What tools (software, dead tree, or otherwise) to record information about your campaign?
Myself, I use PCGen for PCs/NPCs. While there are some bits I'm not tickled about, I do love how flexible it is, and how easy (compared to anything else) it is to customize the data. I use the GMGen tool to track initiative, too. That's another feature that kinda sold me on it. That said, I'd love to find something even better.
For maps, I use a combination of hand-drawn and CC2-Pro. I'm finally starting to feel like I understand CC2 (now that CC3 is coming out), so I'll probably be using that more and more. Even my hand-drawn maps, though, I've started scanning in, just for storage.
Adventure/campaign outlines, etc. are stored in Word, as are most house rules. Really, though, this is an area that I'm horrid at doing. Every time I try to put together a compilation of house rules, I never seem to be able to properly organize things. Ditto for the majority of campaign notes. What I have, I have in Word, but I'd love to hear a better tool or a template.
I use PhotoShop and a set of fonts/clipart to make my maps.
Other than that, pretty much everything else is MSWord documents.
Lately, I've been getting into using wikis for easier organization and access to campaign info.
PCGen - though I have a few other character generators and occasionally use them, I don't feel like paying out the arse every time I want to add a special class or feat to be tracked in the generator. I find manipulating list files in PCGen easier than most painfully limited house rules editors in other character generators.
CC2Pro/FT - mapping, chronicling, that sort of jazz. For smaller maps, I still plunder and will, but world or city maps... basically anything I am going to use more than once... CC2 is my choice.
Word Perfect - for campaign notes. If I had 2003 (no, pirates, I don't want an illegal copy), I'd use word, but WP 2000 works better than Word 2k IMO.
Quatro pro - I use a spreadsheet to track XP. I don't use CR to award XP.
JH Namegen Gold. I keep all my random generation tables in this. I have been meaning to switch to table gen, since it's more flexible, but I'd have to port my files over.
Solevor/Sage SRD - hypertext SRD on my desktop.
NPCGen - Quick NPCs, when needed
Treasure Gen - Quick treasure, when needed.
//www.writerscafe.co.uk - I use their storylines module for campaign planning
Autorealm for drawing maps before the game, or pen and paper for mid-session maps.
Word for campaign notes, and even Access if the campaign gets out of hand.
And the internet for pretty much anything else I could imagine
That writer cafe thing looks neat.
I always find myself going back to my huge bound plain black book with big blank white pages, no lines. I write and draw out my campaign as I go. However I do use the computer for monster stat blocks.
I used to use PCGen, in fact I was a contributing member of the team and coded 5-6 of the books myself. But with the whole CMP/E-Tools thing caused a lot of problems. That and having my players buy me E-Tools and all the add-ons made me switch.
I used to use CC2 occasionally but its so complex that I hardly touch it anymore. Most of my maps are hand drawn, which is an enormous pain. I'm still looking for a good but cheap mapping program.
I also use word a lot for notes and player handouts.
For characters word and excel with some custom spreadsheets I built awhile back. I use NPCGen on occasion too, but still do a lot of it by hand.
Can anyone recommend anything for doing d20 Modern statblocks?
Quote from: Hastur T. FannonCan anyone recommend anything for doing d20 Modern statblocks?
I don't know how good it is, and there is a price tag attached, but RPGObjects has a subscription driven online generator, $10 for access.
http://www.rpgobjects.com/index.php?page=generator&reset=1&show_notice=1
PCgen does have a modern generator (not with much third party stuff, though), as does Campaign Suite.
Quote from: JanosFor characters word and excel with some custom spreadsheets I built awhile back. I use NPCGen on occasion too, but still do a lot of it by hand.
//www.rpgattitude.com
In terms of software, I've only ever used programs that I've written myself, and those were almost universally character creation assistants (stat rollers and such). More recently, I've used Excel spreadsheets for helping build point-build things.
In the end, almost everything is printed out, or written out, on paper and stored in a notebook. Digital-only materials tend to not be very useful for me. I don't have a laptop and it's awkward to run into the other room to reference the computer during a game, so everything had better be in the notebook of notes.
No software for making characters or stuff like that. I do use Word to write things in, and Powerpoint to make counters for the fights (mostly using pictures from WOTC's art galleries, or from Fiery Dragon's CC Digital).I also make occasional use of Excel to handle things that are about numbers (e.g. how much money does each character have when you include gear?), and of course I have the SRD in HTML format (which makes it a lot easier to get the statblocks I write in Word right).
But no, no PCGen or anything like that. Computer programs generally don't include everything I want to use (e.g. in my current adventure, I included some monsters from Five Nations, and in the one before I used a Dread Necromancer from Heroes of Horror, a modified Dread Zombie from Book of Templates, and some feats from Lords of Madness), and modifying data files to include such things would take way longer than just writing things by hand (or by keyboard).
My group liked E-Tools, the DM uses his laptop with all of our chars in firefox tabs (it can output to .html) and using the dice roller. The DM for that champaign chose to make the rolls for everything from attack rolls and iniative. (that way my rogue didn't know if there were no traps, or if he just rolled a 2 for the check) Aside from a couple of problems in the implementation of templates (doesn't add in the level adjustment) it's been great for us overall.
I use DMGenie (http://www.dmgenie.com) It has never crashed on me. On an evening where the party did something unexpected, I told everyone to take a break for a few minutes, and generated a complete encounter with little difficulty, and no reference to the books.
It has:
- NPC Generation
- Time Tracking
- Travel calculator
- Campaign Management
- XP calculator
- CR calculator - YMMV
- More than I care to list.
It takes a little while to get used to the interface, I'm constantly learning something new. Recently found the Regeneration feat for Trolls, There were over 20 in the encounter, and I had trouble adding 5 hp, and keeping track of real damage vs subdual during the first session of the encounter. The second session went by much more quickly and efficiently on my part. I was also able to save a log of the encounter.
Mapping, I draw myself and scan in. Everybody likes their mapping program too much, and all the little packages to add-on make it too darned expensive for me to consider. Much of the maps of my gaming world are all drawn anyway. I use a free Hex Mapper for smaller scale(or is it larger for smaller areas) maps, freely available from some nice person who has it on their web page. Darned if I can remember where.
I'm digitally challenged it seems. I still use pencils, graph paper, and notebooks mostly. I've tried mapping software but I can't seem to get the hang of it. I'd love to learn how to use Photoshop for maps, but haven't yet. It takes me as long to type stuff out is it would to write it on paper, and I can take notebooks and pencils to more places so I just "go old-school" mostly.
at the end of the day all these digital tools require preparation ahead of time, time that could be better spent writing the adventure or detailing more of the NPCs.
Quote from: Lawbagat the end of the day all these digital tools require preparation ahead of time, time that could be better spent writing the adventure or detailing more of the NPCs.
Yes and no. My biggest issue with electronic tools is that it means I'm at the computer, which also means I'm likely to be drawn here, ENWorld, or NTL.
Otherwise, it depends on how you work, really. I find that I'm generally disorganized. I leave notes scattered all about. The more I try to get organized, physically, the worse things seem to get. But, when I use electronic aids, it gets marginally better. At the least, I'm a much faster than average typist and a slower than average writer (I can't stand chicken scratches and write in very precise print that looks the Dom Casual font). So, I get a slight gain out of it -- plus, it's more portable.
NPC generation, on the other hand, gets a huge boost from something like PCGen. It's the difference between having high-level, classed encounters be viable or not. I just can't keep track of all the math for an 18th level fighter/cleric/knight of the chalice, including feats, equipment, etc. Well, I can, but not easily.
Quote from: Lawbagat the end of the day all these digital tools require preparation ahead of time, time that could be better spent writing the adventure or detailing more of the NPCs.
I find that it shortens my writing and prep time, by having much of my reference material at hand.
Need to know when the next lunar eclipse is for the campaign, Need to know who they battled 3 sessions ago, Need 5 quick NPC's with spells, feats, skills, etc, without leafing through books to create them? The campaign manager is excellent for writing up adventures, allowing for links to maps, creatures, next rooms, etc. Gives me more time to be thoughtful about the campaign, and the story arcs.
But ymmv,
GW
I use a custom excel sheet for my character (I game with a computer at the table). When I DM, I use a program called VoodooPad (I think it's Mac only) to organize campaign notes, etc. I have an EXP calculator widget that really comes in handy, as well as an initiative tracker widget. The Sovelior/Sage SRD also gets plenty of use.
I use paper and pencil. The games I run don't require exacting specifics in terms of statistics and hit points but in terms of motivation and action and I keep that in my head instead of on paper. If there is actually going to be a fight I will scratch out things like soak, size of attack and dodge pools, powers, etc... (I'm only running Aberrant currently).
I use PCGen for creating NPCs, but not PCs (strangely). :) The PCs in my group tend to use additional material (some of it homebrew) while my NPCs are almost always stock SRD. I use the Sovelior/Sage SRD, downloaded locally.
For my game and world notes I use TiddlyWiki (http://www.tiddlywiki.com). If you care to see it my campaign website is here: Heirs of Empire (http://home.comcast.net/~jim.ade/ilium/HeirsOfEmpire.html)
The PC character sheets are just an OpenOffice document, exported to PDF so I can open them in my Firefox browser tabs.
I do GM with my laptop, as you probably guessed. :)
I keep the notes for each Episode in Word, and keep the characters and monster stats in Acrobat forms. That's about as fancy as I get, unless you count iTunes for background music.
Right, that does it. I'm never using PCGen again. I just can't trust it
The fact that it doesn't display Occupation anywhere is a minor inconvenience, but last night I discovered that the d20 Modern statblocks it was producing were missing the alphabetically last skill
If I hadn't spotted that, I'd have submitted material to Tim that would have included a Dedicated Hero medic without Treat Injury
I think RPGObjects are getting my $10
Wow, that's a bummer. I have to admit that part of the reason I started this thread was to look for functional alternatives to PCGen. There are several issues with it, but it's still the best I've found -- especially for someone like me, who mods the living shit out of D&D.
Quote from: IliumFor my game and world notes I use TiddlyWiki (http://www.tiddlywiki.com)
Have you seen Ten Foot Wiki (http://www.unclebear.com/tenfootwiki/)? It's specifically designed for RPG management...
I also use TreePad Lite (http://www.treepad.com/treepadfreeware/)
I discovered a new tool: google notebook
(See http://www.google.com/googlenotebook/overview.html )
It uses an add-on for firefox and ie. You can also publish your pages, though the public version of the pages aren't as browsable as your own version of the notebook.
Here's a couple of my public notebooks:
http://www.google.com/notebook/user/05459702402456288785