RPGaDay 2019: 26 Idea

I recommend keeping a notebook with you as a DM at all times. You never know when something cool is going to come to you and you will need to write it down. I know you don’t think you do, but trust me, you do.

There’s all kinds of studies about the positive effects of journaling—writing something down by hand—as an aid to increasing your memory and also in making connections, linking ideas, and so forth. Keeping a journal is going to free you up to create.

I would suggest you look at the Bullet Journal as a system. Here’s a great starting place to learn all about it, and of course, there’s this book right here. But before you go buy a twenty five dollar German blank book and expensive colored pens and all of that stuff, stop for a minute and think about if you even want to go that route first.

This may have cost me 50 cents.

What I’m saying is this: start cheap. If you lose interest or come up with a better way to do something, then you’re not out a lot of cash. If you love it and want to do more, then you can easily upgrade. What follows is my cheapo way to set up a journal based on me doing it for a year and a half and finding it to be absolutely essential to my creative process where gaming is concerned. The bullet journal method is great because you can switch it up so that it makes sense for you. And that’s really what we’re doing here; we are making a map of your internal creative process.

Okay, all you need to get started is a notebook and a decent pen that writes reliably.

Your notebook needs to be something with a decent number of pages in it, at least 80. It can be a spiral notebook, a sketchbook, or whatever you like so long is it large enough for you to write comfortably in and ideally, inexpensive. At least for now. If you really like this, there are no limits to the amount of money you can spend on special notebooks, stationary, and other accouterments.  I like graph paper, and there are some inexpensive notebooks made of graph paper from the big box stores that cost all of 99 cents. If you want to split the difference, here is a notebook aimed at DMs doing this exact thing. It's nice because it's got a mix of lined, graph, and hex paper included. Pretty swanky.

You don’t have to have a pen. Just use what you most like to write with, as long as it works for you. You don’t want to have to scribble on a page for five minutes to get your cheap Bic to work every time you need to write something down. I like gel pens because they are reliable, but you do you. I got one of those four ink in one pen pens and I love it. They were my favorite as a kid and I like them even more now. 

Write in the middle, not the corner.

Step 1

Go through the entire book and number the pages. Make them easy to see and in the same place. You will need these numbers to make the system work.

A rookie mistake is to write in the corners, you know, like every book you've seen before in your life. But there is a reason not to do this that has to do with linking your pages together. So resist all of that conditioning and write in the middle of the margin.

Use both pages; you may need them.

Step 2

Open the notebook up to the first two-page spread. This is your index. Write the word “Index” across the top of one of the pages. If this is a notebook for your game and nothing else, you are done. 

In a regular bullet journal, you may want to create divisions for larger topics. It’s hard to know what you will need without doing anything first, so I would leave it alone for now. Just set the two pages aside as your index.

You can break up your index pages
into sections if you need to.

Step 3

For a gaming notebook, you are pretty much done. You might want to create a calendar page so you can mark important dates, like when school starts again, so you can make plans accordingly. But it’s not necessary, unless you are a calendar person. That said, let me add: if you are running multiple games, or your sessions change regularly, or you keep getting caught flat-footed and running by the seat of your pants because you forgot to work something up, then you really should look at the calendar module for bullet journaling. It's quick, easy, and useful. Trust me on this. 

Using the notebook

This is the thing—it doesn’t work unless you use it. So take it with you everywhere you go. If you get in the habit of always taking it with you, it will serve you well.

Whenever you have an idea, open up to the first blank page and start scribbling. If you need to draw a map, draw a map. Or make a to-do list. Whatever you need. If you have another idea later in the day, open to the first clean page and write away.

Now, either at the end of the day or the beginning of the next (or whenever you have a couple of minutes of down time), you will look at what you wrote down, flip back to your index, and note it there. Leave room for other topics and page numbers. I’d go every other line until you know what you will need. So, you’d make a note like this on your index:

City-State Notes, Pgs 4-6

Map of Main Sewer, pg 7

Magic Items, pg 8 (sword of chaos)

As new ideas occur to you, grab a blank page and write everything down. At the end of the day, index it. You will quickly see that your City-State notes are going to be spread out throughout the notebook. So, just go back to your entry and add page numbers, like this:

City-State Notes, Pgs 4-6, 18-20,

Map of Main Sewer, pg 7

Magic Items, pg 8 (sword of chaos) pg 12 (wand of trickery)

The index is what makes the notebook truly useful. You can find what you are looking for at a glance.

There’s an advanced trick you can do with your page numbers that will keep you from flipping back to the index. It’s a little more work, but not much. On the city-state pages, you will drop down to the page number and draw an arrow pointing forward and write down the next page number that deals with the same topic. If you’ve come from a page with the same topic, you’ll write an arrow pointing backwards and the page number you came from to get here. That way, if you’re paging through your notebook and you spy something that interests you, just glance down at the page number and it’ll tell you where the threads of the idea continue.

I know. Mind Blown, right?

With the index in place, you are not limited to just holding ideas and plots. You can use the book to track session notes, too. Open to the first blank page, date the page, and then go to town. Every new NPC, every extra side note, all of the great ideas you had mid-session, put them all down there. Afterwards, go back and index the page as above. You're already using the notebook for planning. Why not keep session notes with your plans? 

That's the point: anything you need for your game can go in the journal. It's all in one place, organized by your specific needs in the way that makes the best sense to you. It's like a road map of your brain. 

When you get to the end of your notebook, grab another one, make a new index, and keep going. If you want to pre-designate areas of your index for things you know you need a lot of room for, you can do that. Otherwise, it’s lather, rinse, and repeat.

Tips and Tricks

One of the things that confounds people new to the journaling process is the idea that they can only write down the good ideas. Well, how do you know if it’s a good idea until you write it down? Trust the process and put it all on the page, even (and maybe especially) the half-baked ideas or the tiny thoughts.

Doing it this way ensures that you capture what you were trying to articulate, and it also frees your mind up to think about something else. I’ve rewritten the same idea with only slight variations down in my journal three or four times. Each time, it cleared the decks for me to expand on the thought or simply move on to the next thing on my mind.

Because I’m that-guy, I’ve got a campaign notebook (separate from my journal) wherein I write down all of the finished ideas and usable content I come up with. Anything good from my notebook gets transferred over to the campaign notebook, which is much nicer and far less chaotic. Eventually my campaign notebook will get re-organized into a pdf document with a searchable index and a hyperlinked table of contents and oooooh, it’ll be so fancy. Until we get there, though, this system works like a charm.

Get in the habit of going back through your notebook every three to four weeks. You’ll be surprised what looking at these pages with fresh eyes will do. In some cases, I’ll see something I wrote down and forgot about and think, “that’s brilliant!” Other times, I’ll look over something I agonized over and realize it doesn’t work. But that might lead me to another, possibly better idea that will work instead. It’s all part of the process.