I want to have everything in one place, but I'm having trouble organizing my campaign in the campaign manager. The way it is made, i end up having a very long loooooooong page.
I'm looking for how are you guys using it the best of your ability, without waiting for any changes to its current form.
I use the DM section of the notes to produce a series of links to help me navigate DDB as quick and as efficiently as possible. Ideally, I need only that page for the session, and open others tabs according to what the players do and need.
Other than having my players use the campaign link to utilize my content, I don’t use it for much. I haven’t found much use for the DMs notes. The public notes are just a character list (character’s name, race, class, and player). It seems ineffective for sharing large amounts of information, but could be used for Dropbox links. Some more utility in the campaign manager would be awesome.
I only really use it as a player links and to have the character sheets in once place, most of the time I use a big word file or just pen and pencil for my notes with maybe a few tabs open for items and monsters etc.
I have moved to using onenote for a lot of my actual DM notes because you have have a bunch of different sections and pages and steamline things quite abit more, I would suggest using it as its free and browser based so can use it wherever if the want to add some more to your backgrounds or just look through your notes comes up.
Dropbox is a obvious favourite because you can share pdfs and a lot more with players very easily.
I only really use it as a player links and to have the character sheets in once place, most of the time I use a big word file or just pen and pencil for my notes with maybe a few tabs open for items and monsters etc.
I have moved to using onenote for a lot of my actual DM notes because you have have a bunch of different sections and pages and steamline things quite abit more, I would suggest using it as its free and browser based so can use it wherever if the want to add some more to your backgrounds or just look through your notes comes up.
And this is what I've been thinking of moving toward, and this convinces me.
Using OneNote for person DM notes and organization, DnDB for updated character sheets and recurring NPCs. Group campaign notes and discussions are on Roll20 (which we loosely use for maps as my main game is on Skype)
I've been using the Private Notes field for notes on campaign themes, character hooks, quick notes on what's happened at each session and what might happen in the next session. The Public Notes has the intro text for our campaign and chapter headers indicating what's happened in prior sessions (which end up looking like this: Chapter 1: Together At Last | A Rumor of Birds | Shopping | Divinations in Red | Drinking and Guides | Welcome to the Jungle).
I also keep a OneNote notebook with PC and NPC notes, detailed notes on The Story So Far and The Story to Come, etc. Then there's the Excel spreadsheet for weather, moon phases, random encounters by day, and encounter notes.
I only really use it as a player links and to have the character sheets in once place, most of the time I use a big word file or just pen and pencil for my notes with maybe a few tabs open for items and monsters etc.
I have moved to using onenote for a lot of my actual DM notes because you have have a bunch of different sections and pages and steamline things quite abit more, I would suggest using it as its free and browser based so can use it wherever if the want to add some more to your backgrounds or just look through your notes comes up.
And this is what I've been thinking of moving toward, and this convinces me.
Following up on this, I used OneNote 2007 to build the first session of Waterdeep: Dragon Heist, and it was noticeably superior to my previous use of Word.
Definitely using it from now on, and will be looking to upgrade to Office 365/2016.
To be frank, what campaign manager? D&D Beyond has made noises that it may create a campaign manager, but as of right now all it has is a spot to store some notes. It's not without its uses, but it's no campaign manager.
For myself, I'd rather keep my notes with my campaign material rather than separate.
I use the private notes between sessions. For example; whenever I make up some encounters for the next session I put the links to the monster stats there, or whenever something comes up that I need to remember, such as the name of an important npc or something. I use Dropbox paper for the adventure designs. I really wish I could put notes on player characters as a dm that only I can see, same as that I wish I could allow certain information of my shared content rather than everything. The public notes are for travel distances and such, I use that a lot less. But I'm using a Note on my personal FB page to make a summary of all the sessions, which could as easily be a public note. I just like the fact that other people (some of which former players in the campaign) can read it as a story :)
The "campaign manager" as is, sadly, is not that great but it's been made abundantly clear that it was a lower priority. DDB is a database at first, character creator second, campaign creator... I dunno fifth or something?
From everybody's responses, it seems no one is using the campaign manager for hardly anything ^^"
Sounds about right. Other than the content sharing aspect, and the availability of players’ character sheets, it dun do much. It would be super awesome if it had some functionality for posting maps, character/NPC portraits, and notes (in a less “here they all are!”) manner. If I could use Dropbox less and dndbeyond more, that would be very helpful.
Indeed. I've focused on using Google Drive for most of my organization, although I experimented in one campaign recently with using Trello and will probably give that another shot in the future. The functionality just isn't really present here on DDB for that, which is honestly a shame considering how much I keep the DMG and XGE and whatnot open in another tab when I'm preparing a game.
How are you utilizing it?
I want to have everything in one place, but I'm having trouble organizing my campaign in the campaign manager. The way it is made, i end up having a very long loooooooong page.
I'm looking for how are you guys using it the best of your ability, without waiting for any changes to its current form.
I use the DM section of the notes to produce a series of links to help me navigate DDB as quick and as efficiently as possible. Ideally, I need only that page for the session, and open others tabs according to what the players do and need.
Other than having my players use the campaign link to utilize my content, I don’t use it for much. I haven’t found much use for the DMs notes. The public notes are just a character list (character’s name, race, class, and player). It seems ineffective for sharing large amounts of information, but could be used for Dropbox links. Some more utility in the campaign manager would be awesome.
I only really use it as a player links and to have the character sheets in once place, most of the time I use a big word file or just pen and pencil for my notes with maybe a few tabs open for items and monsters etc.
I have moved to using onenote for a lot of my actual DM notes because you have have a bunch of different sections and pages and steamline things quite abit more, I would suggest using it as its free and browser based so can use it wherever if the want to add some more to your backgrounds or just look through your notes comes up.
Dropbox is a obvious favourite because you can share pdfs and a lot more with players very easily.
This is what I've been doing myself.
And this is what I've been thinking of moving toward, and this convinces me.
I'm not - I'm using OneNote for my campaign notes and such but use DDB for when I need a quick reference to something.
Using OneNote for person DM notes and organization, DnDB for updated character sheets and recurring NPCs. Group campaign notes and discussions are on Roll20 (which we loosely use for maps as my main game is on Skype)
I've been using the Private Notes field for notes on campaign themes, character hooks, quick notes on what's happened at each session and what might happen in the next session. The Public Notes has the intro text for our campaign and chapter headers indicating what's happened in prior sessions (which end up looking like this: Chapter 1: Together At Last | A Rumor of Birds | Shopping | Divinations in Red | Drinking and Guides | Welcome to the Jungle).
I also keep a OneNote notebook with PC and NPC notes, detailed notes on The Story So Far and The Story to Come, etc. Then there's the Excel spreadsheet for weather, moon phases, random encounters by day, and encounter notes.
I might be going a little overboard...
Following up on this, I used OneNote 2007 to build the first session of Waterdeep: Dragon Heist, and it was noticeably superior to my previous use of Word.
Definitely using it from now on, and will be looking to upgrade to Office 365/2016.
From everybody's responses, it seems no one is using the campaign manager for hardly anything ^^"
To be frank, what campaign manager? D&D Beyond has made noises that it may create a campaign manager, but as of right now all it has is a spot to store some notes. It's not without its uses, but it's no campaign manager.
For myself, I'd rather keep my notes with my campaign material rather than separate.
I use the private notes between sessions. For example; whenever I make up some encounters for the next session I put the links to the monster stats there, or whenever something comes up that I need to remember, such as the name of an important npc or something. I use Dropbox paper for the adventure designs. I really wish I could put notes on player characters as a dm that only I can see, same as that I wish I could allow certain information of my shared content rather than everything. The public notes are for travel distances and such, I use that a lot less. But I'm using a Note on my personal FB page to make a summary of all the sessions, which could as easily be a public note. I just like the fact that other people (some of which former players in the campaign) can read it as a story :)
The "campaign manager" as is, sadly, is not that great but it's been made abundantly clear that it was a lower priority. DDB is a database at first, character creator second, campaign creator... I dunno fifth or something?
Subclass: Dwarven Defender - Dragonborn Paragon
Feats: Artificer Apprentice
Monsters: Sheep - Spellbreaker Warforged Titan
Magic Items: Whipier - Ring of Secret Storage - Collar of the Guardian
Monster template: Skeletal Creature
Sounds about right. Other than the content sharing aspect, and the availability of players’ character sheets, it dun do much. It would be super awesome if it had some functionality for posting maps, character/NPC portraits, and notes (in a less “here they all are!”) manner. If I could use Dropbox less and dndbeyond more, that would be very helpful.
Indeed. I've focused on using Google Drive for most of my organization, although I experimented in one campaign recently with using Trello and will probably give that another shot in the future. The functionality just isn't really present here on DDB for that, which is honestly a shame considering how much I keep the DMG and XGE and whatnot open in another tab when I'm preparing a game.
It's a real shame. I love using DDB for reference more the physical books. It makes me much lighter to walk with a tablet than with 2-3 books I need.
It would be much better if I can do something like what Dungeonomics did into DDB.