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Message: <blockquote data-quote="blargney the second" data-source="post: 1484339" data-attributes="member: 14678">I've finally figured out how to file information for an upcoming campaign where I'll be DMing for the first time.  In the interest of giving back to the community that has helped me the most, I thought I'd share it with you here.What I wanted was a system that would allow me to plan ahead in a non-linear fashion.  In a story sense, it is virtually impossible to predict what players will want to do once at the game table.  However, it is not difficult to shape what options they perceive as available to them.In fact, everything they will experience through their characters' eyes must be as definite as possible in my mind, such that I can transmit that information as accurately as possible to them.  So that means I need to have people, places, and organizations that are very clearly defined.The next issue that I wanted to address is: What makes a compelling story?  The answer that resonates the most in me is interesting encounters and appealing (or appalling!) scenes.  An encounter is comprised of the classic questions - who, where, when, what, why, how.  The neat thing about writing up encounters this way is that I start with an idea, and then ask myself "what would make this meeting even cooler?"The filing system itself revolves around index cards and categorizing and associating various parts of the game.  There are a few different categories that I've come up with so far: Characters/Creatures, Locations, Encounters, Organizations.  (PCs will have character cards as well.)  I use a simple code in the top right corner of each card: the first encounter I write is E001.  The first character/creature is C001, etc.An encounter is simply a grouping of several of the other elements.  Hook up the appropriate character cards with a location card, figure out what will bring the PCs into the encounter, and what possible routes they will have out of it.  Include information such as when it occurs, what will happen, how it will happen, and the motivations of all the characters.When a character is used in an encounter, the encounter number should be written on his card, along with any repercussions for him.  This will become useful for later cross-referencing.  I haven't written up any organizations yet, but the gist of it will be to describe the group's goals and methods, and list the characters that it is comprised of.Session planning becomes as simple as pulling out the relevant encounter cards and paperclipping the associated cards to it.  As the story unfolds, I'll then keep notes linearly in a notebook.That's about it.. it's pretty simple, but I think that's why I like it! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />-blarg</blockquote>

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