This instance has downvotes turned off. My understanding is that since your account is from an instance that uses them, you can see and use the button, but it doesn't affect Beehaw posts. I believe the intentions are usually good for why downvotes exist, as you've mentioned, but since people will use them to disagree or otherwise spread negativity (think how vote brigading happens on reddit) it's disabled here altogether. Hope that helps!
Another suggestion is to check out some writing prompts and see if anything jumps at you. I don't write much, but when I do it's because an idea just... sticks to me. @morgiedama mentions dreams, which sometimes inspire me as well.
Unfortunately my favorite source of writing prompts is r/WritingPrompts (currently in the process of saving the ones I've marked over the years) but hopefully there are other sources around as well that might jump start the creative juices a little.
Oh man, Clank Catacombs looks right up my alley. Thanks for the suggestions, I'll have to keep these in mind the next time I add to my collection of board games.
If you can make a tool work for you, that's what matters in my opinion. If not, well, not every tool is for everyone and that's cool too.
I probably wouldn't have spent much time on it if I couldn't just pick up sections and move them around the screen all willy-nilly. I thought it was neat, so the program held my attention where normally mind maps aren't my thing.
I'm honestly not great with mind maps either, but it was a more fluid way to hold information. I actually redownloaded FreeMind and pulled up the old mindmaps - oh nostalgia.
One of them is to help keep track of character details and relations. Nodes were whether they were a main character, minor character, someone referenced in passing, and then the character name, and then a breakdown of details around them (family, special abilities). I think I also intended to include major plot points I wanted to hit as well, as I was big on planning at the time.
The second was going to take place in a made-up world, so that one has character details and also location details, so I could keep everything straight and have one document to reference to make sure I was being consistent.
Of course, neither of these ever got written, so take it how you will haha. I think the map was just more visually appealing than a list of these items, since related things can be linked easier than in a doc.
My best friend and I used to play SubTerra when we hung out every weekend. Company that originally made it is sketchy for a number of reasons, but they're also gone now and another company owns the games. It's a tile based game where you are trying to escape a cave system with monsters in it and you create the board as you play. Each character has abilities to help this and there's a turn limit you have to escape in. It can be really addicting.
I also really enjoy Campy Creatures and Space Park - they're pretty simple games (same creators) that a great for a group of 3-5. Campy Creatures is a little bit like War, where each player gets a hand of monsters and the highest number wins. There are "people" cards laid out and winning lets you pick who you take, with the people having point values assigned (which is what ultimately determines the winner). Hopefully I explained it okay. Space Park is very different - the goal is to get 20 victory points, which are mostly earned by completing tasks. There are 6 "locations" you travel to which give you various resources to help you complete the tasks.
I also love playing Quiddler - it's a fun word game, nothing super complex about it unless you play with people who make up words (we have a rule that half the table has to agree that it's a word).
These come out a lot at my game nights, hopefully I did them justice with my descriptions.
I do the same as you with Google Docs - it honestly never occurred to me to use something fancier. I did used to use a mind map software when I had grand ambitions of writing longer works, FreeMind.
While I would love to use pen and paper, my handwriting is a mess and it would get lost long before I ever moved it to a digital format.
I definitely haven't been as interested in reading comments on Reddit - I still go for the pet pictures and the funny gifs while I can, but between all the drama and bots, I agree that it's nice to have another platform I'm more interested in.
Anything featuring writing prompts is something I like. I don't write as often as I'd like, but that would be the most likely to grab me and, even when I don't contribute, I like to save prompts I like to reference when I am in a writing mood.
Hmm, they might be visible because you're viewing it through your instance and someone on an instance with them enabled downvoted, but I can't be sure. This would be a better question for Beehaw Support, or maybe even Lemmy support since I'm not sure we have an answer based on my current understanding.