Managing a Homebrew Campaign: Three Lessons
Ever since I started D&D 5e two years ago, I've been in the role of DM. That meant that from the very beginning I had to figure out how to prepare sessions, run them, and manage my notes afterward. This article is about the latter. What have I learned so far when it comes to keeping track of the campaign and doing my work efficiently?
As much as necessary, not as much as possible.
The first step is about the complexity of preparation. It's the question of "What should I actually prepare?"
In the role of DM, you're less an author and more an improv artist. What actually happens at the table isn't a reading hour, it's collaborative storytelling, with you serving as a sounding board for the players. That means the DM has to be as flexible as possible in order to react to the many situations the players cause.
Flexibility requires room to maneuver, and that room doesn't exist if you nail down the entire story in advance, down to the smallest detail, and carve it in stone. Quite the opposite - you box yourself in. Improvising becomes harder. The DM would have to make sure they remember, or have on hand, every previously created detail at all times. On top of that, a DM can get the nagging feeling that all that work was wasted whenever they deviate from the rigid framework.
For that reason, it was an important realization for me that I only prepare a session up to the point where I feel confident that improvising will come easily. Once that point is reached, everything beyond it is just the icing on the cake - purely optional.
If you need help figuring out how to apply this approach to the first steps of a homebrew campaign, I've written a rough guide here.
Write, don't archive.
Once the content exists, the question quickly becomes "How should I write this down so I don't immediately forget or lose it?"
We all know the big wikis for well-known shows, movies, or games. Carefully maintained entries packed with all kinds of information, structured under well-chosen headings, in lavish boxes, decorated with beautiful images. Who doesn't dream of something like that for their own campaign?
Public wikis are, above all, one thing: public. Complete strangers need to be able to find their way around them. In campaign notes, the only thing that matters is that the DM can find their way around. That means you don't need to make any structural changes - to folder structure, tags, categories, or links - unless there's an actual problem that would be solved by doing so. It can be reassuring to know that you only have to solve the problems that actually affect you.
Sure, you could tag every NPC with which people they belong to, which class they are, and so on. But when do you actually need an overview of every elf or every wizard in your campaign? Every structural convention also has to be maintained. Such efforts aren't worth it unless they're solving an active problem.
When structuring notes, a DM shouldn't ask what the most fitting links, categories, or tags are, but rather through what paths they want to stumble back onto that information again - even if they forget about it entirely.
The tag "Cleric" won't do me any good on some random NPC if I never look at the list of all clerics. The tag "Unrevealed," on the other hand, would let me, during every session prep, dig through a list of all the NPCs I've dreamed up but who have never actually appeared.
You control the tool, not the other way around.
There are a lot of programs for managing notes. Too many.
Word, Evernote, Obsidian, OneNote, Notion, Scrivener, World Anvil, and so on... The selection is powerful, and so are some of the tools.
I learned two things for myself after trying out each of these options. Both realizations bring me back to the two points already made in this article.
In most worldbuilding tools, the moment you create new content you get bombarded with input fields and the questions that come with them - questions you may not have even thought about yet. That can be good for sparking new ideas, but it should be optional, not mandatory. It also tempts you into creating content you don't actually need.
You had a nice idea for an NPC? Now the tool asks you about their family, hometown, favorite food, and so on. By answering these questions, you narrow your own room to maneuver. Improvising becomes harder. Whatever you wrote down gets rendered obsolete by improvising at the table. Creating new content should be a matter of a few seconds, and ideally without distraction.
Second, the tool shouldn't force a structure onto the DM. Who cares if one NPC's note has the heading "Appearance," another has "Looks," and a third one just has a picture? Consistency matters when telling the story, not in how notes are formatted. All that matters there is that I can get my work done.
As already mentioned, the best structure is the one that makes it easiest for me to dig through my notes and get to the content I need. A structure like that can only ever be something personal, and it's not possible if the tool dictates how you connect your notes to each other and put them in context.
In my experience, pretty much any non-worldbuilding note-taking software is better suited for managing campaigns. Worldbuilding tools create wikis where the cost-benefit ratio, measured against the fun had at the table, comes out very low. A wiki for your own campaign is a separate project - its own undertaking entirely.
Closing thoughts
These are all personal takeaways. The sessions I get to run are very story- and roleplay-heavy. I also have a tendency toward perfectionism and organization. So it's entirely possible that my problems differ quite a bit from those of other DMs.
Still, I wanted to share them, since I find relatively little material out there on note-taking and structuring campaigns.
Feel free to send me your thoughts and feedback on Twitter. I always look forward to a good exchange!