I’ve been thinking a lot recently about tools to help me prepare for my sessions. Recent sessions seem to have had a lot of moving parts for which I have felt the need to do a large amount of prep, and although I have an extensive library of books of ideas, monsters, rules, city building, locations, NPCs and establishments, and although I have more maps and map tiles than I can ever use, both electronic and physical, I still find myself stuck for inspiration, and unable to find “that thing” which I’m looking for.
I feel there must be a tool which can help me with this, so I’ve decided it’s time to do some market research.
What I do now
When looking at process improvement, the first step is to look at what is being done now. Warts and all – not what we know we should be doing, but what is actually happening. So here’s my current approach.
My campaign is a series of Word documents, one for each “section” of adventure, where a section is something that has a natural completion point. For example, my first section started with the PCs in a marketplace which had demonic worms (a nerfed version of the Plaresh from the Kobold Press Creature Catalog) suddenly bursting up through the ground and attacking the people in the market. The PCs banded together to kill the worms, and then the city guard encouraged them to investigate where these worms had come from, so part 1 also included the partly-flooded cellars beneath the market, which contained a summoning circle with the bodies of the people who had summoned the demons, plus some more worms and dretches and a portal which kept summoning more. There was also more in the cellars for them to investigate.
Part 2 had them sent into caverns underneath the city where more demons were terrorising the native kobold population.
Part 3 had them following a title deed and a list of names, to discover the flat (apartment) was owned by one of the people on the list of names, who had been assassinated and his ghost still occupied the flat.
Etc.
Within the Word doc – which is typically a few pages, and typically covers 5-10 sessions – I have summary notes, location descriptions, maybe a map or two, stat blocks, maybe some NPCs. We are currently working through section 18.
I also have a separate document of stat blocks which I have developed over the years, which I used to copy-and-paste into the session doc, but which I have recently printed out A5 and put into poly-pockets in an A5 ring binder, so that I can take out the relevant sheets at the table.
Along with this I have an index card per character with basic stats – name, STR, etc, languages, proficiencies (Persuasion, Animal Handling, etc) with bonuses – but only those they are proficient in –and a couple of other notes if they seem relevant.
I also have my session tracker, which I print out new for each session, with quick stats for the PCs, time tracking, a section where I can put in stat summaries for NPCs or monsters I think they might encounter, and my initiative and battle tracker, where I put each creature in initiative order and track the non-PC hit points through the battle. This is accompanied by the character initiative tents – both PC and monster – which I put on my GM screen in initiative order so everyone can see who is coming next. These are put into a template in Affinity Publisher and printed off, 16 to a sheet.
And there are various other reference documents, particularly the religions, and a load of hand-outs which I have prepared over the sessions (these are shared with my players via DropBox).
Review
This works reasonably well for me, but also has limitations.
The good:
- I have a sheet I can refer to at the table during the session, though I do find myself flipping forward and back
- The A5 stat blocks is working quite well, and I can put monster initiative tents in the poly-pocket with their stat block…but it’s starting to get unwieldy
- Having a thumbnail map helps, but Word is really bad for managing this
- Having all my sessions to hand helps me to find location descriptions and characters again, and refer back to what items they found
- The session trackers are a place where I can scribble notes of what happened, so also provide a record, particularly of things I improvised during the session
- Having my index cards means I can check which characters are proficient at a particular skill during the session, without having to alert them to the fact it might be relevant by asking
Room for improvement:
- I don’t have a record of locations, so if the characters go back somewhere (which happens quite a lot in a city) I have to try to remember which session it was described in and refer back to those notes, or just rely on my memory
- Similar for NPCs. I have some key NPCs I have printed out as stat blocks, but mostly they’re just collected within the session
- Preparing a new stat block is now fairly quick based on my template, but there’s a lot of repetition
- Preparing the maps is fiddly – Word really isn’t good at image layout
- I can never find an appropriate map. I have a lot of options, but the full-blown physical maps never quite match what I’m after, and I have so many map sections that finding what I’m after always seems more trouble than it’s worth
- Also, I don’t like putting down a full map and letting the players see everything, since there’s no fog-of-war with a physical map (if anyone could invent a way to achieve this I’d be straight on that KickStarter!)
- I have so many electronic maps (particularly the gorgeous artwork from Heroic Maps) that again, it’s difficult to find if I have the map that fits what I’m looking for – and then I have to print it off, and chop it up if I don’t want the players to see what’s coming
What I want
Okay, that’s the review of what I’ve got. What do I want from a tool?
- I can prepare notes for a session as a document, ideally keyed to one or more maps
- I can easily add NPCs and monsters, filling in a stat block with the info I need
- I can find, link in and refer to existing NPCs and locations
- I can link in existing NPC and monster stat blocks
- I can search my map collection for the perfect map
- I can print out my session notes for use at the table
- I can print out the NPCs – both stat blocks and session tents
- I can quickly refer back to things from other sessions
- I can key everything to one or more overview maps – maybe different scales such as city, region, country, continent
- Ideally, I would be able to import my current session history
- …and it has to work better than typing into Word
The search commences…
To be worth switching, whatever I find has to be an improvement on my current way of working. Time to try a few contenders.
At the moment I am aware of:
- Sly Flourish recommends using Notion and has put together a Notion Campaign template
- Johnn Four has developed Campaign Logger
- World Anvil is designed for world-building, but has campaign features
I will try to dedicate a post to each one for initial impressions and how well they meet my needs.
Are there any other tools I should look at?
