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Using Logger with WoA

Toasty

Member
Platinum WoA
Gold WoA
Silver WoA
Wizard of Story
So I am trying to figure out how to use Logger to organize my campaign that I am creating using Wizards of Adventure.

I created a campaign. So far, so good. :)

So I now have the following items I need to manage:

Treasure Chest
Adventure Plotline
Milestones/5RDs
Encounters

How do I organize these? The Adventure Plotline, Milestones, and Encounters are all linear. Do they all go into the same log as log entries of different types (Section, Loopy Planning, etc.)? Or are these all separate logs?

I realize there is not one "right" way, but I'd like a recommendation on how to organize it.
 

JochenL

CL Byte Sprite
Staff member
Adamantium WoA
Wizard of Story
Wizard of Combat
Gamer Lifestyle
Borderland Explorer
I can only give you a description of how I am using CL for my games:
  1. I start with a Planning/Ideation Log within my new campaign.
  2. I add entries to it whenever I develop an idea, usually just using "*"-tags.
  3. When I prepare a game session, I review this log, grab everything of interest, create an entry describing the overall plot idea there, and use all the interesting tags.
  4. For tags that stand out (important characters, organizations, locations, items), I then create (or update) Campaign Entries to reflect their current state and ideas.
  5. For the game night, I switch to a Session Log. I start with adding a prefix with the session number and date and add the names of players and characters expected, any obvious hooks that come to mind from planning, and a summary with all the tags of interest from my planning log (alternatively, I copy the planning entry over to the session log)
  6. During the game, I mostly punch in noteworthy (and sometimes a lot of silly) things, using just "*"-tags for new stuff. When a specific situation comes up, I filter by tag and draw data and inspiration from the Campaign Entry (or when in a hurry, just by hovering over the corresponding tag - I'll try to keep a summary and stats near the beginning of my CEs).
  7. After the game, I sum up everything in a final session log entry, especially dealing with XP (I also have a $XP campaign entry to summarize all XP log entries).
  8. In between sessions, I go through my "*"-tags in the session log and refactor them into characters, organizations, locations, items where appropriate, noting down any loose ends and ideas in a separate entry, which is then easily copied over to the planning log for later planning reviews.
  9. I also update any campaign entries that need updating, e.g., new facts, stat changes, etc.
  10. Start over with 2.
I hope this helps.
 
Last edited:

ExileInParadise

RPG Therapist
Staff member
Adamantium WoA
Wizard of Story
In the Adventure Building Workshop - the tags in Campaign Logger are closely related to the Mining Carts lesson.

So, my approach has been to build pages in the Campaign notes side sort of like wiki pages for all the items you will be mining from throughout your campaign.

Break out Campaign notes by the tag markers:
* The campaign plotline with the seed and tiered adventure seeds goes on its own toplevel * tagged plot page
* Adventure plots, milestones, and 5RDs with their encoutners go on their own * plot tagged pages that refer back to the campaign plot page.
% calendar tags for a timeline page to keep my master "when stuff happened" as well as session tagging.
@ entries for people, monsters (Monsters in Map Monster Chest) - players and their characters can go here for tracking player background.
^ for factions etc (Meta-Monsters in Map Monster Chest)
# for locations (the Maps in Map Monster Chest)
$ for planned GP budgets and treasure piles (I tend to make these "hordes" like Smaug's horde in the Hobbit - named piles so big they are reknowned)
! for item lists or items with special rules that need their own page
+ for magic items that need their own page/sheet
The Section marker is for my session notes pages

Populate the starting pages with stuff for your initial homebase, sandbox, hexcrawl, campaign outline and starting adventure.

The logs for the campaign are more like tweets where I can just put a short list of tagged people, places, things, events, etc that all tag-link back to the wiki-like campaign entries.

Then between sessions, you can mine stuff back out of your log entries to update the master campaign pages for the buckets/mining carts, and then use the updated data to feed into the next adventure and its encounters.
 

JohnnFour

Game Master
Staff member
Adamantium WoA
Wizard of Story
Wizard of Combat
Gamer Lifestyle
Demonplague Author
Borderland Explorer
For my part, I had a basic system in CL V1. But now need to go through all the cool options in Campaign Logger vNext and plot out WoA organization.

This is in my backlog for future WoA updates.
 
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