book keeping for dummies

OKay, so my players have become a splinter in the side of a crime family and they are soon to be targets of theft and arson. Now I want to do this without them knowing what's going on of coarse. So I'm thinking of having the group fill out some sort of sheet to let me know who has what, or where the group treasure is located. And that got me thinking, I really like the idea of some sort of treasury log that way I can always have said information.

I know there are several folks who make character record booklets and advanced character sheets, but does anyone have any really good DM's Party Book or anything like that?

Hi punkornage,

As a DM, I most likely organise and prepare a little bit more than most (I do my seven character's individual booklets in Illustrator - each ranging between 14 and 22 pages). I have a system in place that works well with items:

Each "magical" item or item of importance I hand out gets it's own card (fitting four item cards to a regular page). This way, it's very easy to track who has what by who has the card. You have the card, you have the item.

Secondly, I set up a page in Excel with the following columns:
- Official Item Name (eg. +2 human bane longsword)
- Campaign Name (Most item's in my game have unusual names given to them by their creators)
- Campaign Origin (Campaign date and acquisition circumstances - eg. 12th Ready' reat, CY595, Tofu the Bold)
- Official Value (DMG, Book or now Magic Item Compendium). This makes it easy to total as well to make sure all the players are getting a fair shake of the MI's.
- Campaign Value (Larger Column - Any time I make an appraise check, this is where it goes)

I copied this into each page in the workbook with each page tab being a character in the game and the columns filled out with the items they had. I then print out the pages, staple them together and have it in my game folder to access and change when appropriate on gameday.

In each of the character booklet's I produce, I also have a small section for loans and debts (my player's are notorious for playing swapsies). This makes it much easier for working out who owes who.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

In my campaign, I use a system of cards. This has taken quite a lot of my time (and ink) setting up, but it really makes for a memorable system where items don't get misplaced.

The basic card I use is a nine to the page card. These fit nicely into the baseball card sized sleeves you can get at Wal-Mart. (They're cheaper than what my FLGS carries for Magic, but they're not acid free and all that fancy stuff.) Each character gets a folder which has a full-page sheet for the character sheet and several 9-slot sheets for items. I printed labels and stuck them on the 9-slot sheets so you know what is in your head slot, what is in your belt slot, what is your primary weapon, what is your backup, et cetera. This makes tracking magic items easier and makes it cake when someone else has to run your character.

Magic items all get these 9-per-sheet cards, from potions on up to powerful weapons. I also use the same size cards for masterwork items.

I have somewhat smaller cards for ammunition and grenades. This is mostly because the ammunition card fits in the sleeve nicely in front of the weapon card, and you can still see the details of both weapon and ammunition.

For treasure items, I have smaller cards (closer to business card size) that have the details of the item. I also have cards for money. (Similar to the "Fantasy Money" product, I have cards for larger amounts, like 50 gold coins. I have different cards for the monies from different countries, so the players can keep track of what they really have.)

I'm experimenting with sleeves that are for photos for the money. There are some 4x6 pockets and other sizes.

The idea is that you have either a pocket or a sleeve for "at home" or "on the ship" (they own a ship) or "in the bag of holding" or wherever isn't on your person. They'll probably end up with a folder for the ship to keep cards for things stored on the ship that aren't part of any one PC's inventory.

This really helps keep track of things. You want to drink a potion? Give me the card. You want to spend money? Give me the card. Lost the card? You lost the item. If I want to know who has something, I just ask for the card. (This became important in a campaign years ago before I started doing this when they had a rod of healing that got passed around so much that no one knew who had it anymore.)

I admit, I also like this because it has kept certain players I used to game with from writing down extra stuff on their sheets. I started looking for this method when I had a player who was in a college group where I had no choice who I took who used more healing potions in one battle than I had given out all campaign.


If you want to save some time on card creation, I know TOGC makes a Complete Item Card product. I custom designed my cards because I wanted slightly different information and because I found developing them in Adobe Pro' to be fun.


I print everything on cardstock and I have a Firskars (sp?) paper cutter that make short work of the cards. I have several boxes designed for Magic cards that I use to keep things organized. (I also created dividers. I'm that obsessive about it.)

The beauty of it is that once you have it all, you rarely need to make new cards -- just for new magic items or new treasures, or if you add a currency.

I also like the suggestion of someone on these boards that when its time to search bodies, you throw out envelopes with what each creature had on them. (I don't bother with cards for bits like "piece of string", "shiny pebble", and the like.) Whoever grabs the envelope starts searching the body first.

I really like the cards, and I may work on implementing and enforcing such a system.

SiderisAnon said:

In my campaign, I use a system of cards. This has taken quite a lot of my time (and ink) setting up, but it really makes for a memorable system where items don't get misplaced. *snip*

Click to expand...

COOLEST. IDEA. EVAR!!! Anychance we could get a peek at what the cards actually look like? I would love to have a setup like this for my campaign as my players are nortorious for loosing items, forgetting who has what, what does what, etc. Also I love the binder idea, will have to look into buying a few sets for my players to try out.

Cheers,
E

Sample Cards

Okay. I've never tried attaching files before, so we'll see how this works. (I don't have a web site to host some samples on.)

The first two cards a pair of masterwork blades. When I created them, I used the random sword generator from Seventh Sanctum, then modified things to suit my game.

The cards were created in Campaign Cartographer 3 for the layout and then Adobe Acrobat Pro 6 for the text. (I couldn't get lines I like out of the Adobe because I don't have the full Pagemaker package, I guess.) I have files which hold blank cards that can be filled in. The data is typed into Adobe and then a copy of the file is saved. I also created ones where if you fill in the first card, all of the 8 other cards on the propagate so that I can quickly create sheets of items for bad guys. (Though these are not masterwork, as I like individual descriptions for all of my masterwork.)

Ammo and Grenade

The first one worked, so here are two more.

The first is just shortbow arrows. The card is smaller because when it's cut out, it fits in one of the 9-sleeve pages for baseball cards right in front of the weapon card.

The second is for tanglefoot bags. I probably don't need all those boxes for number, but as one of the PCs not only loves tanglefoot bags, she bought an alchemy lab just to make more, so I may need that many. Right now, she has one card for "carrying on her" and one for "on the ship".

In Adobe, you can put little X's in the boxes by clicking on them, so I can pass out ones that only have a few uses. (I'll adjust the sample, actually, so that it only shows five uses left.) Then the player can use pencil to mark off the rest of the uses as they're used up.

Both of these cards are on sheets that if you fill in the first card, all the rest on the page get filled in with the same information. Makes it easy to equip large numbers of orcs and goblins.

I put in the rules for Tanglefoot bags because that way the player has them handy. I do the same for smoke grenades and for many magic items. (I also note things on weapons, when needed, like the bonus to hide something on your body with a dagger.)

Potion of Bull's Strength

I guess I could have put these all into one post.

Here's a potion card. I picked this one because I recognize the image as being clip-art.

Different classes of magic items are different colors. Weapons use a red brick background. Defensive items are green granite. Potions are the gray stone. Scrolls are a parchment looking color. Et cetera.


P.S. If people are interested, I can post money and treasure samples later.

Oh, and if you're wondering, I too think I may just have too much time on my hands sometimes. Of course, the library of cards were created over years of gaming.

Erywin said:

COOLEST. IDEA. EVAR!!! ... Also I love the binder idea, will have to look into buying a few sets for my players to try out.

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Thank you very much!

The idea evolved over the years. I started back in ... college? ... back in the day with documents I created in a word processor. Important magic items would have a full sheet of paper. Common magic items, like potions, would have 3-4 per page and be cut out. (Making horizontal strips.) The pictures were much bigger. Unfortunately, they were unwieldy.

Over time, I began to change how I did things, partially as I got better software and partially as I got better with it.

Originally, I was looking for a way to adapt Magic cards to use, either putting a sticker on them and keeping the artwork. Even using commons, it was too expensive. I also didn't like defacing the cards like that.

So, finally, I developed my own cards in Campaign Cartographer 3. However, while it's great for maps and even for the artwork and boxes of cards, it really sucks for putting in chunks of text. (It's a map program after all.) In the past year, I started moving all of my cards to having their text entered in Adobe, as I bought a used computer from a company and it came with some software, including an Adobe Pro package.

This campaign is the first one where I added money and treasure cards. The campaign involves travel to a lot of different lands, so I just couldn't accept using the standard "gold piece" as the same coinage everywhere. I know the players won't keep track of different currencies on their sheet -- they just ignore it and write them all down as generic -- so I decided money was important. The treasure cards are actually because I got tired of maintaining a spreadsheet with where things came from. I just put a value on the card and they don't know if it's accurate or not until their Appraise is rolled when they go to sell. (Oh, you THOUGHT it was a 500 gp item, but it's actually a fake, but that other item you had is worth a bit more than you thought.)


You can get the card sleeves and full-sheet sleeves at Wal-Mart for about $2 for set of nine card sleeves and 10-15 full-sheet sleeves. I use the 10-cent folders that have the three metal prongs for holding some looseleaf and a pair of pockets. When a campaign ends, the players get to keep their folder, character sheet, and it's sleeve. I keep the magic item cards and their sleeves. (Too much expense put in.)

If you start getting heavy into this, the cardstock is cheap but the ink can get pricey. Fortunately, I have a player who bought a set of ink for my printer to help me defray the costs and others who have offered to pick up sleeves, cardstock, and paper.



I just looked at the thread and realized I have posted entirely too much here. Bye now.

Once again, yeah I really like the system especially after seeing some of your cards.

Do you come up with all your descriptions for potions, weapons, etc or do you have some kind of description generator?