GMing Tip

[Nyctalgia]

I feel almost embarrassed to share this because it's so obvious, despite having never done it until now after two decades of GMing...

Using a calendar as an organizational aid.

It's made an enormous difference in me being able to plan sessions. Being able to pre-plan things such as weather, random/daily occurrences, and even just the simple tracking of time has given me entirely new perspective as a GM, both for planning future sessions and for (perhaps more importantly) easily summarizing past ones.

Anyway, me = duh, it would seem. Still, I wanted to share it regardless since it's been a huge boon.

[Jack Shrapnel]

Along that idea, Ali the DM from our game also uses the "epic words" website... incorporates your calender idea as well (which is a great tip) and gives email reminders, and lets the players enter journal entries as well as allowing the DM to have an online wikki of the campaign world / NPC's etc.

can't say It's my idea though... I tended to go years without thinking of GM aids... only when someone else used it did I go "Oh wow... what a great idea!"

thanks for the tip!

[voodoo]

I laminate the majority of my GM aids. I made several charts in Excel (Iniative, A "monster" hp tracker, etc) that helped me organize things quite a bit with the help of a package of dry erase markers...and a big dry erase board. Ok so maybe I'm just a big fan of dry erase, I don't think I have a problem, I can stop using dry erase any time I want to!