I keep all of what happened in one journal, and everything else on the computer. All the maps, the schedules, and the character sheets using a gurps character sheet program (forgot what its called), because I run it through discord using a text format. I hardly plan anything besides what’s in my head.
Ive been trying to use different ways to plan besides just pure vibes. like using joplin, or some wiki format or even trying to do use a mindmap? But alas most of what I do is simulating what I believe would happen and keeping character sheets of possible enemies on hand.
So, I’m curious, what do you do?
I use Onenote, it’s free. Let’s you have a book with folders and pages. You can have blank lines dotted or graph paper. You can use it to search images uploaded to it. Combined with a surface pro to write on the screen I can do everything I want to from draw maps, edit character sheets and take notes. You can hyperlink between pages and print pdf’s into it. Fabulous piece of software for RPGs.
I use the superior method, a mess of illegible scribblings in a journal. I am trying to get better about it, though. And one thing im really trying to do is focus my prep on what the region is like, and what the important actors there are doing, and not on what i think the players will do. Every time I try to predict the pc actions they completely flip my prep on its head, so I want to go for more of an “informed improv” type prep
I felt the illegible scribblings in a journal because thats what I did when I was first starting to layout the setting. Even my maps look like that. I drew most of it in tuxpaint for that deranged feeling 🫣
I think that planning and keeping in mind what NPCs do through out makes the game feel “alive”. I try to do something like that, though I’m not sure how good I am at it. At most I just make recurring characters appear where they might be when a player enters a building or a setting occasionally
Lol! Yeah, im really trying to work on making the world alive. For my next campaign Im in the worldbuilding and planning phase right now, and Im planning to have the PCs be a mercenary group, who can be hired by various factions. But in between missions Im going to run a faction game with other players, so that the factions naturally evolve and actually hire players for their goals, so that the missions and world feel real. If all goes well anyway, I’m crossing my fingers lol
I hope it goes well 🫡🫡god speed! that sounds really cool lol I’d be too scared to try something like that. I like running smaller scale games
Haphazard scrawls on a notepad during the session, trying to not lose it in between the initiative orders and scribbled HP tracking from combats. After the session I try to collate it all into a OneNote where it’s all organised by campaign and plot element and theme.
Lately I’ve been moving from OneNote to Obsidian. Obsidian’s ability to link between files and then see the visual map of all the links is handy, and it can even detect mentions of a thing even if you didn’t link it at the time, so if something becomes important enough that you later decide to create an actual page for it, it’ll find all the places you previously mentioned it. Very useful.
Lol that visual map sounds super awesome and useful
Obsidian! Can’t recomment it enough! It’s simple, has everything I need and a shitton of plugins (dice roller, statblocks, Initiative tracker, fantasy calendar, a tool for working with maps with pins and everything, ability to embed all sorts of generators from generators websites, wiki styled notes and more!)
I’m a big fan of the Notion template from Sly Flourish. You can find it here: https://slyflourish.com/lazy_dnd_with_notion.html
This has been a lifesaver for me for years now. Just need to add some sections for world building and it’d be even better!
Thank you for the neat website! This looks so cool
MS OneNote is my preferred tool for this as you habe an infinite notebook and can doodle anywhere on its infinite pages. I usually have a chapter for rules, NPCs, Fluff (locations and past events), PCs (their history and plot hooks), with pages for e.g. combat rules, 1 page per NPCharacter etc. You can import pictures (and also paste them directly from ON to Discord) and share the notebook (or single pages) with others online.
Gm notes? what are those?
seriously though, I have someone in the party keep a journal of things that have happened. Then I keep a bullet point notes in a notepad or piece of paper that I have behind the GM screen.
Poorly! I do it poorly! :D
Characters are in GURPS Character Sheet, an (awesome!) open source character management program. I run our games through Foundry VTT, which handles all the combat tracking, HP/FP management, maps when I have them, etc. It also imports GCS files (and GCA, if that’s your flavor of character editor). Most of my other notes (events, generated people names for unexpected NPCs, etc) go in Google Keep notes. Notes that I have to take on the fly go into my notebook, where they go forgotten until the next session, more often than I’d like…
Fellow gurps character sheet user! Yea I was using that, thanks for reminding me. Its kinda sad that I didn’t know what it was called off the top of my head but it really is a nice program especially for being free and open source. It makes making characters in gurps MUCH easier than by hand which is useful for a gurps newbie like me.
Ive heard a lot about foundry! It looks really neat! I’m more of a theater of the mind gm but do u think it would be decent for a newbie like me if I ever wanted to try to use maps? (Not sure if I’m using those terms right 😅 )
For notes during/right after a session I have a notebook where I write by hand.
For planning, loose ideas etc I used to use Trello. It was serving me well for a long time (I’m still using it to save maps I might want to buy, interesting systems, links to tools, etc) but with time I felt I’m lacking a kind of big picture view.
So for campaign and adventure planning I’ve switched to obsidian.
- I like markdown
- With plugins you can create random generators
- I like that it’s simple. It’s just a bunch of files which I sync to my cloud
- The graph view lets me take a look at arches as a whole and find loose ends/underutilized facts
Between sessions: Google Docs (one document per campaign). Props and visual aids are handled separately, the campaign document is just for me to write down my ideas, session notes, etc.
During the session: I’ll print out the document and scribble on it with a pen as needed. I’ve tried editing the doc live (via laptop) during the game but it takes too long and requires too much focus to type as opposed to just jotting down/crossing out as we play.
For planning I used to use Scrivener pretty extensively, but I’ve since realized I can get most of the functionality I need with markdown, so I’ve been transitioning to that (mostly using hackmd.io).
During a session I’ll usually jot stuff down in a notebook, particularly for things like enemy stats during combat. Then (when I’m feeling sufficiently motivated) I’ll transfer that into markdown for writing up play reports.
Paper in a folder with index sheets. Old school as hell.
I tried Obsidian recently for a homebrew game and it worked really well to however.
I use cherrytree. It has hierarchical note taking, hyperlinks and anchors. I make separate nodes for separate note categories. It works well for me, keeps stuff mostly organized.
I use obsidian, and git to sync between devices.
I use WorldAnvil for all my GM stuff :D Got my notes in their notebook, my worldbuilding in articles, etc etc. It’s a bit of a heavy program unless you’re going hard on worldbuilding, but I do go hard on worldbuilding so it’s perfect for me.
Used to use onenote before, but those aren’t really searchable last I checked.