What do your DM/GM Notes Look Like?

[the Jester]

Well...

The notes that I dm from are a single long Word file per tier (at least, that's approximately how it's working so far). It's long and full of stuff, and I never have to find my notes (although I often have to find where in my notes something is, but that's easy enough with some planning; for instance, when the pcs find loot, I tell them to write down the dungeon name and room number ("Okay, we still have the gold-thread tapestry is from the Chagmat Cave, area 4... how much can we sell it for?")

In addition, I keep a log of who plays each game. I also have a few handwritten notes that I keep track of during the session, and the players pass around a notebook and keep notes (which I give xp for, as it aids me immensely when I'm working on the campaign's story hour- link in sig).

The key thing is, I try to keep all my notes. I still have the notes from game 1 of the campaign, about 15 years ago now. And I try to number each game, and note the game number on the notes, so that I can find what I need. (If you're curious, there is a big list starting four posts down here).

I've been doing a fair amount of planning in 4e, including crafting interesting and cool encounters, putting together random rumor charts, detailing skill challenges, statting up new monsters, powers and rituals, etc. I tend to write up whatever I think I'll need, based on my assessment of the pcs' next moves. Often, I'm dead on with what I think they will do, but just as often, they run in an unanticipated direction, and I end up with tons of unused material. That's okay, though- I'll try to use the stats, skill challenges, etc. somewhere else later.

 

[Jack99]

I use google docs to work with. Allows easy access no matter where I am, which is handy if I want to print out something at work or if I forgot stuff when leaving for a gaming night. It also means that I do not have to worry about backup. Once you have lost years of notes due to a complete hard-drive crash, you start considering either learning to backup or using something that doesn't require it

Anyway, these days, most of my notes are monster stats and a few notes on tactics and terrain. I do not do combat maps, I just draw them on the fly from a the notes. Also, I have a timeline of things that happen in the campaign. Whatever the players do is up to them, so I just take things as they come. Fortunately, DMing for the same people for almost 20 years mean I usually have a pretty good idea of what choices they make, depending on what I present them, which makes it fairly easy most of the time to prepare what is going to happen.

I keep a campaign blog, where I write stuff about the world and summaries of every session. Works really well so the players (that are interested) can remember what happened and put the things together that their characters should be able to put together, but they might have missed during the sessions.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

My notes?

It varies from RPG to RPG, from campaign to campaign, and sometimes, from adventure to adventure.

I've used notebooks full of details. I've used flow charts. I've used my Mac for word processing & spreadsheet data- especially for number-crunchy games. I've used my PDA. More and more, I've found myself either bookmarking or sending links to myself (via email) of data I think is appropriate...and sometimes, that stuff gets forwarded to the players.

And sometimes, I just memorize everything.

Usually, its some mix of the above techniques.