D&D General Help w/ Party Loot Tracking

[Quickleaf]

Hey guys. I could use some help. My folders are disorganized. My record-keeping system is non-existent. My handwriting is so bad that it once cancelled game night.

So here's my question: How do you go about handling the party loot sheet? Any software recommendations, bookkeeping resources, or general advice to help a bungling quartermaster out? Scribbled notes on random bits of paper clearly aren't working for me anymore. How does your group handle it?

I use a mix of things. For magic items, I switched to using magic item cards & trading card inserts, mostly Paizo Gamemastery cards (with trimmed sticky notes on back) with a mix of a few homemade ones. See the image. Note that I almost never include "just a +1 sword", but prefer to flesh out items to make them more engaging.

For gold, gems, trinkets, and non-plot relevant art objects I just describe to the players and let them jot it down. "You find 500 gp and 350 sp scattered around the lair and a dented brass chalice with a worn turquoise lip inside of the nest."

For a few rare plot-critical items – e.g. the puzzle cubes from my Tomb of Annihilation game – I'll craft a prop.

 

[Fauchard1520]

When I run games I use Fantasy Grounds, it tracks everything for me and the players using the Party Inventory, even lets items be identified or unidentified.

Is that a pay service?

 

[David Howery]

when I was a DM back in the Stone Age, I used to have one player keep a record of all the loot found in an adventure, and another one keep track of monsters killed... then I could just ask for the latter list and tally up XP, and the players could divide the loot...

 

[BookBarbarian]

We keep our group loot in a google doc. The player that finds the loot can choose to keep it themselves or dump it i the groop loot sheet

Which is an inventory of our bag of holding.

 

[LordEntrails]

Is that a pay service?

Yes, it's a Virtual Table Top.

Fantasy Grounds

www.fantasygrounds.com

 

[Lakesidefantasy]

When I was unemployed I ran a full Pathfinder adventure path (Curse of the Crimson Throne), and I did a combination of what Lanefan and CCS did. I used Obsidian Portal to keep track of everything. I had a lot of extra time on my hands.

Now that I'm employed I still do the same thing, but I don't hand out nearly as much treasure.

 

[NoobNathan]

Hey guys. I could use some help. My folders are disorganized. My record-keeping system is non-existent. My handwriting is so bad that it once cancelled game night.

So here's my question: How do you go about handling the party loot sheet? Any software recommendations, bookkeeping resources, or general advice to help a bungling quartermaster out? Scribbled notes on random bits of paper clearly aren't working for me anymore. How does your group handle it?

I had a lot of the same problems, so I started working on this web app a couple years ago! If you’re still looking it’s a free collaborative tracker that the entire group can view and edit.

Party Loot

A party loot tracker to keep your games organized!

partyloottracker.com

 

[billd91]

Around here that would lead to some pretty rich Rogues...

Around here that would lead to some rogue players without a game...

 

[Lanefan]

Around here that would lead to some rogue players without a game...

Anything goes, my friend; anything goes.

 

[gamerprinter]

Well I took drafting in high school (old school drafting with pencils) so my print or cursive writing is always legible, though my print "a" is more like you see it in the font of this post - so not everybody makes their "a"s like that, but I do. Take old school drafting if you can find it, if you want to improve your hand-writing.

So the fact that I have a scratch pad with all the PC's names on it, and a space available for all their current treasure/item holdings, and enough space to add anything new picked up in the current adventure. Along with other details I feel the need to record while running a game.

But that doesn't help you, due to your unique problems like hand-writing. Use some kind of text document creator as an app for your phone. I have used a laptop while running a game, but then got complaints about the heat blowing on the players across the table (I play live games, never online using virtual tabletop). Maybe use a laptop and a comprehensive VTT just to hold stats and items tracking... that works too.