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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Doug McCrae" data-source="post: 4787651" data-attributes="member: 21169">As Piratecat says, most of it can stay in your head, it doesn't need to be written down. In fact it can be harmful if you have to pause a lot of times during a session to look things up.Just use a few keywords, subject headings, to serve as memory triggers. Look into <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_map" target="_blank">mind mapping</a>. You might find it useful (for a lot of things, not just GMing). What Piratecat describes is pretty similar to a mind map.I just write down a few things for adventures. On one side of paper I have some keywords for the session - subject headings and subheadings with places and NPC names - and a few things I'll find hard to remember, usually stuff I looked up on wikipedia (my game is set in the present day) such as the 'Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, Forest Glen, Maryland'. Little details like that add a veneer of verisimilitude to all the nonsense about super-cats attacking animal testing labs. On the other side of the page I have some names to give to random NPCS tailored for wherever the adventure is set, like Japanese names or Colombian or whatever. I find it hard to come up with normal names on the spot.The other thing I have to do is stats for the bad guys. That's easier in D&D though when you have books full of monsters.</blockquote>