I have found myself crawling into an online campaign manager and am surprised how it has captured me completely, enthusiastically as the new way to chronicle my campaigns. If you would have asked me would I use a digital record for campaigns let alone think it could be used in session I would have said no. I would wax on how the physical journals with homespun maps and weird characters was all part of the creative process, blah, blah, blah. The fall was swift and rapid. I was looking for a way out of my three ring binders, that is for sure. But my quest had only progressed as far as trying different types of notebooks and drawing pads. Part of the quick commitment came from my noodling with Roll20. I hated it. I could not see how it was going to help me run the game I want to. So, when I started banging away on my new kanka account writing up session notes from the latest run I went fuuuuuuck. I am going to throw out a bunch of old thinking.
Specifically, being unwilling to
see the benefit of online tools for my online games. Because I was not getting
any with virtual tabletops. What I like about the campaign organizer, the
campaign wiki I think it is called, I don’t have to search through a three-ring
binder to find shit. Cause it piles up and the binder gets thick and becomes horribly
inefficient in session. This is the virtual note board of interlocking
world-building pieces and I’ve so far found a spot for everything. Cutting and
pasting in stats and details from PDF content makes these things at my fingertips.
Only redundant task I have found slightly wearisome is attaching pictures to
entries, but I can not do it because the return on investment, the visual payoff
is high.
So, I get all the things in the
wiki set for the current session coming up and take a look. Start at the
Dashboard and drill down into the data I am going to want in game. I like how
it works. I see myself running a session from its screen. I think it is going
to give me a bit more focus on the situation at hand and roleplay more before a
calling of the die.
Oh, and now my game is on the
cloud. I can pop in and tinker on the game wherever I am. So my favorite
materials, maps and images are all at my beck and call when inspiration
strikes!
Super handy! I'm going to check it out. I tend to have docs on google drive and hand written notes, so I can never find anything.
ReplyDeleteWhich service are you using?
ReplyDeletekanka. i did zero research and just grabbed it out of the blue cause it is free.
DeleteInteresting I've looked at these kind of programs before Obsidian Portal being the main one but Kanka does seem pretty cool but I've not really made the jump to them as Roll20 works for me, though you do need to be careful in organising things otherwise you end up with things all over the place (Folders for the win) so using one of these programs will just be a duplication of work but I can see there benefits especially for tinkering with potential encounters and backgrounds.
ReplyDeleteYes, I am not interested in duplicating work. So most of the content I put into the Champions "wiki" is stuff pertinent to the upcoming encounters and moving forward. Being smart with the "nesting" thread function is going to be a must moving forward!
Delete