[3.5] How do DMs organize their campaign, and their info/notes?

[Pika...]

I am trying to put together a spreadsheet system of some kind, but am lost as how to start. For the past 2-somthing years it had been mostly in my head, and as I go with general big plots in mind, but I want something more concrete now.

There is also the issue that I run Sandbox, so that make it impossible?

I am thinking a spreedsheet for the various kingdoms/settlements with the settlement/kingdom name to the left, and above my world's calendar dates for a year period, then I plug in all the major events that happen in each location each day one would happen? No clue...

How do you all do it? Especially for a Sandbox game? Is there a good program for this?

[Corronchilejano]

I dont have my template here, but I use two:

1. Sessions
Here I place a VERY short explanation of what happened, followed by who played it, and how much Xp they got:
"They began in the cave by the water tunnels, finding out a big rock blocked the river. Three got petrified by a stone crystal but the rogue saved them. Found some gnolls that had no trouble dealing with. Found the tall man, never understood what he said. Finally decided to open the blocked rock with their picks. The current dragged Clara and the gnoll cleric, but she dragged them both to safety and beat him to submission. They got the darkness lamp, never cared about it. They're now resting in the cave, and can't go back through the tunnels.

Played by: Clara, Toro, Nadeleine and Helric.
All: +862xp.
Clara: +100xp for the idea that unblocked the tunnel.

2. Story
Here I keep dates in which important things happened, along with what it wants, and event, a place they got to, or an NPC they met:
891, February 13th - Campaing begins
891, February 15th - Awaken at the tunnels
891, February 17th - Arrive back at Mogila
891, February 18th - Leave for the Lion Ruins
891, February 20th - Toro dies
891, February 27th - Arrive at the Lion Ruins

Hope it helps.

[Pika...]

Sorry, I messed up. I meant more on the lines of planning it. Sorry...

[Corronchilejano]

Sorry, I messed up. I meant more on the lines of planning it. Sorry...

That's fine.

What you're trying to do is Titanical for a DM. I suggest you only get a "general" idea of whay might be happening and go along with it. Even sandbox campaings require a bit of planning in order to pull interesting stuff.

My two cents however:
- Make an excel spreadsheet with some names in there, and every cell to the right place possible encounters (events, whatever) in that city, organized by ECL.
- Create encounters that fit MOST of those situations. As many as possible.

Then, during your gaming session, using your creativity to place the encounter in the character's decision. It's harder in some places than others, but it's always worked for me.

For instance, if they don't know what they should do between going to a kingdom to participate in an arena or go hunt a giant that destroyed some farmers' house, in both cases I prepare encounters with humanoids (since they're both available in cities and forests), and whatever they choose, I place them there. Only the end boss (a hydra in the arena or the giant in the forest) changes, and the scenario.

I've found it works great when I don't have anything SPECIALLY prepared or characters have a lot of downtime between story events.

edit: You have to be good at improvising. Going through a forest is different than going through a city you know?

[LansXero]

I make a flowchart; although mostly in my mind. The PCs are at the middle of things, and have options around them. Every answer branches off into other options, and so on; kinda like a web. That also includes the world's reaction to the options they didn't take. Sorry if it doesnt make sense.

[nedz]

I'm not currently running a sandbox, but I have ran several in the past.

I take it your not talking about maps, gazeteers, etc.

I make an organisation map, showing the various guilds, temples, unions, whatever and use this to indicate which ones are allied/opposed etc. This isn't neccesarily static, but these things tend to change only slowly.

I then try to tie the PC's into this structure from their backgrounds. This gives me a subset of organisations which are going to be mainstream in the campaign. I then define the responsibilities and interests of the organisations of interest (those linked to the PCs, and thier opponents). I will then go on to define organisation maps, though these are always sketchy, since I will want to write things in later.

This gives me a framework onto which I can hang NPCs, and also some initial plot drivers. eg. PCs do a job for organisation X, where organisation Y opposes.

Now I can do the detailed fleshing out.

[Ozreth]

THE DM Notebook: http://sites.google.com/site/medic78...attredirects=0

Now, I haven't actually gotten around to making my own yet, but it is pretty amazing.

My best advice (other then making a DM notebook like the above one) is this:

Say it's a Forgotten realms campaign. have a 3 ring binder with tabs. Have an entry for each city/town/castle/whatever that is located in the region your players are currently in. A paragraph for the history, a paragraph for the current happenings, a table for NPC's and a table for random plot hooks by level. And a map.

This way if your players travel say from the high forest to mithral hall you can just flip to the mithral hall tab and know what you are in store for.

I just used FR as an example but you get the idea.

[dsmiles]

I mostly just wing it. I mean, really? The players are going to go straight off the rails anyways. So why bother?

[Anxe]

I drew a small map first that was only a portion of my campaign world. Later on I enlarged it to include other parts of the continent. Then I drew the rest of the world in. As I enlarged I wrote descriptions of each of the major cities and some of the minor ones. I kept these city descriptions in a single word file organized alphabetically. I keep all my D&D stuff in a folder on my computer.

Mydocuments/mygames/dungeonsandragons

In Dungeons and Dragons there are 6 different folders, Campaign, CC3, Other DMs, Pictures, Programs, and Rules. The D&D folder also holds character sheet pdfs which are not saved in their own pretty folder.

Campaign holds various notes I've made on my campaign. This includes adventure ideas, adventure descriptions, city descriptions, people descriptions, timelines, histories, a list of titles to use in place of classes, a list of deities, and other various notes about the fluff of my campaign.

CC3 holds the software for my favorite D&D program, Campaign Cartographer. You can look it up and find out more for yourself.

Other DMs holds files that my players send me when they try out DMing and describe their world in a text file. It also has a few notes that I make myself about their worlds.

Pictures holds pictures obviously. This is where I store the stuff from CC3 along with some pictures I download of cities, buildings, people, events, or monsters. I occasionally show these pictures to my players, but not that often.

Programs holds all my other D&D programs besides CC3. Maptool is a good one along with a bunch I downloaded from The Thieves Guild. You can check that out for yourself as well.

Rules holds all the crunchy stuff I've made up for my campaign as opposed to the fluff. House rule lists, monster stats, NPC stats that I write on the computer, all end up here. I also stuff some files from The Thieves Guild here as well, but I don't use those that often.

I don't think a spreadsheet system would work for me. It might work for you, but I'd suggest you only use that as an index of sorts. The body of your information should be in text files, not tables. Hope that in-depth description worked for ya.

[LansXero]

I mostly just wing it. I mean, really? The players are going to go straight off the rails anyways. So why bother?

Thats exactly why and why not bother, imho.

You should have a half-coherent idea of what else is going on in the world and whats out there for the players to find should they get òff the rails'.

You should probably not grow too attached to any specific events/people/descriptions. Your players dont know this is important for you, and if they ignore it/ mock it/ burn it / kill it / ruin it, you may start resenting them and losing interest or becoming antagonistic.

So you should and should not bother, based on your own personality and that of your players, imho.