RPG

I use the superior method, a mess of illegible scribblings in a journal. I am trying to get better about it, though. And one thing im really trying to do is focus my prep on what the region is like, and what the important actors there are doing, and not on what i think the players will do. Every time I try to predict the pc actions they completely flip my prep on its head, so I want to go for more of an "informed improv" type prep

I use Onenote, it's free. Let's you have a book with folders and pages. You can have blank lines dotted or graph paper. You can use it to search images uploaded to it. Combined with a surface pro to write on the screen I can do everything I want to from draw maps, edit character sheets and take notes. You can hyperlink between pages and print pdf's into it. Fabulous piece of software for RPGs.

I'm a big fan of the Notion template from Sly Flourish. You can find it here: https://slyflourish.com/lazy_dnd_with_notion.html

Haphazard scrawls on a notepad during the session, trying to not lose it in between the initiative orders and scribbled HP tracking from combats. After the session I try to collate it all into a OneNote where it's all organised by campaign and plot element and theme.

Lately I've been moving from OneNote to Obsidian. Obsidian's ability to link between files and then see the visual map of all the links is handy, and it can even detect mentions of a thing even if you didn't link it at the time, so if something becomes important enough that you later decide to create an actual page for it, it'll find all the places you previously mentioned it. Very useful.

Obsidian! Can't recomment it enough! It's simple, has everything I need and a shitton of plugins (dice roller, statblocks, Initiative tracker, fantasy calendar, a tool for working with maps with pins and everything, ability to embed all sorts of generators from generators websites, wiki styled notes and more!)

MS OneNote is my preferred tool for this as you habe an infinite notebook and can doodle anywhere on its infinite pages. I usually have a chapter for rules, NPCs, Fluff (locations and past events), PCs (their history and plot hooks), with pages for e.g. combat rules, 1 page per NPCharacter etc. You can import pictures (and also paste them directly from ON to Discord) and share the notebook (or single pages) with others online.

Gm notes? what are those?

seriously though, I have someone in the party keep a journal of things that have happened. Then I keep a bullet point notes in a notepad or piece of paper that I have behind the GM screen.

Poorly! I do it poorly! :D

Characters are in GURPS Character Sheet, an (awesome!) open source character management program. I run our games through Foundry VTT, which handles all the combat tracking, HP/FP management, maps when I have them, etc. It also imports GCS files (and GCA, if that's your flavor of character editor). Most of my other notes (events, generated people names for unexpected NPCs, etc) go in Google Keep notes. Notes that I have to take on the fly go into my notebook, where they go forgotten until the next session, more often than I'd like...

For notes during/right after a session I have a notebook where I write by hand.

For planning, loose ideas etc I used to use Trello. It was serving me well for a long time (I'm still using it to save maps I might want to buy, interesting systems, links to tools, etc) but with time I felt I'm lacking a kind of big picture view.

So for campaign and adventure planning I've switched to obsidian.

• I like markdown
• With plugins you can create random generators
• I like that it's simple. It's just a bunch of files which I sync to my cloud
• The graph view lets me take a look at arches as a whole and find loose ends/underutilized facts

I use cherrytree. It has hierarchical note taking, hyperlinks and anchors. I make separate nodes for separate note categories. It works well for me, keeps stuff mostly organized.

I use obsidian, and git to sync between devices.

I use WorldAnvil for all my GM stuff :D Got my notes in their notebook, my worldbuilding in articles, etc etc. It's a bit of a heavy program unless you're going hard on worldbuilding, but I do go hard on worldbuilding so it's perfect for me.

Used to use onenote before, but those aren't really searchable last I checked.

Between sessions: Google Docs (one document per campaign). Props and visual aids are handled separately, the campaign document is just for me to write down my ideas, session notes, etc.

During the session: I'll print out the document and scribble on it with a pen as needed. I've tried editing the doc live (via laptop) during the game but it takes too long and requires too much focus to type as opposed to just jotting down/crossing out as we play.

For planning I used to use Scrivener pretty extensively, but I've since realized I can get most of the functionality I need with markdown, so I've been transitioning to that (mostly using hackmd.io).

During a session I'll usually jot stuff down in a notebook, particularly for things like enemy stats during combat. Then (when I'm feeling sufficiently motivated) I'll transfer that into markdown for writing up play reports.

Paper in a folder with index sheets. Old school as hell.

I tried Obsidian recently for a homebrew game and it worked really well to however.

I've been using Kanka as an online wiki reference for the settings I run. For notes that I use while running the game I use the Notion template by Sly Flourish that another user posted here.

Obsidian is a personal favorite.

I've been using the Zim desktop wiki. It's very simple, entirely local, and uses plain text files to store its contents (so if for whatever reason a decade from now I need to look at old notes and Zim isn't workable any more it's fine).

I poked around with "worldbuilding" programs like Fantasia Archive but I found them to be too specializd. They come with a lot of assumptions about how my world and campaign will be structured.