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7-Day GM Organization Challenge

Derric Munns

Member
Adamantium WoA
Wizard of Story
That's awesome Johnn. I hadn't thought of using CL for day to day needs. This may seem a bit off topic, but understanding the framework will help me with the GM organization challenge. So do you create different campaigns for gifts, writing, journaling etc.? Or do you group several of these topics in in a single campaign, organizing them by section? Or a combination?

My personal albatross is understanding the structure of CL and it's capabilities, and pairing it with the mess of ideas and notes I have. I'd love to see the structure you use, along with the search capabilities across all the disparate topics you listed above.

I've used Evernote and OneNote, and they have their pro/cons, but I always drift away from them, because it just doesn't flow for me. I live by Todoist (based on David Allen's GTD process), but it's not made for keeping things long term.

I appreciate this GM Org Challenge, it's given me the kick I need to dive more into CL.
 

JohnnFour

Game Master
Staff member
Adamantium WoA
Wizard of Story
Wizard of Combat
Gamer Lifestyle
Demonplague Author
Borderland Explorer
Hey @Derric Munns , here's a stab at an answer:

https://komododecks.com/recordings/7ZcRMSWKYRiSArr8nWV6

I realized just now I failed to complete my final thought in the video. I would walk away from the computer for awhile and plan out on paper how you would like to be organized. THEN you open CL and see how to make CL work for your ideal system. This would also help you decide if CL is a good fit for your day-to-day life use.

And if you choose to share with me how you'd like to be organized, I can recommend a tool if CL is not a good fit.
 

Derric Munns

Member
Adamantium WoA
Wizard of Story
Hey @JohnnFour , Thanks for the video, it game me a good overview how you organize with CL , with several deeper insights. Proof is in the pudding, so I'm making a daily commitment to add content daily in CL, and see what patterns emerge.

At about 12:44 on the video you had a page linking to three 5RDs. Do you have a standard have of organizing 5RD in CL. In my mind, on game night with a full table, I'd click on the label "5RD" and choose the correct 5RD I'm looking for, and run the dungeon (I can also see how this page might be a landing page with each room having it's own page). Is this how you organize 5RDs? I'd love to see a couple flavors of how you have 5RD in CL.

And what is the other tool you mentioned in the previous post?
 

JohnnFour

Game Master
Staff member
Adamantium WoA
Wizard of Story
Wizard of Combat
Gamer Lifestyle
Demonplague Author
Borderland Explorer
At about 12:44 on the video you had a page linking to three 5RDs. Do you have a standard have of organizing 5RD in CL. In my mind, on game night with a full table, I'd click on the label "5RD" and choose the correct 5RD I'm looking for, and run the dungeon (I can also see how this page might be a landing page with each room having it's own page). Is this how you organize 5RDs? I'd love to see a couple flavors of how you have 5RD in CL.

I'm prepping a video on this. I'll be using my Tower of Drowned Shadows adventure to demonstrate. Stay tuned!


And what is the other tool you mentioned in the previous post?

Nothing specific. It's more like, what features or flows are missing from CL that you need, and then I could make a recommendation. I've used OneNote, Docs, Scabard, World Anvil a bit, D&D Beyond, Roll20/FG/Foundry, Notion, Evernote and MyInfo and similar clones, speadsheets, a custom database. Index cards, duo-tang, and GM binders too. :)
 

Derric Munns

Member
Adamantium WoA
Wizard of Story
Thanks mate! I look forward to the video. As for the GM Org challenge tools, I'm going to actively pair Todoist (as the task/semi-project manager) and CL as the project support material manager, for a few weeks, and see what, if any, features and flows are missing.
 

JohnnFour

Game Master
Staff member
Adamantium WoA
Wizard of Story
Wizard of Combat
Gamer Lifestyle
Demonplague Author
Borderland Explorer
Something I feel CL needs are stat block templates. If you build a village, for example, it would be nice if the app had an empty stat block for that. A bunch of templates would be nice.
 

Derric Munns

Member
Adamantium WoA
Wizard of Story
Hi @JohnnFour in CL, Campaigns and Logs are described as the main building blocks, but as I'm creating content, I'm going straight to Pages and bypassing the logs initially. If there a downside to this tactic?
 

Ready To Role

New member
Gold WoA
I'm really excited for this challenge- just yesterday my inorganization started catching up with me in a session (session 14, nearly 2 years in!) I made it through without messing anything up but I definitely am not prepping well because I have a backlog of details to flesh out and need a better system (currently using Word documents and a binder). Between this and the Campaign Logger trial here's hoping I'll turn it around!
 

booklover160

New member
Copper WoA
I'm on day 6 of the challenge and it was mentioned that Campaign Logger would be getting the player editing feature in the future so they can all contribute their notes and the like. I was wondering if that's been implemented yet? Completely fine if its not there yet; I was just wondering!
 

JohnnFour

Game Master
Staff member
Adamantium WoA
Wizard of Story
Wizard of Combat
Gamer Lifestyle
Demonplague Author
Borderland Explorer
I'm on day 6 of the challenge and it was mentioned that Campaign Logger would be getting the player editing feature in the future so they can all contribute their notes and the like. I was wondering if that's been implemented yet? Completely fine if its not there yet; I was just wondering!
Not yet. We're working on getting a new editor out. And then we'll look at what our next project will be. Player editing is in the top 3 of our list!

Thank you for asking!
 

Carol

Member
Gold WoA
First off, I just found this thread and I have to smile that your 7 day challenge is still going years later! We all just need help!
I haven't had anything to say for a long time - the one long term campaign I was in folded when a player left and I no longer needed notes for it and I've been dealing with a load of stress and some health issues and have hardly even been playing (took a couple of months off). I'm doing a lot better and expect to be sorting out a campaign I had started for my family 3 - 4 years ago!

Now if I can remember anything about CL, I'll be happy! Otherwise, I'll be here spending 7 days (not consecutive) organizing myself and any games I'm in or gonna run!

I know I want to be able to enter a wall of text after a session and cross reference it to blocks of information. I also want to be able to put in an outline of a 5RD (or just the plans for an arc of encounters). I don't use a computer with my family games and have way too many windows open for online games when I run them - I don't have time to look up references when running a game, as my old brain is working overtime just to remember what we are doing and deal with dialog, etc. I like the idea of having players input notes too, as I do have players that would.

I also want to put in block of rules, as we play a different system for every game I'm in (or it seems like it!). I'm going to run one game in D&D 5e, playing another game in that, one game in Pathfinder 1e and one game in War Hammer 2e.
 

Carol

Member
Gold WoA
Welcome back @Carol!
Thanks! I'm happy to be back!
As usual I have a question - is there a utility of some sort to print out parts or all of a CL database? Let's say I want to print all the info on a certain NPC, or the pages of what's happened in our campaign? I don't have a laptop to take with me to look stuff up on when I'm running a game at my daughter's house! I'm used to using printed materials, which I could bookmark for fast access.
I have to try to make things difficult for you?! hehe I do find I understand how to use CL more easily this go-round, so that helps. :)
 

JohnnFour

Game Master
Staff member
Adamantium WoA
Wizard of Story
Wizard of Combat
Gamer Lifestyle
Demonplague Author
Borderland Explorer
is there a utility of some sort to print out parts or all of a CL database? Let's say I want to print all the info on a certain NPC, or the pages of what's happened in our campaign? I don't have a laptop to take with me to look stuff up on when I'm running a game at my daughter's house! I'm used to using printed materials, which I could bookmark for fast access.
Thanks for the great question!

I've spun this off into a thread for us to collaborate with @JochenL on the answers:

https://campaign-community.com/index.php?threads/cl-print-to-pdf.2365/
 
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