Those of us who began our time as GMs decades ago have had the opportunity to watch a slow evolution in the games we play, from a pen and paper hobby to one including all sorts of digital enhancement. We now have software that can handle sound effects, images, mapping, data management, initiative tracking, the rolling of dice, and even connecting to other players around the globe. People play over Roll20, Google Hangouts, IRC, and Skype and various other digital tabletops like Fantasy Grounds.

So many tools to assist GMs and Players, it's hard to imagine finding the one perfect tool, the holy grail of RPG software, but that's as much because each GM has his own requirements, his own preferences, as it is because of the scope the software would need to cover. Some GMs just want chat and dice rolling, others want the whole shebang - maps, music, and more - and most want something in between.

Campaign management used to be about making sure character sheets and GM notes didn't get lost between game sessions. We had folders and notebooks, character sheets tucked into game books, and shelves upon shelves for our books. Now we have more options, from software designed just for the job - including Realm Works, Obsidian Portal, and Scabard - to software (both online and off) that we use to do the job. Some popular choices are Google Docs, Scrivener, MediaWiki... and of course our own OggDude's amazing software.

What campaign management tools do you use? Are they primarily online? Offline? Do you take advantage of a number of tools to do the job, or prefer to have one larger piece of software handle most of the grunt work?

I use OggDude a lot. And when I start my Campaign later this Spring, I'll use Obsidianportal.

I use a few tools.

• Excel to brain storm the campaign story and break it into manageable parts.
• Visio to map out individual missions/encounters
• OggDude's Character Generator for Character generating of PCs/NPCs and the Encounter setups sometimes
• I tried Obsidian Portal to give my Players a place to organize their information but they didn't really use it much so I doubt I will use it again.
• Notepad to spitball encounters/dialogue/etc
• Additionally I use Roll20 for actual gameplay. I am working on learning more of the scripting/macros to make it even more fun too.

That is pretty much how I handle it.

I use OggDude a lot.

So, during your game sessions you put him in the corner with a computer and printer dressed up in a Leia Slave outfit and demand new playaids to be printed out from time to time?

I use Obsidian portal more for myself than my PC's. It keeps past events in order and i can refrence back to important events. My PC's use it to refresh prior to our bi weekly game and update important information i need to now about their characters.

I am moving to Roll20 soon (free version)

Roll20 is great especially since they added folders for characters/handouts.

Oggdude's for most of the crunchy stuff, open office document for notes, and dropbox to share it all with my players as needed.

Oh, and a old school leather notebook holder with pocket that a friend gave me for random ideas, printed encounter sheets and such.

I make all my maps with roll 20 from various star wars tile sets and such.

One of my players is a sprite artist and he makes all our figures, (and they have the perfect retro feel to them while being customizable, which is important as we used to use legos figures on the table top so everyone invested in character creation in more ways than one).

I use my iPad mini for digital handouts (because the map is much cooler on a data pad for a star wars system)

I then use two different audio programs, iTunes and VLC media for music and sound effects.

we try to keep as much physical as is practical for having kids around the house (thus the switch from maps and legos) but we love books and real dice with paper sheets to keep the classic feel. Also meeting together in person is big. Roll20 across distances only when a player can't make it to location one week or so. Having tried the full distance game it feels so different and less fun all around.

• Theory crafting and NPC write ups. Campaign notes and upcoming encounter notes: Evernote (I like being able to add quick notes wherever I am)
• Player generated Logs, they document what happens week to week so we actually have a written out story at the end of it all. Sort of like a journal entry: Google Doc
• Organization + News Bulletin. I post images, maps, XP earned, gold, NPC names, etc...: Secret Facebook Group
• Digital Table Top: Roll 20
• Day to Day discussion: Google Hangouts Chat Messages
• Voice Chat: Team Speak (only did this because one of our players was in the country and using anything else we were getting ping times of 10 seconds. TS greatly reduced that. but since he has a speedy connection might end up just using hangouts.)
• Character Gen: Some tool for the system

I am very fickle when it comes to technology.

I also use Obsidian Portal extensively for myself, rather than for my players. I'd be excited if they joined in and wanted to post stories and stuff, but mainly it's a wiki and planning tool that I use to organize NPCs, organizations, plots and so on.

I use OggDude's character generator, Notability note-taking app (handy because it auto-syncs to my iPad, which I then use in sessions), and now iDraw for quick maps. I've started dabbling with Campaign Cartographer for maps, but the learning curve is very steep.

That's pretty much it. We play in person, though one friend joins via Skype and rolls his own dice, which we just trust him to read properly.

I use OggDude's character generator, Notability note-taking app (handy because it auto-syncs to my iPad, which I then use in sessions), and now iDraw for quick maps. I've started dabbling with Campaign Cartographer for maps, but the learning curve is very steep.

That's pretty much it. We play in person, though one friend joins via Skype and rolls his own dice, which we just trust him to read properly.

I have been there with CC2 & CC3, but I have never found that the result is worth the effort. I use Hexographer more now when I need a map. Your work on iDraw looks pretty good, I may have to look into a vector graphics program.

I use OggDude a lot.

So, during your game sessions you put him in the corner with a computer and printer dressed up in a Leia Slave outfit and demand new playaids to be printed out from time to time?

You do NOT want to see me in a chain mail bikini...

I use Google Drive primarily. I have a public folder where game details go and a private folder for notes. I write out entries for planets, organizations, and NPCs in Google Docs, and I keep track of my campaign outline and NPC stats with Google Sheets. I've considered moving some of it to Obsidian Portal, but my notes on locations and people are rather thorough and might spoil a few things for the players.

When we play online (which seems to be about every other session) we use Roll20. I pay $5/month, but I've considered upping it to $10 so we can roll the dice in-session without relying on the Hangout Tools.

We all sit around a table, and as a digital GM, I am paperless save for the occasional scrap for notes (and I'm working on that.)

I use:

Scrivener - primary holocron and GM dashboard

Scapple - visualize pc/npc/org interplay & prospective use for maps with my projector

Google Drive - store it all

Numbers - just started using this for character sheets

Web Browser - for cool things like wookieepedia, http://swrpg.viluppo.net/ , etc

MindNode - I brainstorm plots

Evernote - another critical piece of my holocron - lots of NPCs statted up and ready to go with checkboxes and whatnot.

iTunes/Sonos (depending on location) - control playlists for that je ne sais quoi of music.

You do NOT want to see me in a chain mail bikini...

Can one of you use the force to remove this image from my mind?

You do NOT want to see me in a chain mail bikini...

Can one of you use the force to remove this image from my mind?

This is not the image you are looking for... / handwave

Better?

This is not the image you are looking for... / handwave

Better?

I think so, but now I have this urge to stop selling deathsticks, too.

Obsidian portal. (link in sig)

I have a map of the sector, with points of interests, major and minor planets, all with links or their own pages. Minor and Major NPCs. News. And even an adventure log for my players.

yea I spoil my players fairly good with all the work I do on Obsidian.

For characters I use OggDudes character generator. My only gripe with the program is that I don't like to do the players bookkeeping, so credits and inventory is a sort of grey area

For characters I use OggDudes character generator. My only gripe with the program is that I don't like to do the players bookkeeping, so credits and inventory is a sort of grey area

You can keep the data on a shared dropbox account and let them do their own maintenance and still have access to it. My players do that and it has worked excellently.

For characters I use OggDudes character generator. My only gripe with the program is that I don't like to do the players bookkeeping, so credits and inventory is a sort of grey area

You can keep the data on a shared dropbox account and let them do their own maintenance and still have access to it. My players do that and it has worked excellently.

This is also another area where Google Docs/Drive can come in handy. You can share a folder or some documents with the group, they can track gear and loot and what have you in a spreadsheet everyone can access, you can shuffle handouts into there when they're ready to be provided to the group, etc.. Very much like Dropbox but it also provides the 'apps' for viewing the documents too, which can potentially be handy.

I have been there with CC2 & CC3, but I have never found that the result is worth the effort. I use Hexographer more now when I need a map. Your work on iDraw looks pretty good, I may have to look into a vector graphics program.

I've started dabbling with Campaign Cartographer for maps, but the learning curve is very steep.

Consider using AutoRealm. I have an extensive CC library, but probably 90% of the time I still use AutoRealm. It's free. It's not as powerful as CC, but is SO much more easy to use. If you stop using CC for a few months, expect a couple hours of using it again before you can recall how to do it all. Then, it's still clunky. AutoRealm you could not use for 2 years and still be able to start it up and jump back in. It's very intuitive compared to CC's click object then select command. It doesn't have an extensive library like CC, but it can do nearly everything CC does. I have a library of icons (created and saved inside AutoRealm) that I made for Traveller long ago which I've used to make Star Wars maps like this:

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZGVmYXVsdGRvbWFpbnxzdHVybnNzdHVmZnxneDo0M2EzMmY1YTBmY2EzOTgx

I hope to make a Star Wars icon library someday, but what I have seems to work ok. Not as beautiful as the other deckplans posted around here, but the clean and simple version works for my games and you can create them relatively quickly once you get the hang of things. You can use it not just for deckplans, but overland maps (icons included), urban maps (icons included, but more fantasy then scifi), basic vehicle lineart, map of a station/house, etc. If you want graph paper on your maps you can add several types as a layer.

Real quick sketch of your pirate outpost? Use AutoRealm, don't even try the CC in my opinion.

True digital artists will hate the results, but for those with less skills and time this is my go-to program.

If you need any help to get started feel free to ask.

With so very many excellent maps out there, I've more or less put my cartographer's had on the shelf, albeit sadly. It's easier for me to just grab something and project it than it is for me to personally create masterpieces or even sketch it out on a mat.

Heck, since we're not concerned at all with grids, I could feasibly just capture images from google maps and use those, even.

Still, I like what I'm seeing in your Autorealm works, Sturn.

I use OggDude a lot.

So, during your game sessions you put him in the corner with a computer and printer dressed up in a Leia Slave outfit and demand new playaids to be printed out from time to time?

Ahh you got me good there. I laughed till my stomach hurt.

Sorry I meant for there to be an s with an apostrophe.

I think I was really darn tired when I wrote this. Normally I am more elaborate.

Roll20 for those very rare times that we can't get together in person.

Obsidian Portal (for now) to organize everything. But will be moving to The City of Brass once beta opens up. (May just use it for my own notes, since motivation isn't a word I would put on the same continent as any member of my group, excluding myself. (Even my girlfriend played last session and now has 85xp that's still unused, though she does have motivation, just not for gaming like I do.)

For every scrap, I use Google Drive to share everything. Again, I'm the only one who adds anything.

And OggDude's character builder for the PC/NPC/Group generator.

And I'm still looking for a good map program.

Other than that, the only other tool I use is Syrinscape for background sound. So I guess since I'm running this Sunday, I need to get to work compiling the sounds needed.