Back when I started playing games and buying gaming books, print was all there was. And even once I got a computer cool enough to do that whole internet thing, the idea of paying for an intangible product was just weird to me. Buying a computer game on a disk in a box made sense, but buying the same game as a download didn't. Maybe I'm weird. I'm okay with being weird.
But things have changed a little for me over the past 5 years or so. For one thing, I've been selling my own game as a digital download for at least that long. Then about 3 years ago, the Bundle of Holding discovered me and I discovered them.
Another thing that's changed has been how I use technology and information to run my games. When I started my old school Castle of the Mad Archmage campaign, I was almost entirely a paper operation. I used graph paper to track all of the mandatory downtime required in old school play, at least until I ran out of lines. My note taking was terrible. I might have mentioned this, but the map the players were making of the dungeon as they explored it was more thorough and complete than any record I had behind the screen. Eventually, the player who was the map keeper stopped coming and the campaign ground to a halt.
Toward the tail end of that, I had gotten somewhat better with digital (and more detailed) note taking. Instead of graph paper to track every character's activity, I was using timeline software. My dungeon notes were no longer printouts with notes scrawled in the margins, but notes saved within the PDF document itself.
When I resurrected the Castle of the Mad Archmage for Pathfinder, I incorporated better notetaking in the form of Microsoft OneNote. I can have a separate page for every room in the dungeon, go into detail on the city that they live in and have all of that information pretty easy to find.
I'm also using OneNote to flesh out campaigns I've got on the backburner, getting them ready to run.
But things have changed a little for me over the past 5 years or so. For one thing, I've been selling my own game as a digital download for at least that long. Then about 3 years ago, the Bundle of Holding discovered me and I discovered them.
Another thing that's changed has been how I use technology and information to run my games. When I started my old school Castle of the Mad Archmage campaign, I was almost entirely a paper operation. I used graph paper to track all of the mandatory downtime required in old school play, at least until I ran out of lines. My note taking was terrible. I might have mentioned this, but the map the players were making of the dungeon as they explored it was more thorough and complete than any record I had behind the screen. Eventually, the player who was the map keeper stopped coming and the campaign ground to a halt.
Toward the tail end of that, I had gotten somewhat better with digital (and more detailed) note taking. Instead of graph paper to track every character's activity, I was using timeline software. My dungeon notes were no longer printouts with notes scrawled in the margins, but notes saved within the PDF document itself.
When I resurrected the Castle of the Mad Archmage for Pathfinder, I incorporated better notetaking in the form of Microsoft OneNote. I can have a separate page for every room in the dungeon, go into detail on the city that they live in and have all of that information pretty easy to find.
I'm also using OneNote to flesh out campaigns I've got on the backburner, getting them ready to run.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment