How To Organize D&D Campaign Notes | DM Journal Tips
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- Опубликовано: 8 сен 2024
- Kelsey from The Arcane Library explains how to set up your Dungeon Master notebook for success when you begin a new campaign!
This is Kelsey's battle-tested process for keeping her campaign notes organized, reasonable, and effective.
All you need is a pen, notebook, and about ten minutes!
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Bullet journaling + two-page "control panel" style spreads = FIRE!
I feel like we should coin the term "DuJo" for Dungeon Journal. Other candidates were "DaJo" for Dart Journal, since D&D features bullets less often...
@@weaktwos DuJo is a very cool idea!
I think you should write a PDF combining this with your Dungeon Master Tools, I would buy a copy. This is very valuable information. ☺
absolutly
I've watched A LOT of DM note taking videos over the years. This is the best I've ever seen. I am 100% stealing this.
Thanks for the great content!
This is some seriously helpful advice! I also keep handwritten notes for my games, but they're quite terrible and disorganized (to the point where I often find notes from entirely different games on the same page). Going to try using some of the organizational methods here and see how that helps!
So glad this gave you some good ideas! I can be really disorganized with my notes, too, but writing that quick Campaign Overview after each session has helped me distill down the important bits and not have to reconstruct my notes the next time I look at it.
Nice layout. Running 3 campaigns right now. In two of them, player has volunteered to be the journal keeper. A good portion of what you've described, is actually kept by these players instead of me. Works great and invite them to take more charge of the game and their characters.
W my 3rd group there is no journal because no one stepped up to claim it (and from past experience I'm not interested in keeping a journal that no one reads - got to have boundaries!). And in that game, if you lose your card with your magic item or potion... well it's just gone then. In response they asked if they could keep their sheets in a folder at my house, which I obliged. 😊 So now they always have their stuff, but I don't have to do the work.
Great video, I like your simple process.
I love the bullet journal idea…I’m using Obsidian as a computer technology because I like to run with so many large random tables (particularly for NPC’s, random encounters, etc.) that would just be impractical to reference in game without the macros and multiple tabs. I love the idea of all analog, but it’s so useful to have all my hexes, NPC’s, tables, etc. at the click of a button.
This is phenomenal! I lack the time to create artsy journals, and I much prefer information organized in text. This is perfect for me! Thank you!
Great video, Kelsey. Thank you. Very organised. I’ve been writing DM journals for years, but never thought of doing it this way. I started a Shadowdark journal today, and wish I had have seen this video first - but I can still emulate what you have shown from page five onward. There’s so much excitement around Shadowdark, and I can see why.
I will start as dm next week. I discovered d&d last year. Still learning and this will be very useful! Cheers
Awesome! Love to see new GMs. Good luck!
Great video! I use Notion, a web/app based way to easily store notes, data, and really anything. At my table I have an iPad going as a reference tool with Notion, maps, pictures, etc. If I need to, I flip it around for the players to see. Your method of writing things down in a physical notebook still sounds appealing to me. Typing on a device just doesn’t “feel” right at the table- especially when I’ve told them not to use their devices. LOL. It’s funny, I went more and more digital over time, and now I’m thinking I need to get more and more back to paper, pen, and imagination.
I love these videos! For a B/X game I made a 2x2 fillouts on standard letter size printer with spots for mundane and magic treasure, notes, campaign date, real life date, characters present (XP and treasure recipients for the session), etc.
I also think we should normalize players writing equipment on a 3x5 index card instead of on a character sheet.
im a teacher and im planning my class right now, and i found this very inspiring and helpful!!! its cool what this tips can do for you also outside of DnD!!!
I'm missing DM advice videos from this channel (or posts in the arcane articles or shadowdark blog). They are really good.
You are so kind! :) More are coming very soon. Now that the Shadowdark Kickstarter is completed, I have more time!
I've been doing digital stuff using OneNote and Notion but this year I am trying to get back to more Old School styles of play so I am going to try this old school style of note-taking. Got my BaronFig notebooks on the way! :)
I love this style of journaling. I use Bullet Journaling to keep myself organized, and I'm excited to see a lot of principles adapted to campaign logging. I want to try this for my next campaign!
OMG! This video was a life changer! Seriously. I've always been terribly disorganized with my session notes. This is great! Thank you so much!
Super great advice! I'm planning to run a new campaign in the next month after not running a TTRPG in 2 years. I love the attendance list, since we'll also have rotating players like in a West Marches style of game. Can't wait to use this! Thank you (:
Thank you!! As someone who is planning on solo gaming and didn't want to make a Baby Keepsake Book out of it, this is just the ticket!
For prepping I do a bullet point prep where it's basically information that the players need to progress. (Useful for running a module). I just got a ShadowDarkRpg GM journal and when I run ShadowDark this style combined with what I already do will be a great help! I know this video is a year old now but this info is very helpful! Thank you!
Solid advice, great analog method of keeping everything straight without needing a labtop in the middle of play
At the moment I have separate sections in my notebook for character sheets, bank ledger, calendar, rules cheat sheet, and the main thing, session journal to keep track of every turn. Session journal looks like this:
0800 Party leaves the town
0840 Party arrives destination
0850 Discussion
0900 Loraine lit torch. Room #1
0910 Room #2 encounter with 3 goblins
Combat:
G1 G2 G3 P1 P2 P3 5 4 3
etc.
Nice! :D That is extremely well-organized!
I bullet journaled for my job for a long time. I’ve never thought of this structure for my campaigns.
The key with bullet journaling is figuring out the sections and content tricks - thank you for sharing your solution!
Neat video, but I think it would be really helpful to see it more filled out. I’d love to see a follow-up where you show us how this approach has been developing since first seeing it.
I'll definitely do a follow-up video when I can! This one had too much personal information from my players to accidentally show to the internet, but I'll eventually have a complete one to show where that's not a concern!
Going to give this a try, will be using it with Rocketbook. Will give the best of both digital and paper.
Great advice. I didn’t know I needed indexes and spreads!
Thank you for this excellent video. It really helps me as someone who loves to "organize" but I get completely overwhelmed by digital tools when it comes to actually using that information. This is elegant and just enough, and no screen!
I really like this method of taking/tracking notes! Really great way to organize and simplify the process. Thanks for sharing!
I cannot express how encouraging it feels to see a notebook with crossed out mistakes and quickly jotted notes. Whenever I look at journals (like bullet journals, travel journals) people keep I'm disheartened because I will never be able to keep everything as tidy and neat and perfect. Not to say your handwriting is untidy, please don't get me wrong - it's just that there are actually some scribbles and crossed out stuff, which makes it look closer to my own reality, as in it would maybe work for me, too. Thank you for that! Also, the method seems really promising. Definitely trying that!
I totally agree! I always felt like I was doing something wrong because my notes are a bit messy and unplanned. But it just works for me! And it if ain't broke, don't fix it. :)
I was in a deep dive for note taking and this was the most useful system and video after watching like a dozen.
Absolutely fantastic video, super excited to try this out. I wrapped up a 3-yr campaign earlier this year and am slowly coming off of hiatus, and trying to get back to basics. I've run D&D for years but it's been so long I feel like I've lost touch with basics like this, stuck in ways of note-taking from school. This is solid advice, am currently turning my next campaign notebook into this. I've never been a fan of the dotted grid paper, but next short campaign I run I think I'll adopt it.
P.S. If you're not into dotted paper, get a MEAD Five Star spiral notebooks. I found one at Target for $8-$9 that the front half is gridded paper, and the back half is lined paper for note taking. SUPER useful, especially with dividers with pockets between the sections.
You had me at "The Keep on the Borderlands"
I'm totally gonna give it a shot, it looks really good
I Love this. I have such a hard time keeping notes on anything, and this way of organizing is very simple and is exactly what I am looking for. Thank you so much for sharing.
I've got my very first D&D game tonight. Definitely going to use this note taking method. Thanks!
Thank you, very interesting to see how you handle it
I've been using a journal for each campaign for a few years now and like my org for session notes, but it's been the other aspects of the campaign organization and notes that I have had trouble tracking. I appreciate you sharing your journal / notes setup - I will be putting these very useable ideas into practice.
Thanks for this video, it is very useful for notetaking during and after a session. Would you consider doing a similar video sharing how you prep before a game? I'm using the lazy dm's eight steps in a binder right now but I want to switch to a journal 😅 Love what you're doing 👍👍👍
That’s a great idea!
Such great advice. I run a west marches game where I will use a single sheet to keep game notes during the session. Post session I enter the information from those notes into my game calendar (excel sheet) to correspond with the date in the game world when the events transpired. I find this super helpful when trying to figure out the who/what/where/when of the game with so many players coming and going.
Each location in my game has it's own physical folder for the information I need for that spot, so I'm with you on the mostly physical ephemera when it comes to my campaign. I use the inside of the folders to jot down notes reflecting how the locations change after the players interact therein. Helps to keep the locations dynamic over time, making sure the players actions are reflected in how the world changes around them.
Thanks for such a great video.
Absoluetly helpful advice, ive been a DM for a year now but notes are so difficult, im gonna start using this method now.
Superb illustration of how to take usable notes. Thank you will be giving this a run through.
I use single pages of paper that was supposed to be used but still has one side usable. One example of that kind of paper is the monthly paper calendar my mother uses after the month passes, or one sided voting ballots that have been delivered to my door. And then, during the week, I use those notes to make the final notes as entries in campaign logger.
I'm terrible at taking notes. Going to give this a try
0:00 Intro
0:43 Index Page
2:40 Campaign Overview
3:19 Players
4:28 Characters
5:58 NPCs
6:40 Special Treasure
7:50 Set - Up
11:50 Conclusion
Good advice to carry on a good campaign- especially the special magic items and names of NPCs you make up on the fly.
Thanks so much, Luke! :) I'm glad you liked it!
A ton of great advice! I developed something similar for my onenote, stealing a few ideas to add to my flow! Thank you!
This is so rad! I never connected D&D and bullet journaling. this is incredible!
This inspired me to do my campaign notes in analoge for my upcoming Eberron campaign. Especially the campaign overview (why that never occured to me wow) and the spread design principle are real cool. I run my games digital so it is really nice to have an analogue notebook, it helps with the 'digital exhaustion" that happes to me when running games digitally, especially because my day2day job is already 99% at the computer. I combine this design with the "Lazy Dungeon Master" principles by SlyFlourish which improved my campaign design and note taking drastically already. Bought a A4+ Leuchtturm with dotted paper and I am excited to start!
I've begun to use my phone with a digital pen and microsoft onenote. Digital handwritten notes. The best of both worlds imo.
Thank you so much! This just helped me determine a note-taking style going forward. I still prefer Google Drive for running games, but I will definitely adopt this for taking notes as a player!
Wow ok! That is a HUGE advice! I don't take notes... I suck at this, I'm too into my game and the action that I can't take notes and it's a shame!
I really give it a try, it's easy, fast and super organized! This is THE advise I needed!!
Thanks Kelsey!
An interesting video with useful information, thanks.
As for me, I used to handwrite my notes in the 90's, but then I shifted to my PC and now that's my go to when runnning adventures/campaigns. I have far an easier task than you, since I have only a couple of gaming groups (5e and Savage Worlds) and they are all my friends. As for the sessions, I rarely keep notes, but when I finish playing I (almost always) immediately write it down, as a sort of diary, and put it online for my players (no DM notes in it, of course), so that we can all share the chronicles of our adventures. It's useful also as a reminder, particularly when a player miss a session.
I've recently tried taking notes in the "old fashioned way" and I can say it works: it's more flexible than using a laptop and sometimes I'm even faster. Still, the fact that I can modify, cancel, upgrade and share my notes if taking them via laptop, makes the electronic way more viable to me. However, I may try a sort of middle ground: taking notes on a paper notebook (with pencil) and then scanning them to have them on my laptop as well.
Welp I learned a thing or three. I’ve got a somewhat similar method, but that opening page spread and page numbers and well…. Okay there was a lot here that will be useful. Thank you for sharing!
I print out my overview for the session, and jot stuff down on that - not to the same detail, but npc's, locations, extra details I didn't know I needed. I also keep index cards for special magic items, and let my players write down the details on their own paper/sheet. Doing it all in one book is rather more organized, go figure!
I make a PC cheat sheet with a ranked list of ACs, saving throw modifiers, etc. it helps me create a sliding difficulty scale where I can target mob abilities at more vulnerable players if I want make the encounter more challenging on the fly
cool system - as former teacher my week planner was a spread - lived out of that - all my good systems - charts, calendars are one look easy to read, bullet points and my obsessive arrow drawing (they seem always to be necessary)
This is golden, pro-tier advice.
Thanks Kelsey, I will be doing this.
Started setting up a campaign notebook in this method, but I'll be PLAYING rather than GMing.
Still solid gold advice here.
Congrats Kelsey on SD.
Thank you for sharing your process!
I’ve been figuring out my own notes system that isn’t too dissimilar to yours so going to incorporate some of your ideas. 🎃
Thanks! I think that this is going to help me too as a player
Thank you! very useful!
This! I'm going to try this.
A binder and dividers also works.
Thank you for this! Just discovered you on Gaming Beast video. I’m a new GM and I GM sessions with my kiddos, so you can imagine that organization strategies are needed. New subscriber! 😊
Thanks for the video, I am going to try these ideas when I can run a D&D type game.
Loved this approach and it was just what I was looking for. Thank you for sharing. Glad I found your channel. :)
Lots of great ideas!
Super helpful. One of my weaknesses. Subbed. Hope you do more content like this
Great Tips, Thanks
These are the notes of an experienced DM!
i LOVE handwriting notes. I think this is the way to do things as a DM tbh; computers are fine for maps and resources but the session notes themselves should be handwritten
Thanks for the video! Great advice for GMs new or old!
Thanks!
Great vid, Kelsey! These kinds of vids are super helpful!
This is incredibly useful! Thank you.
Yes
Notes for a DM is essential
Wow, super helpful! Thanks so much for sharing! Happy Halloween!
Thank you, Kelsey. :)
Those were some nice tips. You can never have enough of those. Sorting out information is super important and a very complicated matter. I am still sorting out my way of note taking. I am typically running very long epic campaigns, that take years to finish. When listening to your method, I already thought about how many pages for NPCs I had to leave open. ;) So I think, this not for me.
Still, I think your advice of spreads is very helpful. I am thinking of a method of doing this in a binder to add pages.
And you advice in regards to treasures is so true. That part I will integrate in my upcoming new campaign for sure!
Great ideas! Thank you!
super helpful!
Wow this is how I take notes while I GM and I did not know this was a thing!!! LOL
Would you please do a video about tips for running an open table?
That’s a great idea! I’ll put that on the list! 😊
Great tips!!
If you pick up a Leuchtturm 1917 notebook, it comes with numbered pages and an index page in the front already.
Sweet! I’ll have to scope those out!
Pricey notebooks but they’re soo nice
I just use One Note, but I'll add these tips to it. o 3o
I tried your method and it really helped me, thanks :)
Hey great video and love the classic note taking. How do you "prep" your pre written adventures tho? Would love to see some video explaining running a pre written campaign (like keep on the borderlands) Do you have a separate notebook for important bits in the book, or do you rely solely on the book and annotate things inside of that? I find that I always struggle to find the right way to prep a campaign with the least amount of "page flipping/tab switching on my tablet". So any tips? :)
Q: can I give you a background for my new level 1 PC? A: sure! just keep it to one word long! 😂❤
Here's why I also handwrite notes during games:
A. I like my fountain pens
B. You try hard to immerse your players in a game world... you really going to barrage them with clickety-clack sounds? Is there a court stenographer in your world?
Bullet journals FTW!
They’re the best! 😃
I often sleep on my couch, too. 😆
Hahahahahaha!! Would you believe me if I told you it was my dog’s blanket nest? 😆
@@TheArcaneLibrary - I would, if you didn't do the whole video with bed-head. =P
BTW, RUclips recommended your Halloween video from last year too. Exact same situation!
Don't worry. I think it's awesome.
A Binder to add and remove pages would be better, and they have small ones, I often make Custom magic Items, go to Magic the Gathering card Creator, make it into a Card and you can add card Sleeves to the binder to hold them ready to hand out, I do use a Laptop mainly because both my at the Table Thursday 10 player and Sunday 7 Player campaigns every week, I use Owlbear Rodeo to hold all my Maps, with a Digital DM screen on it as well I made, also Town Notice Board for Jobs, Wanted Posters, etc ... Plus tons of Monster, Heros, NPCs, Mounts, Conditions tokens, as well Post-it notes I can add right to the maps for Monster stats, trap info, Treasure etc, and it saves so I can access it from any PC, so easy to look back see what they Killed, DId and etc. as for Treasure division that's up to them, I do give Legendary quests for that player only Special Weapon or Armor pieces, that's basically attuned to only them, also all my DnD PDFs which would weight tons to take around with me, ... I take a Back pack with Dice, Laptop, Pen, Notebook for ideas, Snacks, Drink and carry by its handle, a Light Portable " Touchscreen for Players to see maps, Images, and move there tokens for Dungeon Exploring & Encounters
great process. very Bullet Journal. love it. to me the whole point of trrpgs is to use pens and paper. also...great hair! for realz.
That is so kind, thank you very much! 😊
I do the mayhem part on individual sheets of paper that get tossed in folders with the pc sheets.
I think I could upgrade to your system and maybe add color codes, when I change games or groups...
Color coding is a really handy upgrade that could add a lot to this method!
As a first time DM this is really helpful to me, but I have a question. What do you do when you run out of room in a specific part in the journal? Like if you fill in the pages for your session notes, but the player notes are on the next page, what do you do?
So glad this was helpful! :D What I'll often do is write a "continued on pg. ##" at the bottom and start a new spread with the actual gameplay notes.
That said, if you often find your prep running into a large share of the pages, you could always do prep then game notes on back-to-back spreads as your standard layout! :)
What about Locations?
Do you also keep notes about towns/cities, etc., in the same notebook, or do you keep it in a different format?
Really good question! In the particular game I'm running, it's not a factor (have only had a few NPCs in small towns to note down). But major towns or cities would probably deserve their own spread, especially if you know you'll need them before the campaign starts so you can put them in the up-front material!
Love this for note taking! In terms of prep, is that all in your head/improv? Do you fill some of these notes in in advance? Keep it somewhere else? Thanks!
I sometimes write a few notes ahead of time before the "actual notes" section for each spread! But usually, I'm running adventures I'm familiar with already, or ones that I've printed out on paper and have written a couple notes in the margins. I tend to improvise most stuff that falls outside what's already in the adventure document!
If you’re looking for a little bit more meaty prep but still in the half-hour or so range, Return of the Lazy DM is a great little book that talks through a prep style that has helped me a lot. It’s particularly useful for running homebrew where you don’t have pre-written material to work with.
Such a gift. When do we get to see your wife? Are her products on DTRPG?
Get out of my brain pan. Lol. So much sounds familiar to stuff I do, but what slayed me was you use the same micron pens I love to use for pretty much everything. Aren't they the best?
Hahahaha! We have both struggled our way to this method + microns (the best). :D It was a long road!
@@TheArcaneLibrary I am a game producer and would love to send you our latest game if you'd like. My company is The Polyhedral Knights. Our latest game we put out is Pirates of a Shattered World.
Do you leave space between spreads in case the pages get filled up and you need more room?
I sometimes do that if I'm sure I'll need it! One thing I also do is draw a small arrow at the bottom right corner of a spread I want to continue on a page, and I write, "Continued on page ##." That's a pretty seamless way to jump between things!
I take handwritten notes also. No screens at my table.