As the title says, what’s your go-to when it comes to things like notes and maps. Personally, I like Obsidian and Tabletop RPG Map editor II from the lead dev of Dead Cells.
I also like https://when2meet.com/ for resolving scheduling conflicts.
Not that much special tools. I try to keep my game prep short, at a point I found out there is no need to write long text when I am the only one reading them, so I keep some bullet lists
I recently switched to a *cloud note taking app (anytype) as it syncs well between PC and tablet, rather than good old Libre office.
Stable diffusion when needing illustration and in the mood to play with image generators.
Illwinter map making app, that I got at some steam sales, when I want to do a map. So maybe 10% of the case
For pregen characterà my goto is now Libre office impress to fill a character sheet + backstory + goals, this assume that I don’t find a sheet at another format
A small paper notebook, for my ongoing notes, and usually I ask the PC to do the session recap while writing down the stuff they want to develop and finishing the game prep at this moment
Obsidian is a must have.
Since sessions are frequently run over Discord, I use HammerTime to make sure everyone is seeing the same time being displayed.
I’ve been running Lancer for over a year, so all my tools are very particular in their uses. Lancer Map Creation Tool has been extremely handy in, well, creating maps and RetrogradeMinis in making up PC and NPC tokens. I also use this Pixel Art Furniture Pack for human-sized encounters, as its the only one I know that’s more focused on modern aesthetics instead of vaguely medieval fantasy.
Never heard of that Map Editor before, I’ll give it a look, thanks for the rec.
I personally like the lightweight option at https://r.3v.fi/discord-timestamps/
Oooh I had no idea about the Lancer map creator, that will be very useful. I’m decent at making maps manually but a shortcut for adding all the information like cover to a grid would speed things up substantially
The Goblin’s Notebook. It’s a great prep tool that allows you to break up all your notes based on what things are, allows custom relationships between objects, and allows what is displayed at any given time to change based on whether specific objects in your notes are relevant to the current chapter of your campaign. And that’s just scratching the surface of all the cool features. ~$3/mo thru patreon to fully unlock all features. I swear by it and I’ll probably never use another tool to keep all my notes organized as long as I’m GMing.
The custom connections are my favorite feature, and I use them a lot to inform the decisions any given entity in my world makes. Example of custom connections attached, lol.
OneNote is my go to for my notes storage.
Archives of Nethys for PF2e is a must have for keeping track of things
Fantasy name generator website for random things. I really like using the groups and clans and town names. (Sorry I can’t link, I’m on my phone!)
Donjon website for all kinds of things. It’s more suited for 5e, but the 5 room dungeon generator is fantastic. Their city maps are pretty good too, and they break up demographics and notable NPCs and stuff too IIRC
Kobold Fight Club is a must have for encounters. Similarly Mimic Fight Club as well. One is for 5e, the other is for PF2e, but I’ve forgotten which is which.
Watabou for maps. That’s a super powerful tool and one that I use a lot.
Pinterest. As much as I hate it, it’s like the only place where there’s so much art cobbled together in one spot. It makes it very easy to find maps, NPCs, token borders. And if you’re smart about it and reverse image search, it’s easy to find the originals if you’re someone that wants to ask permission to use a certain artwork for an NPC
I’ll add https://lettucemeet.com/ to the pile of scheduling sites.
This is a fine lettuce.
I didn’t read the article, but usually clear liquids and Gatorade with MiraLAX.
Logseq for notes and “Lazy GM” checklist, GIMP for carving out maps from the ones I have, Tiled to populate them. Tarot (I mean the cards, not some software) for populating initial background connections when I’m completely stuck
EDIT: I know that this will be unpopular here but I also use Mistral to convert my dry three sentences into radio speaker text with the right angle or mail exchanges my players “might” find on the host while hacking
I’d be interested to hear more about how you use tarot cards as prompts!
I’ll put writing a post about that on my to-do list :)
I wrote my own VTT and my own note management (basically private-wiki) system. I also wrote a thing that would record video from the VTT. Aside from that, Discord with a bot that plays music on demand and a bot that records audio from the voice chat.
out of curiosity, why do folks gravitate to Obsidian over something like Notion? Obsidian always struck me as a bit intimidating.
Everything’s a text file on your computer.
It’s polished looking, and it has a lot of plugin support for TTRPG GMs.
I use LogSeq to organise all my notes. My group meets in-person, but I use Foundry to put background art, NPC portraits, etc. up on a screen, as well as to manage any NPC character sheets.
It may stretch the definition of ‘tool’ a bit, but the other thing I do is set up my laptop with four desktops/workspaces (notes, Foundry, music, rules) so I can switch between them with Ctrl+Windows+Left/Right. It’s a minor thing, but I am constantly surprised by how many people I run into who don’t know that you can do it. Switching desktops feels like much less friction to me than Alt+Tabbing between windows for some reason.
Windows finally has persistent workspace order? Last time I was forced to try Windows out, there was no way to consistently switch to a workspace without looking at it to figure out which one it is
Yeah, it works well enough. I haven’t had any issues, at least. On Linux, I prefer something along the lines of Workspace Matrix to get a proper two dimensional layout, but on Windows, the built-in workspaces have been at least sufficient for game night and don’t require any additional setup
Notes, and links, etc: UpNote Fantastic app, Windows, Linux, macOS, iOS, Android; Markdown support.
As a markdown hater, I primarily use Trilium Notes for organizing my prep and taking session notes. I’ve built a digital GM screen with my players’ key stats that I keep in my main tab, and then each encounter for the session is loaded into tabs before the session starts.
I use Wonderdraft for my world maps, and pull most of my encounter maps from free ‘sample’ maps from map makers on Patreon (which I sketch out on my battle map in dry erase marker). For city/town/village maps, I use watabou’s Medieval Fantasy City Generator.
I pull most of my statblocks off of pf2easy. I also used pf2easy’s spellbook to help me make physical spell cards for my players.
