Running LMoP as a first-time DM with first-time players and using Roll20 as the platform to play on (sad covid times). The module itself comes with a lot of notes and everything needed to run the campaign but I keep a word document for additional stuff.
My current note-taking style with Word for each session:
Summary of the events that took place, noting any peculiar/significant things
Things that need looking up (e.g. questions regarding any rules) and things that need prepping for next session (e.g. 'prepare x encounter/quest')
Preparatory notes for following session in addition to those given (especially when the campaign has started to branch off)
While this format is decent for session-to-session notes, it becomes difficult to keep track of individual characters/events that took place many sessions ago. Ideally I'd like to easily flick through tabs/pages for these things and have the idea of writing short stories as a form of NPC notes (inspired by Lutes & Dice on YT).
For example, after the party attacked the Redbrand hideout I'd maybe write something like this (in addition to previous entries):
Glasstaff (Iarno Albrek)
A faint squeaking sound dragged Iarno's gaze away from the sprawling notes on his desk. He sat upright as the rat familiar he had placed in the lab had scurried through its hole in the corner of the bedchamber wall and began frantically shuffling around the foot of his desk. The air of confusion slowly wrapped itself around the wizard into a veil of realisation before tightening into a grip of panic. Iarno leapt across the room, cursing the incompetence of the ruffians and the persistence of this troublesome group of Phandalin newcomers. 'The Black Spider was indeed correct' he thought as he hastily activated the secret door and rushed out;, hearing the faint muffles of movement on the other side of the passage wall he sneaked through. Upon reaching the cellar, the wizard's eyes darted towards the pool of water and the absence of his pouch within it. With a curse, he slammed his fist against the wall and raced up the stairs into the dead of night.
'I shall head to Cragmaw Castle and report back to the spider. I am sure this information will be of use to him!' Iarno told himself as he trudged along the Triboar Trail and delved into the Neverwinter Woods. But as he stepped deeper and deeper into the woods, one thought began to resound louder and louder in his mind: 'I'm counting on you Iarno, don't disappoint me'
Fear halted him in his tracks. With a deep sigh, Iarno Albrek turned around and held his staff in hand; he knew what had to be done.
I feel like this style gets me more immersed and gives a better understanding of the character than standard notes, plus I could give these 'NPC Tales' to the players after the campaign which could be cool for them to read.
So two questions here:
1. What software would you recommend for note taking? Currently playing on Roll20 if that makes any difference
2. What do you think about my current and proposed style of NPC note taking? Also any tips on general note taking?
I have this crazy good mechanical pencil I really dig the feel of and a notebook with dividers in it. Every now and then I add a sticky note as an extra divider.
I'm in a similar position to the OP, I have a digital filing system of Word docs that was starting to get cumbersome unless I prepared a dedicated document for each weekly session.
Trello has been a revelation. I can use sticky notes in categories and put as little or as much in each one as I like. The real beauty is that I can link docs from OneDrive and work on my material from any device, embed URLs to the FanDom wiki, even hot link to other stickies.
I also use the Game Master app to run encounters, it's very slick if you invest a little time to set it up.
I mostly jot down everything in a Bullet Journal style, normally in a physical notepad during a game and then I'll type things up with more detail later.
For digitally sharing information, I use either OneNote/Evernote (whichever the group prefers) so that I can have a catalogue of both private information and shared lore/story notes that everyone can interact with.
When I'm running a game, for any pre-game preparations, I'll type anything I expect to happen into a bullet point list in a Word Document with each point linking to the more detailed fluff in my OneNote/Evernote directory. I try to avoid having blocks of text, almost everything tends to be just keywords and bullet points as I much prefer to improvise and interpret my notes based on the group's actions and how they approach something rather than going off a block of scripted text.
Get one note off the windows store for free (it's beetter than the official office one note), it's perfect and synchronizes across devices. you can add media of any kind from anywhere, anything you copy past from the internet will have a link to where you got it in case you forget it. you can even write in it if you have a touch screen or stylus. I love it. Keeps all my campaigns in one spot. I bullet point the crap out of stuff then write notes in the margins. Or add pix to help me remember how to describe something.
I use a combo of One Note, an excel spreadsheet, and in-app notes in Foundry VTT. I wish I could just pick one but they are each good for different things.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
A spreadsheet makes things a lot easier to deal with for calculations, character sheets, and the like.
I have used a single word document for each adventure and a master campaign doc with embedded links across them using the Paste link function and bookmarking. Bad thing is you have to keep the relative file structure the same. Was using One Drive to take care of that.
That is a lot more complicated than most people will want to do though. I found Trello when I used it for work to be a little clunky and was missing certain things that I felt would be good for project management. It was used because the sales people were stupid and they hoped they would figure it out easier than Project which we had licenses for. it is also fairly expensive. I think we were paying about $25 a month for it. That is more than the Microsoft 365 family subscription I have.
One note is easy for new people, but a big campaign will make it difficult to organize.
I'll be sure to check out all of your recommended software (bullet journal would be lovely if I didn't roll a natural 1 in handwriting). One of the party members also keeps track of the campaign events via a personal character diary which is a fun read and also helps me if I miss anything, which is fantastic. Currently Roll20 seems to handle all of the number crunching fairly well but I'll definitely keep things like Excel and Game Master in mind for post-covid irl sessions.
Lyxen, those bullet points are basically what I've been aiming for but never quite nailing down. Thank you! I also relate with being unable to take notes during sessions and thanks for all your other advice too.
Hello all, level 1 DM here,
Running LMoP as a first-time DM with first-time players and using Roll20 as the platform to play on (sad covid times). The module itself comes with a lot of notes and everything needed to run the campaign but I keep a word document for additional stuff.
My current note-taking style with Word for each session:
While this format is decent for session-to-session notes, it becomes difficult to keep track of individual characters/events that took place many sessions ago. Ideally I'd like to easily flick through tabs/pages for these things and have the idea of writing short stories as a form of NPC notes (inspired by Lutes & Dice on YT).
For example, after the party attacked the Redbrand hideout I'd maybe write something like this (in addition to previous entries):
Glasstaff (Iarno Albrek)
A faint squeaking sound dragged Iarno's gaze away from the sprawling notes on his desk. He sat upright as the rat familiar he had placed in the lab had scurried through its hole in the corner of the bedchamber wall and began frantically shuffling around the foot of his desk. The air of confusion slowly wrapped itself around the wizard into a veil of realisation before tightening into a grip of panic. Iarno leapt across the room, cursing the incompetence of the ruffians and the persistence of this troublesome group of Phandalin newcomers. 'The Black Spider was indeed correct' he thought as he hastily activated the secret door and rushed out;, hearing the faint muffles of movement on the other side of the passage wall he sneaked through. Upon reaching the cellar, the wizard's eyes darted towards the pool of water and the absence of his pouch within it. With a curse, he slammed his fist against the wall and raced up the stairs into the dead of night.
'I shall head to Cragmaw Castle and report back to the spider. I am sure this information will be of use to him!' Iarno told himself as he trudged along the Triboar Trail and delved into the Neverwinter Woods. But as he stepped deeper and deeper into the woods, one thought began to resound louder and louder in his mind: 'I'm counting on you Iarno, don't disappoint me'
Fear halted him in his tracks. With a deep sigh, Iarno Albrek turned around and held his staff in hand; he knew what had to be done.
I feel like this style gets me more immersed and gives a better understanding of the character than standard notes, plus I could give these 'NPC Tales' to the players after the campaign which could be cool for them to read.
So two questions here:
1. What software would you recommend for note taking? Currently playing on Roll20 if that makes any difference
2. What do you think about my current and proposed style of NPC note taking? Also any tips on general note taking?
I have this crazy good mechanical pencil I really dig the feel of and a notebook with dividers in it. Every now and then I add a sticky note as an extra divider.
I'm in a similar position to the OP, I have a digital filing system of Word docs that was starting to get cumbersome unless I prepared a dedicated document for each weekly session.
Trello has been a revelation. I can use sticky notes in categories and put as little or as much in each one as I like. The real beauty is that I can link docs from OneDrive and work on my material from any device, embed URLs to the FanDom wiki, even hot link to other stickies.
I also use the Game Master app to run encounters, it's very slick if you invest a little time to set it up.
I mostly jot down everything in a Bullet Journal style, normally in a physical notepad during a game and then I'll type things up with more detail later.
For digitally sharing information, I use either OneNote/Evernote (whichever the group prefers) so that I can have a catalogue of both private information and shared lore/story notes that everyone can interact with.
When I'm running a game, for any pre-game preparations, I'll type anything I expect to happen into a bullet point list in a Word Document with each point linking to the more detailed fluff in my OneNote/Evernote directory. I try to avoid having blocks of text, almost everything tends to be just keywords and bullet points as I much prefer to improvise and interpret my notes based on the group's actions and how they approach something rather than going off a block of scripted text.
Get one note off the windows store for free (it's beetter than the official office one note), it's perfect and synchronizes across devices. you can add media of any kind from anywhere, anything you copy past from the internet will have a link to where you got it in case you forget it. you can even write in it if you have a touch screen or stylus. I love it. Keeps all my campaigns in one spot. I bullet point the crap out of stuff then write notes in the margins. Or add pix to help me remember how to describe something.
I use a combo of One Note, an excel spreadsheet, and in-app notes in Foundry VTT. I wish I could just pick one but they are each good for different things.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
A spreadsheet makes things a lot easier to deal with for calculations, character sheets, and the like.
I have used a single word document for each adventure and a master campaign doc with embedded links across them using the Paste link function and bookmarking. Bad thing is you have to keep the relative file structure the same. Was using One Drive to take care of that.
That is a lot more complicated than most people will want to do though. I found Trello when I used it for work to be a little clunky and was missing certain things that I felt would be good for project management. It was used because the sales people were stupid and they hoped they would figure it out easier than Project which we had licenses for. it is also fairly expensive. I think we were paying about $25 a month for it. That is more than the Microsoft 365 family subscription I have.
One note is easy for new people, but a big campaign will make it difficult to organize.
Joplin
https://itsfoss.com/joplin/
Guide to the Five Factions (PWYW)
Deck of Decks
Thank you all for your advice!
I'll be sure to check out all of your recommended software (bullet journal would be lovely if I didn't roll a natural 1 in handwriting). One of the party members also keeps track of the campaign events via a personal character diary which is a fun read and also helps me if I miss anything, which is fantastic. Currently Roll20 seems to handle all of the number crunching fairly well but I'll definitely keep things like Excel and Game Master in mind for post-covid irl sessions.
Lyxen, those bullet points are basically what I've been aiming for but never quite nailing down. Thank you! I also relate with being unable to take notes during sessions and thanks for all your other advice too.