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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ranes" data-source="post: 1821791" data-attributes="member: 4826">For Mad God's Key (Dungeon 114), which I've just used to start a new campaign, here's what I did - and what I'll do again in future. I scanned the article, using OCR. I edited the text in Word. This allowed me to edit out some of the howlers that had got into print and to correct OCR errors (the number 1 in an expression like '(1d6)' was often turned into a lower case 'l', for example). Once I had clean copy, I wrote out the Greyhawk references and substituted references to my campaign's locations and gods. Then I began constructing an adventure in DM Genie. I generated NPCs from pasted stat blocks, making corrections to each one as necessary. DM Genie is not perfect but you can override it when a bug leads to an erroneous calculation. I used Paint Shop Pro to cut sections of maps appropriate to each encounter area, adding links and symbols where appropriate. I generated all treasure as items in DM Genie and stocked rooms or equipped NPC as required. Notes for individual NPCs were pasted into the NPC file, as well as into the encounter area description, for ease of reference. I also found an unlabelled map of a city with a river running through it and made that the city map for the adventure. Then I wrote day and night encounter tables for the city, constructing completely new NPCs as required for these. I added some further important or useful NPCs and NPC templates. Then I designed a calendar, set a date and generated the weather for the next year (again, in DM Genie). All of this took two days*, about twice as long as I would normally spend preparing for a single session (from a published module or otherwise) but I have a solid, well-organised foundation for the new campaign. And it's all just a click away on the laptop (which doesn't intrude into the game, as I set it up on a small table next to my chair, from where I can easily glance at it). The other advantages of doing all this are that I'm now very familiar with the module and I can make notes in the adventure file itself, thus tidying up the campaign tracking process. * Including adding Unearthed Arcana's Cloistered Cleric to the class database for variety.</blockquote>

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