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7-Day GM Organization Challenge

Here's the Campaign Logger Code from Day 5:

Code: 
~"Treasure Table"
*"Loopy Plans"
*Plotline
*"The Story So Far"

Code: 
# Treasure Table
|| __Player__ || __Type & Kicks__ || __PC Hooks__ || __Combat Role__ || __Skill Role__ || __Relationships__ || __Treasure__
|| Player A ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||
|| Player B ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||
|| Player C ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||
|| Player D ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||
|| Player E ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||
|| GM ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||

Code: 
# Loopy Plans
|| __Loop__ || __Next Actions__ || __Impulse__ || __Objective__
|| Loop A ||  ||  ||
|| Loop B ||  ||  ||
|| Loop C ||  ||  ||

Code: 
# Plotline
|| __Villain or Conflict__ || __Level__ || __Seed__ || __Blocks__ || __Transitions__
|| Adventure || 1 ||  ||  ||
|| Adventure || 2 ||  ||  ||
|| Adventure || 3 ||  ||  ||
|| Adventure || 4 ||  ||  ||
|| Adventure || 5 ||  ||  ||
|| Adventure || 6 ||  ||  ||
|| Adventure || 7 ||  ||  ||
|| Adventure || 8 ||  ||  ||
|| Adventure || 9 ||  ||  ||
|| Adventure || 10 ||  ||  ||

Code: 
# The Story So Far
__Name:__
__Razor:__
__Dramatic Questions:__
1. Q1
1. Q2
1. Q3
~Plotline:
~"Loopy Planning":
~"Treasure Table":
__Cast of Characters:__
__Gazetteer:__
__Quartermaster:__
 
A "Metacharacter" is a term used by R. Talsorian Games' Cyberpunk v3 for managing factions with built in conflicts.

A faction metacharacter is modeled after the parts of the body.

The "Brain" is the head of the faction and its driving force.

The "Brain" has 2 lieutenants - a "left hand" and a "right hand" that are usually rivals to replace the Brain.

The "Body" of the faction include the foot soldiers, faciltiies, vehicles, and other resources the faction has access to or control of.

Here is my Metacharacter template from my Cyberpunk game.

Any grouping of people aligned to a purpose can usually be fit into this and start generating obstacles and complications for the players ... and the other parts of the faction itself.

Code: 
@ METACHARACTER NAME
% META CHARACTER HISTORY

BRAIN
@ Brain
~ Stats
~ KEY SKILLS
~ KEY PERKS/TALENTS
% LIFEPATH
* GOALS
^ Brain Faction

RIGHT HAND
@ Right Hand
~ Stats
~ KEY SKILLS
~ KEY PERKS/TALENTS
% LIFEPATH
* GOALS
^ Right Hand Faction

LEFT HAND
@ Left Hand
~ Stats
~ KEY SKILLS
~ KEY PERKS/TALENTS
% LIFEPATH
* GOALS
^ Left Hand Faction

BODY
TROOPS:
@ Leaders
@ Soldiers / Specialists
@ Grunts / Mooks

ASSETS
# Buildings / Facilties / Sites
! Equipment

VEHICLES
! Vehicles
 
I was in the process of trying to organize my hard drive materials when this challenge arrived in my inbox so I eagerly joined. My biggest issues is that I have a ton of pdf materials from drivethru rpg and dms guild that defaults its organizing by company name which isn't helpful in finding specific things. So I have started dumping it into piles like you suggested but I was hoping to go further and create a database like adventure lookup where I could do queries to find specific things. However, after hearing your story at the start of the day 1 video I am wondering if that is too much. I know it would be a lot of work but just wondering if the time sink would be worth it to actually have a sense of what I truly have to work with. Thoughts?
 
deadshot2021 said:
I was in the process of trying to organize my hard drive materials when this challenge arrived in my inbox so I eagerly joined. My biggest issues is that I have a ton of pdf materials from drivethru rpg and dms guild that defaults its organizing by company name which isn't helpful in finding specific things. So I have started dumping it into piles like you suggested but I was hoping to go further and create a database like adventure lookup where I could do queries to find specific things. However, after hearing your story at the start of the day 1 video I am wondering if that is too much. I know it would be a lot of work but just wondering if the time sink would be worth it to actually have a sense of what I truly have to work with. Thoughts?
Click to expand...
Hey Christian,

Yeah, the DTRPG app provides a challenge in organization, especially if you have a lot of stuff with them.

Pile and File works for me with this, as I have more sources than DTRPG that delivers files. So I have space on a cloud drive for it all, and I use piles to quickly slot stuff into.

Then I use search to find anything specific if filename skimming doesn't work.

On Windows, I use Total Commander for additional search options. The dual panes make it much easier to manage files on my hard drive as well.
https://www.ghisler.com

I would think about a couple of things for this project:
  • How much effort and time will it take to reach the point you describe?
  • What will the experience of your future self be like when you need to add more files? Quick and done? Or cumbersome and left undone?
  • What value do you get with that level of organization? What are your wins?
Sometimes it's worth going through every piece and part to reacquaint ye ol' noggin of what you've got. You might also be culling. So there are times when a meticulous sorting is worth the time.

A great concern though, is always Cthulhu. Will entropy degrade the system over time resulting in the need for maintenance or periodic rebuilds?
 
I have been culling as I have been dumping into piles but I do need to go through everything reacquaint myself with what products I have. My thought was that if I had to open each thing up to see what it was that have some details about the resource in a database would be good so that I could have a general idea of what I might like to do in a game and then query the database to see if I already have something, if I need to go find something or make it whole cloth. I certainly don't want it to take up any more time than it needs too or be so detailed that adding anything new would be a big timesink.
 
I would suggest a PDF indexing search engine. Windows search can do this, but you cannot get to the data yourself. Everything 1.5 alpha adds content indexing. You could go full Solr or Elastic but this surely is technically involved. But reading your posts I now want Elastic to index all my PDFs for easy DB querying.
 
JochenL said:
I would suggest a PDF indexing search engine. Windows search can do this, but you cannot get to the data yourself. Everything 1.5 alpha adds content indexing. You could go full Solr or Elastic but this surely is technically involved. But reading your posts I now want Elastic to index all my PDFs for easy DB querying.
Click to expand...
I think I am a little out of my depth with that. I am just learning Access. I would love to see how this is done. :)
 
Airtable is supposed to be a nice, codeless app for such purposes as well.
 
I pulled the mess into Calibre but it still doesn't tell me what the 'thing' is so looking at the titles I have to know what type of resource it is and whether it suits my purposes. I need to do some more weeding and pile/file...
 
I do want to say how much I have appreciated this Organizational Challenge. I've been gaming for over 40 years and this has still been helpful me to be mindful of a process instead of just doing things on the fly. Thanks for all your efforts in putting this together, Johnn.
 
Hey all, just wanted to share my layout in Notion. I recently switched from One Note, and this layout seems to give me everything at a glace. Far more suited to the "bucket" mentality for me. Was glad I didn't really need to do anything for day one. I was a chef for a long time, and I have applied the principle of mise en place, or to gather and place, to my GMing style. Having every element for a session, prep or otherwise at hand where i need it to be.

1667648939995.png1667648915051.png
 
So was wondering do you think digital tactic cards and stuff like that for goblins hobgoblins etc would go in Cast of Characters under my GM subfolder, or in my plots folder in the subcategory encounter folder?
 
GamingE93 said:
So was wondering do you think digital tactic cards and stuff like that for goblins hobgoblins etc would go in Cast of Characters under my GM subfolder, or in my plots folder in the subcategory encounter folder?
Click to expand...
I would place this in with the encounter I think. Just thinking of how many screens I would need to go back and forth on and try to limit it.
 
deadshot2021 said:
I would place this in with the encounter I think. Just thinking of how many screens I would need to go back and forth on and try to limit it.
Click to expand...
thank you for the reply. Yeah, I'm having trouble deciding certain things. I have so many digital files and templates and generators and things like that. Wondering if i should place certain things in my main Tools folder and into a sub folder there or the folder of the type of templates and generators. I'm going to post my main and sub folders when I'm done organizing
 
GamingE93 said:
So was wondering do you think digital tactic cards and stuff like that for goblins hobgoblins etc would go in Cast of Characters under my GM subfolder, or in my plots folder in the subcategory encounter folder?
Click to expand...
In my experience, the best answer is in the first place you'd look.

So file it there. Then pay attention when you go to access it next time. If you search more than one place until you find the information, then move the information to the actual first place your started that search with.

For that specific stuff, I put it in ~House Rules. House Rules, according to my unique and personal intuition, contains everything related to crunch. Tactics might never have a clear bucket, but as they are often based on the stat block my brain wants to find stuff like that in ~House Rules.

You do your thing, though. That's the whole point of Campaign Logger. Rename all the Tags and Page categories to how your brain works. I was tired of software imposing on my campaigns.
 
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