DM Campaign Tracker

[JoeGKushner]

Not that long ago, Ronin Arts came out with a Campaign Planner. It was a simple thing that you printed out and filled out. Had stuff for keeping track of a lot of goods but really wasn't a planning tool. Now from Goodman Games comes the DM Campaign Tracker, a very similar product. Note, I haven't seen how the PDF forms work in the revised Campaign Planner so there might be some great enhancements to it.

The books are similar in many ways. Both have page after page of forms for the GM to fill out. This book includes the following:

Basic Campaign Information: Includes space for name, publisher, DM and players.

Published Resources Allowed in Campaign: This includes book title, publisher, pages or material allowed and book code.

World Overview: These pages include spots for numerous different entries including deities, holidays, regions, guilds, churches, towns, cities, and other goods.

Rumors, Themes and Plot Threads: Wide generous spaces with notes for various levels (low, mid, high, epic).

NPCs: These cards are very similar to those produced by The Game Mechanics. They have places for all the major stats, but might've been a little better by abbreviating the AC and HP information and providing some typed out common skills, and more room for the attacks. Another half page allows you to keep track of what I'd call walk on or minor NPCs with name, race, class/level, location and any distinguishing traits and notes.

Character Reference: These pages may see some heavy use in my campaign depending on how my current method is going. See, these pages keep track of character name, hit points, initiative, armor class, ability scores, saving thows, speed, weapon in hand, and common skills, as well as a space for other information like special modifiers and non-combat information. Right now I'm using a combination of the Game Mechanics cards and Index Cards. I like this because it's everything at a glance.

Items: Page for items not identified with spaces for what the item is, where it came from, value, and how many charges. Another useful chart tucked at the bottom is wealth, and an appropriate wealth per character by level. This is good for me because I run a mainly outdoor style campaign that doesn't rely on dungeons so the party is occasionally under funded and this can quickly let me know what wealth level they should have.

Calendar: No doubt about it, this calendar wins over the Ronin Arts one. It's broken up by months and a daily calendar, as opposed to making your own calendar as pages 12-13 of the Planner have you do.

Session History: Another standard form where you write down date, adventures, events, accomplishments, total XP earned and story break point.

XP Log: Ah, how many times do I wish I had this in the past. This is a big win over the Campaign Planner because it's something I can use for all the players. It's broken up by characters and goes by date, gained xp ,spent/lost xp, ending xp. Perfect for those math illiterate players or those who just cheat.

Rules Reference: Spot to note any variant rules in play or any important rules you keep forgetting.

House Rules: Well, you knew with a rules reference that there would have to be a place for house rules.

Custom Encounter Table: Place with all environments and the good old twenty possible encounters.

One of the benefits here is that the front cover has a few important things for those like me, always in search of little important bits. How about some random NPC traits? How about tavern names or even NPC names? Now you can met Osydeus the Blade at the Pearly Rooster or Turog Zak who suffers from boils. The rear cover has something equally cool, a 1-30 table where you can use a dry-erase market to keep track of initiative for characters and monsters. Perfect stuff.

Now the bad news is that I find I would use both this and the Campaign Planner. In addition, I find that while the price of this product in and of itself is great, if they could've included either a CD or a code to get an electronic version of this product, that it would be far superior than it is. A lot of information here, especially on the player tracking side, will change, and change rapidly. Some of it like the encounter tables to customize, need to be done for various regions and would need different copies of the key product.

People are going to get use out of the little bonuses this product has and if you're not already using Ronin Arts Campaign Planner, that the DM Campaign Tracker is worth a look.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

Are you caught off guard when your players decide to visit the NPC blacksmith from 4 sessions ago whose name you can't remember? Do you have trouble recalling whether the unidentified potion of bull's strength is the blue one or the sparkly green one? And what day was that dwarven religious holiday again?

A first-of-its-kind playing aid, this campaign tracker is an essential tool for third edition DM's. Gone are the days of paper scraps and loose-leaf notebooks! The DM Campaign Tracker is a carefully designed booklet with space to record all information about an ongoing campaign: NPC stats, XP tracking, session logs, character reference, world info, and more. Just as every player needs a character sheet, every DM needs a campaign tracker!

Just fill in the name of your campaign on the cover, then you're set to track all of this:

Published resources allowed in the campaign (i.e., which new feats and PrCs are off limits or not)
All the easy-to-forget information about your world, from a kingdom's population to a deity's favored weapon to holidays and economics
Names, leaders, agendas, alignments, and more for guilds, churches, cults, and organizations
The names and NPCs of every tavern, inn, shop, town, and city your PCs have ever visited, and what happened there
A unique rumor-tracking system that lets you track rumors and develop them into plot threads at different power levels
NPC mini-character sheets, ranging from detailed entries for the major villains to short-and-simple one-liners for remembering the names of shopkeepers, barkeeps, and other minor players
A 2-page, easy-to-read spread with space for recording everything you need to remember about the player characters!
A wealth tracker: are your characters too rich for 6th level?
An item tracker, including space to track valuations for unidentified gems and other objects, and tick-boxes for tracking magic item charges
A graphical, fill-in-the-blanks calendar and timeline for any fantasy world
A session history so you remember what happened when
An XP tracker. A commonly overlooked aspect of 3E campaign management, this tool lets you track XP gained and XP spent by campaign session. No more disputes because the wizard forgot about the XP he spent making that golem!
Space for jotting down house rules and reference for commonly forgotten rules.
As if all that's not enough, the inside covers have tables for rapidly generating traits and names for NPCs, taverns, and shops, plus custom encounter tables by terrain for your world. And best of all, the back cover makes use of the book's lamination to present an easy-to-use initiative tracker!
The DM Campaign Tracker is a stand-alone, world-neutral tool for any fantasy campaign.

 

[Psion]

DM Campaign Tracker

The DM Campaign Tracker is a book of forms made to facilitate the tracking of information in a campaign. The book is published by Goodman Games, with the concept and layout being by the frontman, Joseph Goodman.

DM Campaign Tracker is a 16 page saddle stitched softcover book, though all available space is used – even the inside covers and back cover. The booklet is $4.99.

The front cover depicts a woman bearing a sword standing with her back to a pillar, along with a blank for the name of your campaign.

The interior is black and white, though pages have a decorative watermark and thin borders.

The inside front cover is the only actual rulesy-content, containing tables for random NPC names & traits and tavern names. The back cover is an initiative tracker, taking advantage of the cover lamination to allow the use of wipe-off marker.

The rest of the book is filled with forms for tracking various aspects of your game. Forms cover a variety of topics including basic world and campaign details, allowed supplements, details of deities and organizations, towns and cities, rumors and plot threads, NPCs, summarized PC details, items, a world calendar, session history, XP log (2 pages), rules reference of that page you are always forgetting, campaign variants, house rules, and custom encounter tables.

Now most of these forms are nicely laid out and potentially useful. The first problem I can immediately see is running out of space. So you can just photocopy extras right? Well, like many such small nicely laid out books like this, there is no permission to copy form, so depending on your conscience or how uncooperative your Kinko's clerk is, that could be a no-go.

Personally, it seems to me like blank paper or a word processor would be more ideal for most of these forms. However, the price tag is not exactly sticker-shock material at $5, so if you have some trouble organizing your thinking regarding your campaign, you might want to pick it up.

Overall Grade: C

-Alan D. Kohler

 

[GameWyrd]

Every now and then a product like Goodman Games' DM Campaign Tracker comes along. I have mixed feelings about these things as I can be one of those compulsive note takers who seem to be unusually common among gamers. Normally I prefer to take my own notes, in my own format because I tailor everything exactly as I need it. Sometimes, though, I'm a disorganised so-and-so and benefit hugely from a structure suggested by someone else. I've also been gaming for years. It took me a while to really realise the benefits of good note taking as a player and of obsessive note taking as a GM.

It's a single shot victory but perhaps the best use of a structured folio like the DM Campaign Tracker is the initial suggestion that keeping on-going notes, and keeping them in this sort of format, is a good idea.

Goodman Games' DM Campaign Tracker is one of the best. There are 16 grey-scaled pages, with the inside covers used effectively (therefore 18 pages) and just under US $5.

Let's look at the inside covers first. On the front cover we've random NPC traits, names and random tavern names. The Amazing Dungeon, I just diced that up now but it suits wonderfully if I was going to comment on the irony of having taverns so prominent in what is a d20 branded product. The back cover squeezes in the legal foo and finds space to let you jot down a custom encounter table. And yes, this is a Goodman product and so there is a column for Aerial encounters.

The first page, so to speak, of the planner is rather interesting - it is space to record which published resources are allowed in the game and even which pages or material from it is allowed. I think this is a good mindset to encourage.

The World Overview, on page two, starts to fall into more traditional zones. There's space to record kingdoms and capitals (along with rulers, political systems, alignment, population, religion and some notes). The idea of a large continent with many kingdoms, some good, some bad (see alignment) is particularly D&D. The Forgotten Realms spring to mind - but, of course, it's very Tolkien too (Gondor / Mordor). I suppose if it's a common set-up to use then it's a good thing to have in the Campaign Planner. Similarly we go on to see if copper, gold, silver, etc, coins have different names, what the major deities and guilds in the campaign might be. Similarly in following pages we have single line entries for cities and tiny spaces for NPCs found therein (and shops too). If I was using this I'd probably end up using the official space in the tracker to record only the page numbers to my own notes. On the other hand it's enough space for many gaming groups and campaigns. It all depends on the style of your play and just how obsessively you note take.

The middle of the tracker, the double spread, is used cleverly. Across two pages there's room to record the current state of eight characters. If you're a busy DM then this one page will show saving throws, current hit points and skills like listen, search and spot. Really, really handy.

There's a page to keep track of the group's items and the number of charges they have left and an appropriate wealth per character per level chart. An interesting concept. There's a basic calendar (hours per day, days per week, weeks per month, month per year) and of when Winter, Spring, Summer and Autumn are. (Except this is an American product so Autumn is called Fall). These seasons can last for five months, at most, each so if you want to use all four, you can't have more than a twenty month year. I suspect that's not a limit which is going to be challenged often.

There is one page to record what happens in gaming sessions and two pages to log the XP. That's a bit unbalanced but the DM Campaign Tracker is set up to be able to cope with eight characters and there's only room for four characters per XP log page. On the other hand, I suspect just a half page per set of four characters would suit me and I doubt I could struggle to record what happens in each session on just a small column. Again, its worth saying over and over, it all depends on your level of note taking. On the whole the DM Campaign Tracker does well.

The last few pages in the product are there for some column sized lines to scribble house rules or rules you often forget. Once again the DM Campaign Tracker is there to cater to players who've been able to move out of the mould of canon rules and offers encouraging nudges to those gamers yet to follow.

The DM Campaign Tracker does well in GameWyrd's review model. How well does it do what it sets out to do? It's good. Whether you want to use it is a different question (but so is whether you like game system X) but I suspect most d20 DMs (or, oddly, players) would be able to get some use out of this tracker.

* This DM Campaign Tracker was first published at GameWyrd.