GM Advice: Campaign Logs and Notes

[GM 1990]

In a sandbox or homebrewed world, the plot arcs, NPC interactions, plot hooks, and adventures the pull it all together can be a daunting amount of material to keep track of over time. If you do it well, those old notes are a treasure horde of future hooks, easter eggs, and continuity for future campaigns that can add incredible depth to your long term players.

How do you manage your data? Digital, paper, both? Software specific to gaming or a home-designed template/system?

Please share any tips you think would be useful to other GMs, and

[Dave Justus]

I am a pretty horrible record keeper, so I don't keep any sort of detailed notes.

What I do try to do though is send out a recap email to all the players a day or two before we game going over what happened last time. It is usually only a page or two worth of writing, but I can cover basic things that happened, including most of the things you mentioned.

The nice thing about this is that both my players and I then have an archive of what happened throughout the entire campaign and it doesn't take a huge amount of effort.