GMs: how do you keep track of big story arcs?

[cmrscorpio]

I store it all in the infallible depths of my mind.

That's why details often change throughout a campaign, though I rarely realize it. And if I don't notice the change, surely the players won't as well, right?

My players notice. It's very embarrassing!

I keep all my planning up in my noggin. Information that has been revealed to my players goes into my notes.

I rp most of my npcs entirely off the cuff, using only general guidelines as to the motivations and information possessed by a particular npc. Most of the information about the plot is revealed through conversation. As soon as I finish an encounter, I record any and all tidbits that I've revealed to my players. That way, I don't have to worry about the PCs asking the "right" question. Nor do I have to worry whether or not a particular piece of information has been divulged.

 

[sev]

Mind map

Oooh, how could I forget about mind mapping? My partner used to swear by MindManager.

 

[Fifth Element]

I keep all my planning up in my noggin. Information that has been revealed to my players goes into my notes.

See, now, that's the sort of thing a competent DM would do.

 

[Oryan77]

My information's nonlinear, and my short-term memory holds three items. Figuring out how four different things interrelate doesn't work for me in excel because I have to remember where I was three clicks ago.

What I'm saying is that there are ways to throw all of your ideas on a spreadsheet regardless of how linear they are. And if navigating those ideas is also an issue, there are ways in excel to help with this. You can use Excel as a mindmapping tool pretty easily by using popup notes, moveable text boxes, hyperlinks, drop down menus, all sorts of things beyond just typing text in a cell.

I rarely remember a persons name 5 seconds after they give it, and I have years worth of plotlines written out in my excel sheet and access them just fine.

 

[fba827]

I keep all my planning up in my noggin. Information that has been revealed to my players goes into my notes.

That is basically what I do as well.

it's in my head until it happens at which point i jot it down in my notes on my laptop. this way if i knowingly or unknowingly change stuff that hasn't happened yet, then it isn't an issue. and it keep me from changing things that have been revealed as 'cannon'

my notes themselves are essentially large text files, one for 'timeline of historical events' one for each major city/location, another for less detailed towns/locations, one as a long running list of npcs and details on them, etc.

 

[pawsplay]

I keep notes.

I have my players recap at the beginning of each session what they remember.

I don't think too much about the distant future.

 

[sev]

Well, starting with Doug's suggestion of Mind Mapping, I went out hunting for concept-mapping software. Mindmapping is a subset of concept mapping; the former requires a central concept from which all else radiates out, while the latter is more free-form.

I've only played with it for a little while, but so far I've very much enjoyed IHMC's CMap Tools. I can make a representation of NPCs and their relationships with each other. I can group those NPCs together and expand or collapse those groups. It was neat to collapse down my "demons" node and note which relationships started resembling each other and it makes a big difference for me to be able to visualize my data & do so in a non-tree, non-linear fashion.

Recommended if you, like me, think in circles.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Hmm...I might use those CMaps to design a dungeon! It was basically exactly what I was looking for.

As for the long-term stuff, I keep a general outline, but I'm becoming enamored of using Aspirations since it gives a definite time frame.

"The orcs will take 3 Adventures to destroy the city. The players can push this back by undertaking Adventures against them."

 

[Lanefan]

How I keep track of big story arcs varies depending on the situation.

If it's something I planned for going in, I've already roughly story-boarded out what adventures happen in what order and what the PCs should in theory accomplish in each one (see example below). Then, as things go along I keep rough notes which get refined each week into the game logs - one for me, and one online for everyone else. I also have to be aware of what story hooks are being followed up on and what ones are being ignored, so I don't waste time planning for something they've already turned away from.

However, if it's a bigger story that simply grows out of the adventures they do I'll dig back in the log and see what I can dredge up that might be relevant now, to make it all fit together better.

And on an even larger scale, I'll plot out strings of 3-5 adventures that can logically be tied into a single story arc (a good example is the 1e A-series) and then try to work out ways these strings can somehow fit in with each other; I'll also keep a list of one-off or diversion (or red herring) adventures to lob in if needed.

I also intentionally try not to let things get too complicated. If there's more than about half a dozen significant NPCs I have to keep track of at any given time (as opposed to NPCs that just lurk in the background until I need them) that's too complicated. City and-or kingly court adventures are horrible for this.

Example of an adventure-scale storyboard for my current campaign (that bears only passing resemblance to the way things actually went) in format "Adventure name - plot notes and hooks": (were I writing this on paper there'd be arrows leading from one adventure to the next)

1. Keep on the Borderlands - get 'em started, first contact with Ares cult, first contact with renegade Hobgoblins, first contact with monsters pouring into mountains, introduce politics and secret societies

2. Krykos the Warlord - small adventure, can be put anywhere, no real significance except to provide hooks to lead in to adv. #3 or #5 depending how things go

3. Shadowhaunt Temple - further contact with both Ares cult and renegade Hobgoblins, second time seeing them operating together should cause suspicion [if followed up, this leads to a 5-adventure arc]

4. Sphondalai Mountain Hop - party follow up and try to figure where all the monsters from adv. #1 are coming from [leads to a 3-adventure arc]

5. Defense of the Empire - party become agents working on behalf of a secret society whose goal is to reignite the fallen empire, the learn of the society and its fearsome (but decent) vampiric leader [could lead to all sorts of things]

As it turned out, they did adv's #1, 2 and 3; then one party went to work for the empire (giving a nice little story arc) while the other left-turned on me and decided to ignore the empire-rebuilders and may yet end up actively working against them; they ignored the mountains as well (a sub-party of quasi-retired PCs is just now dipping their toes into that mess), and none of them even bothered with the Ares-Hobgoblin business (which means it's still out there for future reference if I need it).

So now instead of working for their own empire they're mostly going up against another one (I'll get years of action out of this) except one party has gone a-wandering up north - their story really doesn't impact the main one at all...yet.

The advantage I've got - and the point I think I'm trying to make with all this rambling - is that the history and backstory are already in place and all I need to do is mine these for adventure ideas. Once that's done, keeping track is (or should be) relatively easy; but you have to keep some sort of a game log/story hour/whatever as that's the only way to remember details from one year to the next.

Lan-"of little brain tonight, it seems"-efan

 

[sev]

However, if it's a bigger story that simply grows out of the adventures they do I'll dig back in the log and see what I can dredge up that might be relevant now, to make it all fit together better.

And on an even larger scale, I'll plot out strings of 3-5 adventures that can logically be tied into a single story arc (a good example is the 1e A-series) and then try to work out ways these strings can somehow fit in with each other; I'll also keep a list of one-off or diversion (or red herring) adventures to lob in if needed.

This is the situation I end up having the most trouble with, and what started me hunting for a better tool this time.

I've got a few major loose ends from a previous campaign: a high-level NPC, a geographical location of great interest, a fallen city and the army that's occupying it. And while I could just pretend there's nothing interesting going on in the fallen city & simplify my life a great deal, it fell because of actions the PCs took and so I'm well-incented to bring it back, and one of the players expressed interest in the geographical location and the NPC is *in* that location and, well, that means I'm on the hook for all my loose ends from a campaign that ended unevenly, several years ago.

And then I've got the published adventure I picked without too much forethought because I figured I could create a link to the NPC (which turns out to be tenuous, but it's better than nothing) that I ran a few weeks ago.

And then I've got several published adventures that fit the theme the players have requested, which I can link to the geographical location...

...and then I start losing track of what pertains to which how.

I spent this evening mapping many of those connections out and I feel *so* much better now that they're out of my head.