I used to use OneNote, which worked ok but it got really crazy organizing and reorganizing every time we started a new chapter of our years-long homebrew campaign. Frustrated, I started looking around at other tools.
For the past year my players and I were using World Anvil to create a sort of online wiki for my players to replace the journal from our VTT which is not always online. I wanted to give them resources where they could check back on things that happened during the sessions, people they met, etc. I stopped using World Anvil recently because they straight up lost a bunch of my nested articles. I had articles nested in articles - which was something that I learned to do by watching their own internal YouTube guide videos. I asked for help on the official Discord server and was told “don’t use nested articles”, which breaks my entire organization methods - the same problem I came into with OneNote. Losing data randomly though isn’t ok with me. A lot of those articles were WIP and I had no backup…
I started using Kanka recently because it’s a small team and it seems like it’s going to work out, but before I get super invested, I wanted to hear from the rest of the community, so - do you all use any tools? How do you keep yourself organized, especially in a long homebrew campaign?
Obsidian is great; all the files are readable anywhere (easy to migrate out if needed) in a clear, readable directory structure, copying the structure you see in Obsidian itself. For something like $8/m, you can have their official sync tooling and have it on any devices at the same time, but there are also free options for synchronisation, which require a little work. You can probably find tools that would migrate your content from Anvil to Obsidian, but also the other way around. There are generally plugins for almost everything; however, there are too many plugins you can use; it’s easy to get lost there. Also, as with many other plugin marketplaces, there is no security vetting on the plugins, so you need to be careful.
I use Obsidian notes, it’s very similar to one note, but it saves everything locally as .txt files. You can pay some amount and have it sych to the cloud. Like onenote you can create folders and subfolders, you can open multiple tabs and have documents side by side, stacked or both. I even added a folder with all my dnd book pdfs and can open them in Obsidian right next to the notes, and word search the books. Super handy. You can also put links in documents to other documents. So if I reference an NPC in a lore doc I can link the name to the NPCs document. Also, when I had to transfer all the info to my new laptop, all I had to do was copy the main folder over and have Obsidian use that as the main folder. Bam, everything is exactly the same. So theoretically you could just, put that folder on a thumb drive or email it to your players and they would have the exact same set up. If you need to remove some info they shouldn’t have you can just remove the text files or folders from their copy.
You can also track your notes as databases inside of Obsidian or install community pluigns to expand its functionalities.
There are also some TTRPG plugins like Fantasy Statblocks or Initiative Tracker
Whoa! I didn’t know that, thanks for the info! I’ll look into these right away
I use Obsidian.md for notes taking and I tend to use the tables in Worlds/Stars/Cities without numbers. I’m DMing Eclipse Phase right now and everything come from my head and help from their discord, my players are using a Google Word for theirs notes.
Another vote for obsidian notes. I like that it is cross platform (I usually use it on my phone) and the files are saved in a format that can still be opened if something happens to the obsidian notes software.
So many votes for Obsidian. I do have it installed but I’ve been hesitant to start using it because it seems to throw a fit when I try to store my vault on my NAS. I’ll have to give it another whirl as I definitely want a self hosted option, even if it’s for fallback
ngl, I just have a whole bunch of nested folders with names like “Places”, “Plot Hooks”, “What the Villain Knows”, and “Maps and Tokens”. I use LibreOffice Writer for everything (or a barebones text editor for when I’m taking verbatim notes when my players are talking).
If I could get my players to turn in their freaking sheets after each level up, that’d be nice.
So I’m a bit weird.
for tracking everything, I use VSCodium. Everything is in text files; I also record audio of the sessions and run that through a voice to text to get transcripts of each session locations are also doodled onto maps that marks out time between major locations. (so going from SwampyAssWater to Shitloads 'o Sand takes 14 days, which, if I’m putting random encounters has 14 chances for something to happen. or “random” encounters, heh. Mostly it’s just a way of marking time as a consequence if something has a deadline.)
When I’m running a session, I’m mostly working out of the session master file which links to the location notes, important character notes, etc; and I have access to all their character and NPC files, etc.
I try to keep everything flexible, because my party loves to throw wrenches in. (I also love to give them wrenches to lead them a certain way anyhow and then TPK them for it. Just kidding. i would never do that.) (although the cleric is now being chased by the very horny daughter of Talos. He tried to murder her because they thought she was the BBEG hiding in plain sight; by using an unmovable rod and the tide to drown her… and it turns out she’s into that…)(okay, so maybe they’re gonna get TPK’d if talos catches up to them. Or maybe there’s gonna be a wedding. we’ll see how the dice roll.)
Having transcripts of every adventure is such a huge game-changer for me. I’ve been putting them into NotebookLM and I can ask it any detail about past adventures, “when the party met with the prince did they mention anything about the vault to him?” Or about the worldbuilding, “who was the goddess of tears and rain?” And so forth. Drop a PDF of the rules in there too and it can look up stuff that may not be so easy to just keyword search, and in a pinch it can even do stuff like whip up a new set of monster stats (though I’ve found it’s not very good at balancing them so you’ll need to give it a once-over).
I’ve been experimenting with tools like llm_wiki, which can automatically build an obsidian-compatible wiki out of raw source documents (such as those transcripts). It’s not quite “there” yet IMO but it looks like a promising approach.
My spouse is the note taker in the group. I forget which note taking app they use, but they send me their notes at the end of each session and I’ve been uploading those to World Anvil as “Session Reports”, now in Kanka as “Journals”. They definitely have been a game changer.
I’m actually in the process of going back and watching our old sessions on YouTube and retaking notes to figure out exactly how long they’ve been on their adventure. We’ve been playing every other weekend (minus some breaks) since ~May 2020 so it’s a lot to go through x.x
I used obsidian for a while. Now I use a big Google doc. 🤷♂️
I feel like tools are kind of overrated. I just need something I can write some ideas down and then modify them easily.
