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    And please drop by the Introductions thread and say hi.

Introductions

MaartenB

New member
Wizard of Combat
Hi all, I'm Ben from Minnesota. As a teenager in the mid 2000s, I DM'd a few D&D 3.5 sessions for my friends, but it never really stuck. I continued looking at books and blogs and subreddits, but took about a 10-year break from play. Now, I've been running a couple of 5E games for 3-4 years in a Homebrew world for some of the same friends. We use Foundry both in-person and online, and reading Roleplaying Tips has had a huge impact on my style and skills. The D20 is my favorite die - it's iconic and when D20s are rolling, things are happening. :)
Welcome!
 

Krogenar

Member
Wizard of Combat
Hello everyone, looking forward to getting to know everyone. I'm here to improve my GM "game". I'm in my late 40's, started with D&D in the early 80's, played it on and off through high school, college and now since ttrpgs have enjoyed a resurgence in the last few years (thanks 'Stranger Things') I've come out of my long ttrpg stasis like a cicada!

I currently play weekly, my group of friends has four GMs (including myself) and we play Pathfinder 1E (woo!), 5e (yay) and Pathfinder 2e (muted woo).
Located in Westchester County, NY (I don't know where the X-Men mansion is located, I've looked) I love ttrpgs in all their forms because it seems to attract intelligent and creative outsiders. :)

My favorite campaign worlds are Forgotten Realms, and anything related to Dying Earth or Lankhmar.

EDIT: My favorite die is the "tens" die of the d100 dice because a hilariously intense discussion of how to read the '00' once took place in my gaming group, also someone needs to love this underappreciated die.
 
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wolfknight75

New member
Wizard of Story
Wizard of Combat
Hi, my handle is Wolfknight75, I also go by Chris and I just turned the BIG 50. I've been playing and DMing D&D and all of its iterations since 1980. I am currently running a Saltmarsh based Greyhawk Campaing mostly 2nd Edition with a lot of homebrew rules. I have been running it weekly for about 3 years. My last campaign was my own World of Adria which I used to run 3.5 edition. It lasted for 7 years (My longest Campaign to date). I would like to run a Dark Sun campaign or similar homebrew using DCC rules or BECMI rules. I have and do play other games as well. Most notably Champions, Savage Worlds (Conan, Necromunda, Deadlands, John Carter of Mars, Flash Gordon, and Rifts), Gamma World, Pathfinder, Empire of the Petal Throne, and Star Wars are some of my favorites. Before the Pandemic I also played quite a bit of miniature wargames such as Warhammer, Necromunda, Flames of War, and Squad Leader. I love Johnns articles and have been a Patreon, a subscriber, Campaign Logger for a few years now. I enjoy his takes on gaming and feel there is always something to learn to be a better Dungeon Master. I have take his Faster Combat Course and it worked! I am really looking forward to the Wizard of Adventure Course.

Like so many people, I am only able to game once a week, due to my job, and working 60+ hours each week. I'm hoping to retire in the next five or so years (sooner if possible) so I can game more often and enjoy life in general.

I love dice, especially the d20, although d4s are a close second. To me they both constitute the "Weird Dice" for the game. Of course, I find I roll d8s the best. LOL!
 

TVC3

New member
Platinum WoA
Gold WoA
Hello new forum members! Welcome!

Please leave a reply and introduce yourself.

Where in the world are you? What game(s) do you GM? How long have you been GMing? What's your favourite sided-die?
My name is Trey and I've been DMing for a little over a year after getting back into my childhood hobby again after 30 years. Currently exploring 5e after doing some adventures on Roll20 as a player with my three kids online during covid with an experienced DM. I now want to DM my kids and have done some prequests to familiarize the players with their city surroundings and find out what type of characters they are going to be thru various social and other situations in game.

I have lots of ideas and threads I want to follow but need guidance about organizing it all and staying focused on the important parts to keep it fun for my kiddos and myself and keep growing my DM skills.
 

Stephan Hornick

Community Goblin & Master of the Archive
Platinum WoA
Wizard of Story
Wizard of Combat
Borderland Explorer
Happy Birthday, @Michael!
How are the adventures with your kids? @TVC3 is new here, but I think there are quite a lot of us who GM for kids. I think we should collect data about GMing for kids in a thread. What do you think? Do you have tips on what works and what not?
 

ExileInParadise

RPG Therapist
Staff member
Adamantium WoA
Wizard of Story
I have lots of ideas and threads I want to follow but need guidance about organizing it all and staying focused on the important parts to keep it fun for my kiddos and myself and keep growing my DM skills.

Welcome! Every GM works a little differently when it comes to organization and reference - but I have received a LOT of help from the tools and threads here at Campaign Community.

What I am finding works very well for me is a two-level organization system.
At the top level - I want a "dashboard" to use *during* the session, and Johnn and Jochen have been building a tool called Campaign Logger that has become my "go to" for that dashboard.

Conceptually - you can put two kinds of entries in Campaign Logger - a long-form campaign entry or a short log entry. I like to think of the long campaign entry like a wiki page - a living document where you hold the current "truth" about a campaign topic. During sessions you jot down quick "reminders" like "tweets" in the form of log entries. The Campaign Logger system uses a load of special characters to tag or categorize the types of things you're talking about in the entries. Between sessions, you can then mine your log entries and update your campaign entries with the overall view.

But, you want to keep your session dashboard light and simple - and most GMs I know are note-generating fiends - myself included.
For that, a "reference notebook" with everything you ever wanted to remember for use between sessions can supplement the "session notebook" in Campaign Logger.

Personally, I use an application called Joplin which works much like Evernote (without the cost) - including cloud sync across devices and with a webpage-to-notebook snipper. The main thing I try to keep in mind is that my Joplin notebook is my "Bucknards Everfull Library" that I can tote around and refer to as needed - it supports tagging and search like Campaign Logger - and I use the same tagging characters for consistency. But, the main point for me is that between session prep I mine and refine from my Joplin notes into Campaign Logger. The intent is to use Campaign Logger exclusively at the table in the session - and Joplin purely for prep. Anytime I need to refer to the Joplin notebook during a session would be me rolling a 1 on prep.

Maybe some of these ideas can help you customize an organization system.
I can say for sure I don't miss toting index card boxes around...
 

TechnoGent

Member
Platinum WoA
Gold WoA
Wizard of Story
Hello new forum members! Welcome!

Please leave a reply and introduce yourself.

Where in the world are you? What game(s) do you GM? How long have you been GMing? What's your favourite sided-die?

Hello! My name is Justin, I'm a stay-at-home dad raising my two toddler sons, and I live in Mesa, Arizona.

I've been running an online D&D 5e campaign for about 2.5-3 years for a group of seven friends so we can keep in touch. Right now we use a combination of D&D Beyond and Talespire to play and used Tabletop Simulator previously. We only get to play 3-5 hours once a month, so the campaign has been pretty slow going. We've just finished up our first adventure that involved Lost Mine of Phandelver with elements of Dragon of Icespire Peak. I'm getting ready to throw them into a version of Deathtrap Dungeon I hope I've modified decently for 5e.

Oh! My favorite die is the d6, because I use it a lot to randomly figure out how a scenario I haven't planned will play out (1 = worst case, 6 = best case).

I'm really looking forward to starting the Adventure Building course so I can stop using published stuff and start creating my own adventures tailored to my group. Or at least use the course to modify things quicker when I haven't got the time thanks to my kiddos. I also hope to get myself a little more organized so I stop losing the threads of my own story!
 

jgesq

New member
New to the whole world and using Campaign Logger as a way to create interactive fiction opportunities, branching narratives and larger fiction works. Looking forward to exploring new tool as I learn old. Tips, trick and video instructional always welcome.
 

ExileInParadise

RPG Therapist
Staff member
Adamantium WoA
Wizard of Story
New to the whole world and using Campaign Logger as a way to create interactive fiction opportunities, branching narratives and larger fiction works. Looking forward to exploring new tool as I learn old. Tips, trick and video instructional always welcome.

Welcome! I came here for a similar sort of reason: I was introduced to D&D when it was new just before the microcomputer revolution started. By 1982 tabletop and interactive fiction (from the mighty Scott Adams and Infocom) were a large part of my life - basically, better than books because they changed each time you picked them up.

Flash forward decades later and the magic is still there ... Those two hobbies have stuck with me my entire life, each reinforcing the other.

Tabletop and interactive fiction are both forms of being an illusionist - crafting sky castles in the imagination from evocative words, rolling bones, and imagination.

Along the way, I've experimented with writing computer RPGs, machine cinema, virtual world roleplay, self-publishing short stories through Amazon, Inform4 interactive-fiction writing, and lately, writing my own RPG systems and settings from scratch.

With everything I've dabbled in, I can say I think your approach of Campaign Logger as an interactive fiction organization system seems *very* do-able, especially with the help of Johnn, Jochen, and the rest of the cast of characters here,

The multiple forms of "tagging" based on type of information should be very helpful to tracking, linking, and cross-referencing the multiple categories of information.

I've had the best luck with Campaign Logger if I treat creating Campaign Entries much like I would create a wiki pages about some aspect of a story - and log entries to be like tweeting about a specific event or data point within the story.

I am very interested to hear how you get along with building and tracking multiple branching story lines within the structure - Johnn's "loopy planning" techniques described in his course speaks directly to that - and loopy planning was one of the earlier drivers for how CL was designed to work.

Feel free to direct message me with any questions you have about interactive fiction, tabletop etc - or start a thread in one of the forums and tag my name in it.

I might not have answers - but I may be able to ask other questions that help clarify, focus, or expand on things.
 

jgesq

New member
Good to hear, EIP that you too have the IF bug. I'm still working through the program - seeing the best way to input info and look at how best to proceed. I like the WIKI example you gave and then using log entries for specifics. I use PLOTTR for my fiction structure work and have a copy of Gamebook Authoring Tool from Crumblyhead that I quite like - so it's a learning process.
 

FelixDizzy

New member
Borderland Explorer
Hello,
i got invited by a good Friend of mine. I play now PnP for maybe 3 to 4 Years. I start playing cthulhu and i love in my group how much RP they use to play. After this i was hard fixed and got in a group that play shadowrun, also with the main focus on RP and storytelling. After this whole Corona thing the group brokes up. Now im looking for new groups to play. =) i would prefer to play with german players, as u can see my english is no that good. =D

Playerprofile:
Name
: Felix
From: Freiburg, Germany
Age : 30
"knowing" Systems: Shadowrun, Cthulhu.
pref. Playstyle : Roleplay/Charakter Focus
hates: Min/Max

Personality:
I got a strong personality and i am very temperamental,some times. =D I think the most of the time this a good thing but some times,
it can be hard to handle for some people. ;) Im not that insterted in rules , they are a just a tool, but the way for a good game is in our head and not in a rulebook.

Sry for my bad english, i rly try my best! =D
If u have any other questions, feel free to asked.

@Stephan Hornick thanks for the inv. =)
 
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ShinwaKurai

New member
Gold WoA
Hi, my name is Sarah. I have been a Storyteller for old VtM and Demon the Fallen, very shortly a few years before White Wolf re-did their systems. And a DM for D&D since 2005 started playing 3.5e in 2002, and while I now run 5th edition I still pull in some of the things I prefer from 3.5e for my campaigns. My favorite die is the d12, it doesn't get nearly enough love.
 
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