## Why there is a setting ## Remember this important point: **the setting exists for the purpose of being engaged with by the players.** Sure, you can play with the setting and decide the outcomes of distant wars or who this dragon is currently dating but if this is not relevant to the *players* its essentially GM masturbation: a fun but solo activity best not shared with other people. Part of "managing the problem" is to make the problem as small as possible. ## The player's drive everything ## With that in mind, the first piece of advice is to limit your workload to what matters to the players (including yourself). That is, concentrate on only what the players do and experience first hand; everything else is hearsay. To illustrate, if the players hear that the king was murdered by the grand duke then that is interesting but the only piece of fact in it is that the players heard it; whether or not is true only matters if the players decide to do something about it, you don't even have to decide if it *is* true until they do. If you just drop this out as an off the cuff rumour in a tavern then you *don't need to record it at all*; if the players are interested in it they will remind you by asking about it, if they are not then it just drops into the big void known as things that failed to engage the players. Alternatively, if this is a major part of your adventure arc then you don't need to record it because *you already know all about it*! If the player's kill an important NPC then you only need to decide what happens to the extent that this impacts the players. For example, if they kill the head of the local goblin tribe and bugger off never to return then who cares what happens? However, this is boring when you have been given a golden opportunity to show them that their actions have consequences. There are a whole host of things that *can* happen: - The goblin leader is replaced from within; the new leader establishing his authority by launching raids on the player's base village. - The goblin leader is replaced by an ogre; the new leader establishing his authority by launching raids on the player's base village. - The goblins are displaced and enslaved by an orc tribe; the orcs establishing their authority by launching raids on the player's base village. - The goblins are exterminated by a necromancer who raises them as an undead army; the necromancer establishing his authority by launching raids on the player's base village. - Something else that's even cooler; whatever it is results in someone launching raids on the player's base village. What *does* happen is whatever you think will be the most interesting for the players (again, including you). The key element here is that *whatever* happens; its impact has to be felt by the players otherwise its not worth worrying about. Therefore please treat "launching raids on the player's base village" as a euphemism for something that affects the players in some way. ## What makes an NPC important ## Focusing on the players also gives you a solid basis for deciding who the "important NPCs" actually are: an "important NPC" is one that is important to the *players*: their importance to the fictional world is irrelevant. If the players neither know nor care that King Larry VI died and was succeeded by Queen Kylie III, why do you? If the player's know *and* care that the barmaid Elizabeth has dumped the swineherd Charles and has now been seen around town with dunnykin diver Henry then these *are* important NPCs. That Charles is planning to chop up both Elizabeth and Henry and feed them to his pigs is a good adventure hook; that Kylie is planning to annex the distant province of Bogrovia isn't. ## Background Information ## Remember that background information *is* background information because it is not exciting enough to be in the foreground. If your background is more interesting or important than what the players are doing then *why aren't you telling that story*? Its like that moment in *Star Wars: Attack of the Clones* when Anakin and Obi-Wan talk about falling into a nest of Gundarks and the audience reaction is: "Why aren't you showing that? That sounds way more fun than watching these guys ride an elevator!" ## Keeping records ## So, having reduced your workload by about 90% by realising that you don't need to keep anywhere near as many records as you thought you can now approach the how to keep records question. Paper is fine if that works for you. Editing your source documents *with the track changes turned on* is good too - you can see where you are in relationship to the crossed out bits of where you were. There are services like Google docs and Office 365 that will keep versions of documents as well. There are websites like https://www.obsidianportal.com/ and http://www.epicwords.com/ that allow you to keep hyperlinked records online. They have DM facing and player facing parts so you *can push the work to your players*! Create an NPC by putting a hyperlink to a non-existent page in your session summary and tell the players that if they want to record info about that NPC then they can do so. However, shopping lists or recommendations are out of scope for this site so I will say no more on this aspect.