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

[Umadin]

Masterplan

Masterplan all the way. The flowcharts help me to conceptualize my adventure easier. When you make a creature, treasure, quest, wtvr it creates a clean stat block. The Export to HTML needs very little tweeking to look like a published adventure. IMO its almost perfect, even the mapping tool is great, convert any picture into a tile and slap it down.

Rock on Masterplan

 

[Jools]

Could someone upload their master plan files to give us some idea of what it can do...

 

[Hand of Evil]

OneNotes for me but looking at that Masterplan!

Oh, see sig for an old thread (dated back to 2004!) on the subject: Programs to Organize Campaigns

 

[Desdichado]

Just curious; why won't "analog" notebooks work? That's still mostly what I use; comp books.

I have had a fair amount of success with campaign wikis on wikispaces.com or pbwiki or some place like that. It works best if the players are also invested in the wiki, and are making updates themselves about NPCs that they meet, or things that happen to their characters, etc.

 

[Krensky]

I've been using an extrinsic outliner called The Guide

The Guide - Home

 

[Hand of Evil]

This is where we should talk about features:

OneNotes

• Tab Organization - add on the spot, characters, world, etc.
• Tags - Tip, use them and then create a index page off them - this means jumping to any flagged note! You can customize them too!
• Search - you can search the Notebook
• Inserts - Audio and images - you also have drawing tools

 

[cmbarona]

Just curious; why won't "analog" notebooks work? That's still mostly what I use; comp books.

I have had a fair amount of success with campaign wikis on wikispaces.com or pbwiki or some place like that. It works best if the players are also invested in the wiki, and are making updates themselves about NPCs that they meet, or things that happen to their characters, etc.

Analog can work just fine, but I want other tools at my disposal. I actually use a small spiral-bound journal during game sessions to write notes to myself, and use that rather than a laptop for tracking plot, encounters, rewards, etc. However, the problem with those is that they don't edit well. For example, what begins as a single NPC page can get crowded very easily. What if I want to add something new about this or that NPC, and I've already recorded something on the next line? Computer programs make it easier to keep everything in a single, consolidated file that I can shift around as I please. It's like the difference between strategy and tactics: strategy is what you do before the battle (game session), tactics is what you do during. I prefer computers for strategy and my handy little notebook for tactics.

 

[evildmguy]

A very big Masterplan convert here.

If I am using 4E, which I will for a quarterly group of friends that gets together, this is perfect. I can flow chart the adventure. It works very well.

For my weekly group, which is using d20 (Modern) Future, I can still use the map creator and adventure planner, but have to have their stats from something else. I find it works for me. (I also have a few remote guys, so we use technology a lot and this has helped.)

One thing that I really liked was this. I was writing up a 4E adventure for the quarterly group. I had a flowchart that had an attack and then going to some villages after the attack. However, in my notes, I said that if the battle goes against the orcs, they would try and warn the villages. This led me to add in a skill challenge to chase the orcs going to warn the village. If they pass the skill challenge, i.e. catch the group, then it's another fight.

This led me to realize that there are two conditions for the villages, alert and not. Well, a quick cut and paste allowed me to create a new branch off the adventure with the alert ideas for the village! Now, whichever path they follow, I have ideas for it!

Very happy with the program! It's great for 4E especially and certainly helps with other campaigns.

edg

 

[Aeolius]

For flowcharts, I have experimented with OmniGraffle :