Hot answers tagged gm-tools
34
First, some failures:
I found Obsidian Portal incredibly frustrating. Navigating between PCs, NPCs, wiki pages, and so on, was so obnoxious that I finally gave up. I hope it gets better, but it just wasn't worth the frustration it caused me.
After that, I set up a Wagn wiki, which was a great success right until I asked players to start contributing and ...
22
Steal a couple and mash them up
Colleges and universities are actually, in general, remarkably good about putting their plans online. To make a believable college campus quickly, steal a couple, and mash them up. Then use the building plans featured in the street map for your internal plans.
Internal plans: MSU, LaTrobe Library, Melbourne, Colorado State
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19
So far I've had the most success simply by using Google docs. I create a 'folder' for the campaign and then sub-folders for each adventure within the campaign.
At the campaign level I have a 'Campaign Journal' which I've made available to my players and I keep this updated with relevant information for the group. This folder also contains 'campaign level' ...
17
Obsidian Portal is a very useful site for tracking various aspects of your campaign. It has wiki-like format and you can make information hidden or not as you see fit. A map of some place you're not ready to show the characters yet? Make it hidden, then when the time comes just edit it to not hidden. There is also a section for the players' characters.
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16
Kind of surprised it hasn't been mentioned, but Masterplan is a pretty nice free tool. It's built to be specific to D&D 4E, but it a pretty useful tool that can be used for general plot points, encyclopedia like entries, campaign notes, etc.
14
Evernote is definitely my preferred method of organizing. I can write up encounters, link to d20pfsrd.com pages for encounters, and tag information. I will also lay out dungeon tile maps while planning, put photographs of them into Evernote, and then use the maps from Evernote to make sure I lay them out the same way again.
Since Evernote runs from multiple ...
11
I use a large hard backed notebook and I note by scribbling pictures, diagrams and ideas rather than long text. A pictorial reference I find easier to track what happened. I also use spider diagrams (aka Mind Maps) to track relationships. I do drawings on the right hand side of the open book and important information (such as NPCs invented on the fly) on the ...
11
The irony games generator is long gone, as far as I can tell.
When it dissapeared, I started coding my own generators.
I guess they'd be better if I dedicated a bit more time to them, but at least they help me with my games (they might be useful for you too).
And if you don't like them, check my "about" page. I try to link to other people's generators.
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10
Historical buildings are a great source of real floor plans: guild halls, merchant adventurer hall, churches, and castles will all have a visitor's map which you can easily adapt to your game.
Another great source is archaeological digs of pre-dark ages sites: Carthage, Rome, Greece, etc... all have many great floor plans that are easy to adapt.
Catacombs ...
9
There are two ways of doing this in my experience:
Exploration as a quest completion requirement: The PC's would have to travel through a jungle/desert/snowy mountain range/sea to get to their objective. In this instance, make sure the journey is as important, if not more, than the destination; Every type of overland terrain has different features, weather ...
9
I've looked more than once for replacements for their tools over the last few years. I've found a couple of decent replacements for certain items at sites such as Inkwell Ideas, which has decent random generators for inns, cities, magic shops, villages and small dungeon maps. There are other good resources here and there as well to replace the tools that ...
9
Generally speaking, if it is too much for a spreadsheet, chances are it's too much for human adjudication in the first place. In other words, if you can't keep track of it with a generalized computer tool like a spreadsheet, then it's a good sign that your campaign needs a redesign. An alternative might be a custom computer application, but if you're ...
9
Dresden Files is pretty tracking-light compared to D&D; the only character assets that really need tracking are the Stress tracks (which work fine on character sheets) and Fate points.
For my games I've been using the following:
A stack of poker chips for Fate points. This makes it easy to keep the Fate economy moving quickly; I can take them when spent, ...
8
I'd like to point out that with some good keying, it's a lot easier to keep track of everything. Make a note for each room or item what it can trigger, and then make a checklist for each room for everything that can be changed. Then when, for example, a lever is pulled you could read the key, go to say room 46, and tick a box.
This might take a while at ...
7
I use the loose-leaf folder as well, as well as:
my player's memories / notes!
If none of my players have memories of it, none of them have notes on it, and I don't remember it myself or have it in my notes - I can make up whatever is needed right at the moment.
Don't know this method: it'll save you lots of work. Be honest about it with your players ...
6
Mainly, my own memory and a large notebook. It's the content of the notebook that makes the game.
In label marked pages are:
a table of premade names to give to NPCs or cities, if needed
a collection of monsters, with their brief stats
a collection of small random encounter tables.
any other quick useful information
On the remaining pages, I write the ...
6
Handing out a card with the item details at the moment of discovery during play is a great start.
If the players end up keeping the item, email the description to the player and add the item to the wiki. If they need to look it up, all my players have smartphones at this point and can retrieve it quickly enough.
Aside: One issue with a wiki is getting the ...
6
Labyrinth is exactly what you want. You have the ability to populate multiple maps with characters, places & objects, link them together and write a bunch of notes for every one of them.
Also there are a time tracking tool and plugins for cryptography (yes, riddles) and relationship calculations.
I've found it preparing an investigative game and it ...
5
I use a combination of physical, "dead-tree" documents (primarily for maps, lists, tables and PC stats) and electronic files (for dungeon keys, rules, and other things I want to be able to search quickly). As often as possible, I create the electronic files as simple .txt files, since they load quickly and with little fuss, though searchable .pdf documents ...
5
Old D&D was exploration heavy not through any odd dodge, but because that was how you solved problems.
It's really deceptively simple. Present a fictional world to the PCs. Don't let them find things or solve problems via the roll of a die. Exploration relies on simulation. "I roll Search" is not an acceptable solution to finding a secret door; ...
5
The first thing to decide (which I suspect you already know) is to decide what kind of campus the college has.
There's Rural, Urban, and Suburban.
Rural campuses tend to be all contained in a large plot of land with maybe 1 or 2 roads in/out of college. For example, my wife's college was on a mountain. There was 1 road that went downhill, and a footpath ...
5
Have you ever heard of Vornheim: The Complete City Kit?
It's a must-have if you find yourself GMing a lot in urban environments. It's a book about designing every aspect of a city on the fly, including streets, floor plans, rumors, NPCs, motivations, plot hooks, etc. It's focused on (a rather grim) medieval fantasy, but it's extremely hackable to suit ...
4
Most are probably lost to the public; the author may or may not have backups of the backend scripts that actually do the heavy lifting.
Most could be readily recreated from scratch by a competent programmer, as well. Several have been, by Inkwell ideas.
4
Prompt your players imagination. Consider for a moment the practical theories of GMing and Playing known as the Floodlight and the Flashlight.
GMs hold a Floodlight in the world, the Players a Flashlight. On what only can be seen with the flashlight will players act. GMs may sit and wonder, "Look at all this cool sh*t I got brewing over here. Why aren't ...
4
A little longer than I felt comfortable with a comment is my answer.
Universities can have extremely haphazard setups. For example, the one I graduated from just bought up an old HS to use as a campus building a few years ago about a quarter mile from the campus proper. So as long as you're consistent you don't need to worry terribly about the exact ...
4
Playing Fate games we always have a wet-erase gridded mat (a large Chessex battlemat, to be precise) on the main play space. Maps and drawings get sketched on it to illustrate things during the game. Lots of temporary Aspects go particularly well there, since they tend to be attached to map locations or are otherwise associated with something on the map.
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4
I wrote an application for doing this kind of thing: RPG Ambience. It's an HTML5 app that works in at least the latest versions of Chrome, Firefox, and Internet Explorer.
At this point it's intended to be controlled with the keyboard, which is pretty handy and fast if you have a limited selection of sounds. I'm working on a visual playback interface that ...
3
details on cards. This means having the card is having the item.
play a system which makes various versions relevant. Tunnels and Trolls comes to mind... there are a dozen kinds of distinct short swords.
make cultural variations unsaleable. That Orc Shortsword should be sold as scrap value, not shortsword value. The elven longsword with the song inscribed ...
3
I use a collection of physical folders, with dividers in them and paper notes. I find paper much easier to use as i can include diagrams and doodles in amongst the written notes.
I have folders for Campaign History, PCs, NPCs, Monsters, Campaign plan and The World.
These folders all have dividers in them to seperate different sections of the notes.
This ...
3
Right now I've settled on my basic pen and paper for brainstorming and outlining ideas, and a blogger to give those ideas form. Blogger can work just like a wiki, hell it works just like obsidian portal really now that they have the pages function. The trick is to work entirely in html, the auto formatting sucks and will only lead to frustration.
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