Finding a good campaign tracker

[Master of the Game]

Does anyone know where I could find a good utility that I can use on my laptop to help keep notes and such for my game.

I don't need a mapper or monster generator or character creator, just something along the lines of Goodman Games' DM campaign tracker, but one that I can use on a computer. Pricing is a bit of an issue right now, as my gaming budget is being set aside for gencon, so I'm trying to avoid buying an expensive program with several utilities I'll never use.

I've though about using Office or Works, but I'm not so great with anything other than the Word Processor, and I'm hoping for an easy to use template of some sort.

 

[IronWolf]

You may want to look at this:

http://www.jhorman.org/wikidPad/

Sort of like notepad on steroids. You can easily link between pages and makes it easy to track anything you want. No real templates or anything, but still might be worth looking at.

 

[Hand of Evil]

You may want to check out this older thread: http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=81852

I don't think it was in the list but DM Familiar: http://www.paladinpgm.com/dmf/

 

[talmar]

My laptop came with MS Onenote.

I love it, it's great for notes, screenshots, organizing everything.

 

[Master of the Game]

Thanks for the help.

I downloaded PCGen, but it seems a bit complex for my needs. I still have it though so I'll play around a bit more. I also grabbed the demo of DM Familiar, but I haven't played around with it yet.

The most promicing thing I've seen thus far seems to be voodoo pad, but it's mac only so, no dice. The wikipad, however, looks to be similar, so I downloaded that as well. I'll try to play with it later tonight and tell you what I think, but thus far it seems to be just what the doctor ordered.

Thanks again.

 

[Delak]

I use DM Genie and love it. I have tried most of the other programs out there and decied on DM Genie after some actually play testing and found that it work the best for Campaign creation and tracking. Its PC and NPC management is also powerfull and being improved all the time.

www.dmgenie.com

 

[DMFTodd]

If you only want a "notepad" type program, I've heard a lot of people using MyInfo.

But if you're going to have a laptop at the table, you should really consider combat management.

 

[azhrei_fje]

As a DM...

Combat management is not as useful for the player as it is for the DM, though. I'm not saying it's USELESS, just not as useful.

I use DMGenie (as linked by Delak, above) and I love it. I've tried DMF, OpenRPG, and RPM. I'd try Kloogewerks if the stupid thing would actually let me put some of my data into it to try out! (I spend a lot of time traveling and what better use of hotel room time than trying out demos? But if I want to try fog-of-war features or combat tracking, I want to use a recent game session from a real campaign and try out spells, feats, and so on, and the inability to save my own data and reload it means I won't even try it. DMGenie let me fully populate my campaign for 60 days (!) before requiring a registration fee. So I now have it installed on desktop, laptop1, and laptop2. )

<rant>
As a DM, I'm still looking for the perfect mapping tool -- there is something missing in every program I've tried. Some don't do fog-of-war at all or very well. Some, like TMapper, requires that I put little icons on the screen for each PC/NPC and move them around on the map one at a time, but they don't enforce movement speed. :\ Some do line-of-sight calculations and can brighten up dark areas as creatures approach based on the visual range of the creature, but configuring them to do so is time-consuming and tedious. Some can handle area effect spells easily, others are a pain (why can't fireball be represented using the grid instead of just a circle?).

There are so many more of these, that I have plans to write my own tool (yeah, yet-another-DM-tool!). If/when I get something workable, I'll make it available as open source so that others can build off what I accomplish. I don't like the idea of paying money for an "almost complete" program and then having the author(s) decide to give up and I'm SOL without any way to continue building the project.
</rant>

(PS: Is it just me or does Preview Post fail for other people? I get an error about REG_EMPTY in function_spamkill.php...)

 

[Master of the Game]

I just picked up DMGenie and added it to my "List o' Programs to try Tonight".

I like the idea of combat tracking, and would gladly use a tool that would help me with it, but the only one I've had a chance to try it PCGen/GMGen, and it seems a bit complicated. I found no easy way to just load stuff on the fly, which is important to me because not all of my encounters are preplanned. Like I said, I only played with it a bit, so I may not have noticed it, but I'll try it again before I give up.

Also, it seemed that I had to use PCGen to stat up each of my players, which was kind of a pain, and when I tried to use it, it actually made a mistake, only giving the fighter character I made 1 feat.

Anyways, I'm still trying them out, and I'm sure I'll find one I like for use at the table, but that wikipad is hella cool for long-term note taking. It looks like creating links is as easy as a couple of key strokes. If that's the case, I may have pages for every bartender, flop house, and side quest in my campaign world

I'll give Genie a thorough look though, it seems to get high marks with everyone.

 

[IronWolf]

I'll just throw another vote to DM Genie. I really like it and I looked at all of the commonly mentioned ones when I was looking. It can be pretty quick to use once you get used to it. It also makes creating NPC's very, very easy as well as combat tracking.