Fighting with myself on style - Top down or Bottom Up?

[jleewatts]

I am trying to organize my next campaign which I will be running in Eberron. I am trying to get all of the place names, wards, districts, etc. for Sharn into CL. But I am fighting myself in how to do it.

Looking at the City of Towers book, it seems so well organized, starting with one district and then stepping through all of the wards, businesses and personalities one at a time. But my problem is getting started. Do I use the list feature of CL, and do an outline, or do I just create one entry per ward with multiple tags with the post?

Just getting started is my problem. I do one entry, look at it, decide that is not how I want it to look and then start over. Thoughts?

 

[ELF]

As you already have the official source material to keep track of the big picture and related topics, how about sideways?

Log only what you are likely to need in the next session, be it tiny details or vast topics, and continue like that when the campaign progresses. Add more details and tags also to the existing log entries as required.

To keep plot elements as flexible as possible in whichever arrangement the players will twist them into, try to keep each log entry as modular as possible, and add tags when new findings emerge.

 

[JochenL]

I am using CL iteratively:

• Prepare: Jot down ideas for NPCs, Locations, Plots, tagging as I go - don't overthink here, it's a bucket, just toss in your ideas, let CL do the ordering and retrieving during the game
• Game/eXecute: Log everything that seems important, I often forget tagging here, my entries are often very short as I keep my focus on the table; use the search and filtering to retrieve info on ideas and prior events
• Evaluate: After the session I sort through my gaming notes, add tags, consolidate several entries into one, update my prep ideas, and prepare a nicely formatted summary of the events with a list of open ends and and likely follow-ups - likely resulting in more than one entry (usually one for XP, one for treasure, one for past events, one for possible future events)

After that I start over again. Don't fear keeping messy entries. Don't fear to delete stuff that never got used and you don't like anymore.

EDIT: What I am trying to say is that every campaign is different and you likely develop a different style for every campaign as you go. Embrace change and chaos, and let the future sort out your campaign style as you go. Nothing is chiseled into stone with CL, you can always come back and change/format things later. The important thing is to actually game and keep consistency, CL will help you with the latter.

 

[Ackinty]

I am using CL iteratively:

• Prepare: [snip]
• Game/eXecute: [snip
• Evaluate: [snip]

I'm using CL like you, and I have a question for you : do you have 3 campaign logs (one for each iteration) or only one for the rpg campaign ?
I find difficult to search throught a campaign log with alot of logs. I'm considering separating the logs but am not sure it's a better solution...

(Sorry for the useless bullet, I can't manage to suppress it)

 

[JochenL]

Ahoi!

I only have one log per campaign (even if I am guiding several groups through the same campaign).
During important points in a campaign, I summarize the effects of previous events into special log entries, sometimes deleting complete passages.

E.g. after I ran https://www.roleplayingtips.com/gm-techniques/creating-first-5-room-dungeon-campaign-logger/ I removed all the encounter details that happened, only keeping stats that would be needed in future encounters. That dungeon level took us four sessions to work through (divided among three groups which got time shifted now and then). After it was done, I revisited the dungeon copied stats to new posts (e.g. a character treasure post) and collapsed the remainder into one short rooms description post with the results of gaming folded in).

During intensive prep I marked the sections of the dungeon with §-tags. After finishing I folded all those tags into #"Menagerie of the Ogre Mage" for future reference and reused the §-tag for new session planning.

 

[Ackinty]

Thanks Jochen, for your clear answer.