Player Characters
21.01 Morgan Fightmaster
21.02 Vito Matu
21.03 Ani diPlanko
21.04 Korvac Oathsworn
22 Non Player Characters
22.01 List Of Npcs
23 Factions
23.01 Mollusks
23.02 Fungoids
30-39 Worldbuilding
30 System
30.01 Inbox
30.02 Someday Maybe
30.03 Bookmarks
30.04 Decisions
31 History
31.01 First Age Draco-Jotun Wars
31.02 Second Age Goblin Empire
31.03 Third Age Modern Age
32 Geography
32.01 Banankoki
32.02 Panru
32.03 Banwel
32.04 Banti
32.05 Koki
32.06 Komoru
33 Cosmology
33.01 Moons
33.01 Selene
33.02 Dion
33.03 Moonmoon
34 Politics
35 Religion
35.01 Pantheon
36 Races
36.01 Elves
36.02 Dwarves
36.03 Humans
36.04 Goblins
36.05 Goliaths
36.06 Tieflings
36.07 Ratkin
36.08 Dragons
36.09 Giants
36.10 Centaurs
36.11 Kobolds
36.12 Porks
37 Dungeons and Underground
37.01 Whence and Wherefore Dungeons
37.02 Underworld
38 Monsters and Non-Playable Races
38.01 Bitebat
38.02 Snat
39.03 Bush Brat
40-49 Sessions Plots Arcs
40 System
40.01 Inbox
40.02 Someday Maybe
40.03 Bookmarks
40.04 Decisions
41 Session Recaps
41.2025-04-22 Sessions 0 and 0.5
41.2025-05-07 Tainted Spring I
41.2025-06-03 Tainted Spring II
41.2025-06-17 Travel
41.2025-06-24 Beartown
41.2025-07-15 Breach I
41.2025-07-29 Breach II
42 Future Planning
42.2025-05-07 Taint
43.2025-06-03 Hex
43.2025-06-24 Beartown
43.2025-07-08 Breach
43.2025-08-12 Bounty
43 Arcs
44 Fronts
44.01 The Underdeep Rises
44.02 Mollusk Wars
44.03 Draco-Jotun Awakening
50-59 Reference Materials
51 Procedures
51.01 Hexcrawling and Overland Travel
51.02 Crafting
51.03 Fishing
51.04 Tension
51.05 Renown
52 Random Tables
52.01 Weather
52.02 Terrain Type Travel Modifier
52.03 NPC Reaction
52.04 Encounter Type
52.05 What Are They Doing
52.06 Recurring NPC
52.07 Giantkin
52.08 Underworld Denizen
52.09 Point of Interest
52.10 Dragon
52.11 Wizard
52.12 Overtable
52.13 Grassland
52.14 Forest
52.15 Hills
52.16 Mountains
52.17 Road
52.18 Omens
52.19 Riddles
52.20 Rumors
52.21 Lesser Griffins
52.22 Beartown Denizens
52.23 Encounter Proximity
52.24 Puzzles
60-69 Currently not in use
70-79 Currently not in use
80-89 Creative Inputs
81 Design Elements
82 Texts
83 Images
84 Photos
85 Audio
86 Video
87 Platform-specific instructions
90-99 Creative OutputsThis is the landing page of my wiki. It keeps things relentlessly organized. No new pages get created without first being listed here in the index. There are never orphan pages any longer.
Every “leaf” of the tree in the index—that is, every line with a decimal point—is a wikilink to another page.
Over time I have started to create a mental model of the system. I know I spend most of my time in the 40s prepping sessions, and in the 50s creating random tables and documenting procedures, and in the 30s doing worldbuilding. Handouts and materials for my players get documented in the 80s and 90s.
But in practice, I don’t ever remember that, e.g. 51.03
is the procedure for our fishing minigame. I just start searching for
“fishing” and vimwiki finds it.
Things that are not actually wiki content like handouts and materials are not capable of existing in the wiki. At least not the way vimwiki does wikis. But I store the PDFs, source files, and what have you alongside the wiki files and the index still lists the filenames so I can quickly find them and open them.
In this way, the index is perfectly capable of refering to things that exist outside the wiki, in the filesystem, online, or even in the physical world. (“Where are the paper minis I made for that ogre encounter?”)
It is working well for me at the moment. Most of the time, it seems overkill. But it doesn’t take any time to administer, and it keeps things super organized. So I don’t see any downside to it right now.