So, I have been DMing a group of friends for about a year now and I am looking to step up my game and dive into a homebrew campaign. The problem is, my organization is trash. Keeping track of NPCs and players are really slowing me down and disrupting the flow of the game. Are there any tools or tips that you use to help speed up the process of tracking these sorts of things?
For tracking them in combat I use the DDB Combat Tracker and I just create (or convert) all noteworthy NPCs as monsters. For outside of combat stuff I use the Notes app on my phone/tablet so I can work on it anywhere.
So, I have been DMing a group of friends for about a year now and I am looking to step up my game and dive into a homebrew campaign. The problem is, my organization is trash. Keeping track of NPCs and players are really slowing me down and disrupting the flow of the game. Are there any tools or tips that you use to help speed up the process of tracking these sorts of things?
I have tried a load of platforms and tools. By far my favourite at the moment is Chronica.ventures it allows you to create quest logs, place and NPC catalogues, in world calendars, and visually is just so much more inutitive and beautiful than something big and popular like world anvil:
I think Chronica is very much likely to be my go-to in the future. The example above is from a DoIP campaign, but I am currently building my own world in the tool and it is just so easy to use. Even better, it's a small team who are really open to feedback and suggestions. They're still actively developing.
Coming in second place for me is Kanka.io it functions a great deal like Chronica and has some price advantages if you're building more than one campaign. I personally think it looks less visually impressive and doesn't seem to be quite as intuitive. It's very much the lesser of the two in my mind.
Following a long way behind is the often promoted on Youtube and other Social media, World Anvil. Jam packed with ads, distractions, and things supposedly designed to 'help' World Anvil is by far the most complex of the three so far. While that complexity might suit some creatives, it's weakness for me comes in the form of making it harder to just add one thing. The structure of World Anvil as more of a Wiki/article based system makes it inherently more interconnected and it's really difficult to keep track of where you left off. What connections did you miss? If I'm writing an article on a town and haven't yet created the information on the town mayor, or the inn the way World Anvil works is to have it as a link. If I don't have the time to do all the things in one session coming back to it later it's difficult to scan back and see what I forgot. By contrast Chronica handles links and connections in a much more intuitive, easy to see system. World Anvil is by far the most complex, but that is it's main weakness. Honestly, it's shockingly bad having now seen other systems.
Shard Tabletop is a VTT come Campaign/Adventure organiser/creator. It's frankly dreadful. It looks ugly, has a steep learning curve, but there are for some reason still advocates of that system.
There's Campfire which again appears on a lot of Youtube channels, but I could never really get into - might just be because it's a system that is trying to be multi-purpose - an all things to all people type of issue. So it doesn't master any one thing.
Finally, an extension has been added to my favourite VTT - Owlbear.rodeo called Clash! Clash is a really well featured initiative tracker that is connected to Open5e and so you can search up and connect stat blocks from the SRD and Community created content in moments. Need to quickly add a monster, add a token, search for the stat block and apply. Boom you've got your encounter set up and running. Better still, once you've added or developed a stat block for an NPC or monster you can save that stat block to your own collection to recall again in the future. It has really just sent Owlbear soaring to the best of the VTTs in my opinion. It works well across both touch and mouse and keyboard devices.
I've looked into several of the RP trackers, although a while ago so I can't remember what they were, but have just stuck to one note. It's free and I haven't yet found after over 2 years in a campaign that I am outgrowing it. A tab each for NPC's, Factions, Quests, then you can have a page inside the tab with each quest, faction etc. Roll20 then does all of the character sheets and manages that part. I think I was looking into it for the sake of having a new toy to use, but in reality One Note just seems to do everything for keeping stuff organised. The best part is that it synchs across devices, so I can be out and about and have an idea for a quest, then add it to my "ideas" page from my phone, and expand on it when I get around to opening it on the PC.
The only thing that would have made everything nicer was if I purchased the digital versions of each book for the integration to roll 20, it's a pain in the ass manually typing up each new enemy I wish to use. But I'm not rebuying all of my books.
If I start an in person RP rather than online, I'll be doing pretty much the same thing but using my tablet for one note access
My preferred software is Obsidian, it's a note tool where you can link between pages, which results in this huge web showing your campaign visually.
It's very simple to get to grips with, and I'm sure there's loads more it can do that I've not worked out yet! Plus, it uses MArkdown code, so can copy over from Homebrewery.
I work on a computer all the time, and it's a pain in the ass to stop what I'm on to scroll and manipulate tabs and such. I can organize index cards and grab the ones I need a lot quicker.
Fightable characters get stats, sometimes a general description if needed.
NPC's get a description, a motivation, and any key info they might have.
Rooms are also treated like NPC's and are colored different than the NPC's - description, any treasure or notable objects, and any needed DC values for checks.
Key story moments ("flags") are give their own cards and also a different color.
Paperclip the NPC's and foes and any story points to the rooms, the map is set out, as characters travel from room to room, generally I can just run them off the cards.
EDIT: oh yeah, I number the rooms directly to the map to correspond to my cards. The players can seen room numbers. It's not going t ruin anything for them really...
For tracking experience, missiles, bonus XP, spell use, rounds etc, I have a super high tech MS Word document. It has five columns and at the top of each column is the character name, HP, AC etc. There is a spot for bonus XP (which I reward for good roleplaying, great ideas in exploring the world, good combat strategy, etc). In the columns themselves I log HP, spells, and consumables.
Monster HP goes in the middle.
At the bottom, I have circles that I check off during combat to keep track of who won initiative, bonus attacks, etc.
If we have several battles, I start a clean sheet and transcribe the current totals to the top of it.
At the end of the session I make changes onto a MS word document character sheet based on my log. One of my players is in IT, and he is working on building us an excel document that auto updates saves, other bonuses, etc. But right now, it is manual (since MANY things in are game are custom, nothing off the shelf would work).
If you are talking about organizing the dungeon itself, I would encourage the less is more mantra. 1-2 pages of text per adventure and a map. If you have 20 pages of notes, 5 pages of NPCs and 6 maps, it is going to be hard to keep straight for even the most organized DM.
I am a 40 something year old physician who DMs for a group of 40 something year old doctors. We play a hybrid game, mostly based on 2nd edition rules with some homebrew and 5E components.
ok, so, I have a lot of older ipads. I don't trade them in, I just keep them, lol. For work, I have a collection of them, a laptop, and a couple of keyboards that allows me to use them with multiple devices. Not a suggestion, though, just a way to point out that I adapted to the tools I do have, and most of my tools are for work and I work about 80% remotely or more.
All my games are virtual. I do not use any VTT. I have a world anvil account, but as noted above, I find it has good ideas and lousy execution and it is going away because I canceled my sub. I have looked at several different ones (VTTs) and since none really have the ability to adapt to my rules, most are useless (we play D&D, but we have 9 base scores, 3 derived, a magic points system, and so forth, so default systems are useless to me).
So, what do I use?
I have binders and notecards (which, as it happens, are in a binder, lol), and i have a few photo galleries (Monsters, NPCs, statblocks) and I have my trusty DM screen that leans up against the ipad supports. I use Zoom and Teams, and I am always signed into a session on at least four devices. One handles the images to the characters (shared screen), another will track certain things, a third will have my camera, and the last will have music and/or function as the secondary thing to show stuff to the players.
Then I have a pad of scratch paper. I but those little 5 by 7 pads pretty much in bulk anyway, and burn through them fast for work as it is, so using them for play is just easy for me to do.
THe least useful thing is that I have been doing this for a really long time, and so I am used to tracking a lot of different stuff in my head. I visualize everything -- we only use a "battle map" when it is essential (and for that I have one of the pads set up to face a big graph sheet that I usually prepare in advance with whatever is handy (though in the next game we will have custom minis). I write down orders of combat on scratch pad (initiative), and I do a light tracking of HP and such for the players (but really only if there is something going on -- I turst my players).
A lot of it is seat of the pants stuff, though. It has to be. I have had three separate parties of 8 to 10 people doing the same dungeon at the same time (but in different sessions!) and so my biggest thing is to take a LOT of notes (that get converted to binder inserts every thursday night, lol),
Lastly, because I use oom and teams, I have a cheat: I record the sessions. I hold up an orange card now and again -- that serves as a flag for me when I go through the video to make more detailed notes on Thursday nights, and then I delete the file (because I am cheap and don't pay for storage lol).
Unless there is a really cool ting. In which case I trim it out and send it to the people who would appreciate (players, not anyone else).
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities .-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-. An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more. Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
So, I have been DMing a group of friends for about a year now and I am looking to step up my game and dive into a homebrew campaign. The problem is, my organization is trash. Keeping track of NPCs and players are really slowing me down and disrupting the flow of the game. Are there any tools or tips that you use to help speed up the process of tracking these sorts of things?
I have tried a load of platforms and tools. By far my favourite at the moment is Chronica.ventures it allows you to create quest logs, place and NPC catalogues, in world calendars, and visually is just so much more intuitive and beautiful than something big and popular like world anvil:
Hey, I just want to say thanks for this. I am looking at it and may give it a test run as it looks like it could be of value to me -- and other systems are far too cluttered for my tastes.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities .-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-. An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more. Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
Personally I like to keep pencil and paper notes in those notebooks you can pick up in the office section of target. I find it easier to have a blank page and fill things up one block, encounter, or dungeon at a time. My sorting system is entirely chronological from when I write content (I date each entry at the top), and I do regular updates on the main plot stuff and character plot stuff between adventure notes. NPC's are included with the content they are relevant to, ensuring you don't get too many that are irrelevant and hard to keep track of.
At the moment I have almost three notebooks full, and it's always been easy to go back and re use things when relevant or for other campaigns.
For those who prefer the physical organisation system, I'd highly recommend checking out the NPC/Monster Cards that exist. I've used them for a while and they're great to have at hand to be able to randomly shuffle and draw a monster for those unexpected encounters:
Google Sheets/Docs for me. A doc for a session outline, a sheet for each encounter, and a "campaign sheet" with stuff like NPCs, locations, ongoing quests, etc. which has a player-facing version that I (or sometimes they) gradually fill in as they learn stuff.
I would just make a colossal mess with notecards and paper. Digital means I can access it anywhere and my cats can't scatter my notes all over the house.
Depending on your imagination and memory ... create the content when you need it and write some brief notes after the session on the names for NPCs, their attitudes and any significant interactions with the players.
It is much more challenging and time consuming to make up every possible NPC in advance and then try to keep them all in mind (other than those few that might be plot specific - but even then you don't actually need more about the NPC until the characters encounter them). The easier way is to have a rough idea and fill in the details when they enter the campaign (if you know the PCs will encounter an NPC in a specific session then make them up in advance of that session but the rest of the time create the content as needed).
In terms of those notes, I have a Campaign Notes handout in Roll20 that is visible to the DM only where I develop the campaign, NPCs, plots, storylines, random hooks that may not yet have an adventure attached (a campaign feels much more coherent to the players when a random event added six sessions in the past which had no attached plot subsequently ties in to a plot line you have just created several sessions later). If running in person, I'll use a note app or just keep some paper notes though I would tend to go electronic these days.
You strike me as the mega-dungeon kind of DM who really doesn’t have any time for fluff like NPCs and the like.
That said, just stick to what you’re good at- making and presenting massive and beautiful dungeon complexes. Things like organizing NPCs and players doesn’t matter much anyways when they are dropping faster than mayflies in the meat grinder.
I use Legend Keeper. It's not free like obsidian, but it's for me more than a notepad, it's also my second VTT, that complete maps on beyond for sharing text and image with my player.
It's very nice if you want to share thing with your player, our product a big map with information on different location.
So, I have been DMing a group of friends for about a year now and I am looking to step up my game and dive into a homebrew campaign. The problem is, my organization is trash. Keeping track of NPCs and players are really slowing me down and disrupting the flow of the game. Are there any tools or tips that you use to help speed up the process of tracking these sorts of things?
An App I've seen to organize notes is Notion (Sly Flourish How to use with D&D).
For my games I use OneNote for the past several years to organize my content in various 'notebooks'
For tracking them in combat I use the DDB Combat Tracker and I just create (or convert) all noteworthy NPCs as monsters. For outside of combat stuff I use the Notes app on my phone/tablet so I can work on it anywhere.
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
I use Google Drive with all of their office style apps (docs, sheets, etc.). It's the only way I can keep myself organized.
DDB encounter builder and campaign builder for ongoing stuff but I mostly build on my PC using office as I’ve been doing since BG (before Google)
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
Yeah, I definitely use Google too for stuff I need to share.
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
I have tried a load of platforms and tools. By far my favourite at the moment is Chronica.ventures it allows you to create quest logs, place and NPC catalogues, in world calendars, and visually is just so much more inutitive and beautiful than something big and popular like world anvil:
I think Chronica is very much likely to be my go-to in the future. The example above is from a DoIP campaign, but I am currently building my own world in the tool and it is just so easy to use. Even better, it's a small team who are really open to feedback and suggestions. They're still actively developing.
Coming in second place for me is Kanka.io it functions a great deal like Chronica and has some price advantages if you're building more than one campaign. I personally think it looks less visually impressive and doesn't seem to be quite as intuitive. It's very much the lesser of the two in my mind.
Following a long way behind is the often promoted on Youtube and other Social media, World Anvil. Jam packed with ads, distractions, and things supposedly designed to 'help' World Anvil is by far the most complex of the three so far. While that complexity might suit some creatives, it's weakness for me comes in the form of making it harder to just add one thing. The structure of World Anvil as more of a Wiki/article based system makes it inherently more interconnected and it's really difficult to keep track of where you left off. What connections did you miss? If I'm writing an article on a town and haven't yet created the information on the town mayor, or the inn the way World Anvil works is to have it as a link. If I don't have the time to do all the things in one session coming back to it later it's difficult to scan back and see what I forgot. By contrast Chronica handles links and connections in a much more intuitive, easy to see system. World Anvil is by far the most complex, but that is it's main weakness. Honestly, it's shockingly bad having now seen other systems.
Shard Tabletop is a VTT come Campaign/Adventure organiser/creator. It's frankly dreadful. It looks ugly, has a steep learning curve, but there are for some reason still advocates of that system.
There's Campfire which again appears on a lot of Youtube channels, but I could never really get into - might just be because it's a system that is trying to be multi-purpose - an all things to all people type of issue. So it doesn't master any one thing.
Finally, an extension has been added to my favourite VTT - Owlbear.rodeo called Clash! Clash is a really well featured initiative tracker that is connected to Open5e and so you can search up and connect stat blocks from the SRD and Community created content in moments. Need to quickly add a monster, add a token, search for the stat block and apply. Boom you've got your encounter set up and running. Better still, once you've added or developed a stat block for an NPC or monster you can save that stat block to your own collection to recall again in the future. It has really just sent Owlbear soaring to the best of the VTTs in my opinion. It works well across both touch and mouse and keyboard devices.
Hope that helps.
DM session planning template - My version of maps for 'Lost Mine of Phandelver' - Send your party to The Circus - Other DM Resources - Maps, Tokens, Quests - 'Better' Player Character Injury Tables?
Actor, Writer, Director & Teacher by day - GM/DM in my off hours.
I've looked into several of the RP trackers, although a while ago so I can't remember what they were, but have just stuck to one note. It's free and I haven't yet found after over 2 years in a campaign that I am outgrowing it. A tab each for NPC's, Factions, Quests, then you can have a page inside the tab with each quest, faction etc. Roll20 then does all of the character sheets and manages that part. I think I was looking into it for the sake of having a new toy to use, but in reality One Note just seems to do everything for keeping stuff organised. The best part is that it synchs across devices, so I can be out and about and have an idea for a quest, then add it to my "ideas" page from my phone, and expand on it when I get around to opening it on the PC.
The only thing that would have made everything nicer was if I purchased the digital versions of each book for the integration to roll 20, it's a pain in the ass manually typing up each new enemy I wish to use. But I'm not rebuying all of my books.
If I start an in person RP rather than online, I'll be doing pretty much the same thing but using my tablet for one note access
My preferred software is Obsidian, it's a note tool where you can link between pages, which results in this huge web showing your campaign visually.
It's very simple to get to grips with, and I'm sure there's loads more it can do that I've not worked out yet! Plus, it uses MArkdown code, so can copy over from Homebrewery.
Make your Artificer work with any other class with 174 Multiclassing Feats for your Artificer Multiclass Character!
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I have started discussing/reviewing 3rd party D&D content on Substack - stay tuned for semi-regular posts!
I'm not super experienced, but honestly...
Notecards.
I work on a computer all the time, and it's a pain in the ass to stop what I'm on to scroll and manipulate tabs and such. I can organize index cards and grab the ones I need a lot quicker.
Fightable characters get stats, sometimes a general description if needed.
NPC's get a description, a motivation, and any key info they might have.
Rooms are also treated like NPC's and are colored different than the NPC's - description, any treasure or notable objects, and any needed DC values for checks.
Key story moments ("flags") are give their own cards and also a different color.
Paperclip the NPC's and foes and any story points to the rooms, the map is set out, as characters travel from room to room, generally I can just run them off the cards.
EDIT: oh yeah, I number the rooms directly to the map to correspond to my cards. The players can seen room numbers. It's not going t ruin anything for them really...
For tracking experience, missiles, bonus XP, spell use, rounds etc, I have a super high tech MS Word document. It has five columns and at the top of each column is the character name, HP, AC etc. There is a spot for bonus XP (which I reward for good roleplaying, great ideas in exploring the world, good combat strategy, etc). In the columns themselves I log HP, spells, and consumables.
Monster HP goes in the middle.
At the bottom, I have circles that I check off during combat to keep track of who won initiative, bonus attacks, etc.
If we have several battles, I start a clean sheet and transcribe the current totals to the top of it.
At the end of the session I make changes onto a MS word document character sheet based on my log. One of my players is in IT, and he is working on building us an excel document that auto updates saves, other bonuses, etc. But right now, it is manual (since MANY things in are game are custom, nothing off the shelf would work).
If you are talking about organizing the dungeon itself, I would encourage the less is more mantra. 1-2 pages of text per adventure and a map. If you have 20 pages of notes, 5 pages of NPCs and 6 maps, it is going to be hard to keep straight for even the most organized DM.
Hope this helps
Velstitzen
I am a 40 something year old physician who DMs for a group of 40 something year old doctors. We play a hybrid game, mostly based on 2nd edition rules with some homebrew and 5E components.
Well...
ok, so, I have a lot of older ipads. I don't trade them in, I just keep them, lol. For work, I have a collection of them, a laptop, and a couple of keyboards that allows me to use them with multiple devices. Not a suggestion, though, just a way to point out that I adapted to the tools I do have, and most of my tools are for work and I work about 80% remotely or more.
All my games are virtual. I do not use any VTT. I have a world anvil account, but as noted above, I find it has good ideas and lousy execution and it is going away because I canceled my sub. I have looked at several different ones (VTTs) and since none really have the ability to adapt to my rules, most are useless (we play D&D, but we have 9 base scores, 3 derived, a magic points system, and so forth, so default systems are useless to me).
So, what do I use?
I have binders and notecards (which, as it happens, are in a binder, lol), and i have a few photo galleries (Monsters, NPCs, statblocks) and I have my trusty DM screen that leans up against the ipad supports. I use Zoom and Teams, and I am always signed into a session on at least four devices. One handles the images to the characters (shared screen), another will track certain things, a third will have my camera, and the last will have music and/or function as the secondary thing to show stuff to the players.
Then I have a pad of scratch paper. I but those little 5 by 7 pads pretty much in bulk anyway, and burn through them fast for work as it is, so using them for play is just easy for me to do.
THe least useful thing is that I have been doing this for a really long time, and so I am used to tracking a lot of different stuff in my head. I visualize everything -- we only use a "battle map" when it is essential (and for that I have one of the pads set up to face a big graph sheet that I usually prepare in advance with whatever is handy (though in the next game we will have custom minis). I write down orders of combat on scratch pad (initiative), and I do a light tracking of HP and such for the players (but really only if there is something going on -- I turst my players).
A lot of it is seat of the pants stuff, though. It has to be. I have had three separate parties of 8 to 10 people doing the same dungeon at the same time (but in different sessions!) and so my biggest thing is to take a LOT of notes (that get converted to binder inserts every thursday night, lol),
Lastly, because I use oom and teams, I have a cheat: I record the sessions. I hold up an orange card now and again -- that serves as a flag for me when I go through the video to make more detailed notes on Thursday nights, and then I delete the file (because I am cheap and don't pay for storage lol).
Unless there is a really cool ting. In which case I trim it out and send it to the people who would appreciate (players, not anyone else).
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
.-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-.
An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
Hey, I just want to say thanks for this. I am looking at it and may give it a test run as it looks like it could be of value to me -- and other systems are far too cluttered for my tastes.
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
.-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-.
An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
Personally I like to keep pencil and paper notes in those notebooks you can pick up in the office section of target. I find it easier to have a blank page and fill things up one block, encounter, or dungeon at a time. My sorting system is entirely chronological from when I write content (I date each entry at the top), and I do regular updates on the main plot stuff and character plot stuff between adventure notes. NPC's are included with the content they are relevant to, ensuring you don't get too many that are irrelevant and hard to keep track of.
At the moment I have almost three notebooks full, and it's always been easy to go back and re use things when relevant or for other campaigns.
For those who prefer the physical organisation system, I'd highly recommend checking out the NPC/Monster Cards that exist. I've used them for a while and they're great to have at hand to be able to randomly shuffle and draw a monster for those unexpected encounters:
Dungeons & Dragons Spellbook Cards: Monsters 0-5 (D&d Accessory) : Wizards RPG Team: Amazon.co.uk: Toys & Games
D&D Creature & NPC Cards – Travelling Man UK
They also come as magic item cards and spell list cards. Again something I find brilliant to have in my physical DM kit:
Dungeons & Dragons Spellbook Cards: Magic Item Cards (D&D Accessory) : Amazon.co.uk: Toys & Games
Dungeons & Dragons Spellbook Cards: Druid (D&D Accessory) : Amazon.co.uk: Toys & Games
DM session planning template - My version of maps for 'Lost Mine of Phandelver' - Send your party to The Circus - Other DM Resources - Maps, Tokens, Quests - 'Better' Player Character Injury Tables?
Actor, Writer, Director & Teacher by day - GM/DM in my off hours.
Google Sheets/Docs for me. A doc for a session outline, a sheet for each encounter, and a "campaign sheet" with stuff like NPCs, locations, ongoing quests, etc. which has a player-facing version that I (or sometimes they) gradually fill in as they learn stuff.
I would just make a colossal mess with notecards and paper. Digital means I can access it anywhere and my cats can't scatter my notes all over the house.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
Depending on your imagination and memory ... create the content when you need it and write some brief notes after the session on the names for NPCs, their attitudes and any significant interactions with the players.
It is much more challenging and time consuming to make up every possible NPC in advance and then try to keep them all in mind (other than those few that might be plot specific - but even then you don't actually need more about the NPC until the characters encounter them). The easier way is to have a rough idea and fill in the details when they enter the campaign (if you know the PCs will encounter an NPC in a specific session then make them up in advance of that session but the rest of the time create the content as needed).
In terms of those notes, I have a Campaign Notes handout in Roll20 that is visible to the DM only where I develop the campaign, NPCs, plots, storylines, random hooks that may not yet have an adventure attached (a campaign feels much more coherent to the players when a random event added six sessions in the past which had no attached plot subsequently ties in to a plot line you have just created several sessions later). If running in person, I'll use a note app or just keep some paper notes though I would tend to go electronic these days.
You strike me as the mega-dungeon kind of DM who really doesn’t have any time for fluff like NPCs and the like.
That said, just stick to what you’re good at- making and presenting massive and beautiful dungeon complexes. Things like organizing NPCs and players doesn’t matter much anyways when they are dropping faster than mayflies in the meat grinder.
I use Legend Keeper. It's not free like obsidian, but it's for me more than a notepad, it's also my second VTT, that complete maps on beyond for sharing text and image with my player.
It's very nice if you want to share thing with your player, our product a big map with information on different location.
i kinda just use notepad or write it down...