DMs: What program(s) do you use to track your campaign?

[Harlekin]

Holy cow. Is that as good as it looks?

Not quite, but the author seems to put his all into it. Some features are a little buggy and a few of the options are only placeholders to be added later.

However, it is already extremely good for a free program and once finished, it will be great. If Wotc took this program and took it as a template for their GM tools, they couldn't go too wrong.

Also, the author is very helpful on his facebook site, posting a question or a bug got me an answer within 48h.

 

[Agamon]

Recently found masterplan Masterplan and so far I'm quite impressed.

Ummm...words fail me here. I may have to give this a shot when my 4e game resumes in the fall....

 

[kitsune9]

I'd like to become more organized in planning my campaign. I currently use a small, spiral-bound journal, which has worked well enough so far, but I know won't work as adventures progress and there become more NPCs, organizations, events, etc. to track. I'd like to put everything in a digital format, but I'm debating the specific format to use. Hence the titular
question.

What program(s) do you use to track your campaign? I'd like to weigh the pros and cons of various applications.

Right now, I write all my adventures so I've been keeping track of everything through Word on my laptop. I also take my laptop to game so I'm not lugging around 500 books. Eventually, I'd like to get to the point where I don't have to take a single book to the game and just my laptop.

I would like to have some kind of software to campaign management, because I'm using an Excel spreadsheet to track initiative, word document for the adventure, and a bunch of pdfs and scans for books, rules, and monsters.

 

[stonegod]

I use Obsidian Portal to keep info online combined with the wiki-like software VoodooPad for secret stuff. Works well.

 

[Mathew_Freeman]

I've been using Obsidian Portal. It's awesome and really easy to use.

I second this.

It's also a good way of finding other players in your area (although that works better in the USA than in the UK, obviously).

Click the pic in my sig for more details of what I've been doing with it.

 

[fba827]

plain and simple text files on my laptop.
one for npcs, one for places, one for each session's notes, one for the metaplot timeline, etc.

it gets the job done and if i used anything fancier, my OCD would force me to obsess over completing every little detail and i'd never get anything else done

 

[The Shaman]

I've been using Obsidian Portal. It's awesome and really easy to use.

I use Obsidian Portal to keep info online combined with the wiki-like software VoodooPad for secret stuff. Works well.

I second this.

It's also a good way of finding other players in your area (although that works better in the USA than in the UK, obviously).

Click the pic in my sig for more details of what I've been doing with it.

Another OP user here.

I really like that you can create a page on the wiki and then link the page to a map with Google markers. And the tags on the NPC tracker come in handy.

 

[Daniel D. Fox]

A campaign wiki that's fully searchable by term, hyperlinked and weekly updates from the last campaign session.

For instance - The Last Cataclysm: Year 200 / A Tale of Stained Honor

 

[Ktulu]

I use Epic Words - a home for your RPG - Role-playing Game Blogs and Wikis to track my npcs, plot, loot, and the like.

For my campaign notes (the stuff the players don't see), I just create word files and save them in session folders. Most of it doesn't get used after the session (I track most of my plot-stuff in my head, using the epicwords wikis to keep names and goals in order).

 

[cmbarona]

Turns out I'm a Masterplan convert. Thanks for recommending it, Harlekin! I found that I can actually install and run it from my flash drive, which makes it just as mobile as I need it. I may look into making an online wiki at some point, but our other DM, who knows more about web design than I, may be creating one for his campaign, so I may see if I can piggyback off of his format for my own campaign.