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Looking for a good campaign organizer

two_fishes

Explorer
I am starting a new 4th Edition campaign. What campaign organizers do people here prefer and why? A friend of mine has used Masterplan, and seems to like it pretty well, so that is my initial impulse.
 

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Masterplan is excellent for the DM, but doesn't really give players any access. For many groups, that's perfect: many players aren't interested in combing through the campaign materials anyway.

Obsidian Portal and EpicWords.com are two online campaign organizers. The former is bigger, but I like the latter for a more organized setup and very responsive admins. EpicWords.com is also integrated with iPlay4e.appspot.com, which is a very good repository of 4e character sheets. EpicWords and iPlay4e is the setup I use.

Otherwise, a private wiki (tiddlywiki.com is a good one) might be the best way to set it up. With extensive use of tags, it may be the ideal way of sorting all the info you need to do.

Finally, I know many DMs that just use a plaint text file. It's harder to break, it can be online, but doesn't have to (you can just put it in your dropbox folder).
 



The big draw of something like Masterplan is that it acts as something like a DM's helper during play, keeping track of Monsters, ongoing conditions, Monster HPs, and can even be used to make battlemats. Is there anything out there to compare with this?
 


Masterplan is the bees' knees. Really, it's incredibly groovy.

I use it to plan my games, track XP (which I ignore), write adventures, store monsters, and run encounters. And it works splendidly for all of the above.

Its combat tracking is excellent. It tracks conditions just brilliantly with both save-ends and end-of-x's-next-turn, automatically applies ongoing damage, rolls saves, and rolls recharges. And tracks HPs. I don't want to run games without it.

-O
 

Bah- kids today and their newfangled gadgets!

In MY day, if we wanted to track the progress of a combat between the party and some Pirate Ninjas on gatling laser-equipped displacer dinosaurs in the Snowy Fire-Swamps of the Mountains of Kro, we did it all by hand, with all of our notes in overstuffed binders!

And we LIKED it that way!
 
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I can only second Masterplan. The programm is simply great and eassy to use. It even allows you to build your own monsters and gives you reccomandations according to the MM3 -Guidelines. At higher levels, the tracking of conditions makes encounters a lot easier on the GM. The only two disadvantages I can see about it is that you have to be very picky about image files, because masterplan slows down quite a bit as soon as you start to include high resolution maps and the need for 2 screens. One for the GM and another for the players. Those two minor issues aside, it is a GM`s dream come true.
 

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