This morning Matt Hildebrand sent me an updated version of the Barbarians character sheet and I wanted to throw it up on the blog.
The Kickstarter Update
The Kickstarter is progressing well and we still have 23 days left! We are currently hovering at the $8.5k mark. So there’s still a ways to go until funding, but I’m hopeful!
Reorganizing My How I Run My Games
This subject will feed into a longer series of posts, but I wanted to kick it off here. Due to RL obligations with work, DIY RPG Productions projects, and other general assfuckery, I’ve lost the wind in my sails to run my games.
There are several factors in this (stress, anxiety, burnout, work, not enough time to run or play in shit, etc.), but for this post I just want to focus on the fact that I am unhappy with how I’ve been running my games lately and how I’ve been organizing. So rather than continue to be frustrated and wallow in the murky mire that is self-pity, I decide to examine what I was doing and what I didn’t like and where I could go from there.
First- I’m not a huge fan of having my notes digital. I do it, because I hate wasting paper, but I have to have all these word documents and PDFs open, then I have to scroll through everything, and it just becomes tedious.
Awhile back I tried to bridge the gap by keeping important stuff in a notebook, but nope. Now I had notes all over the computer AND in a fucking notebook- that equaled more work.
Recently I’ve been thinking of how I used to organize my notes when I started RPGing back in mid-90s and into my college years and remembered I used to use 3×5 note cards for all my shit and kept my notes super lite.
This weekend I decided to read through Sly Flourish’s Lazy Dungeon Master and Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master to see if he had any thoughts/advice that hadn’t occurred to me. The book is a fun read and while it isn’t anything groundbreaking (I do recommend the books), it did remind me of a similar way I used to run my games and had some advice with a few new tips and tricks- that’s a win!
Also Skullfungus posted his notebook on Twitter about dungeon design and it was a great reminder on keeping shit simple (so thanks for that!). Along with nods to Goblin Punch and Grognardia.
I’m going full-on organized by index cards and taking the Lazy DM approach of only what is absolutely needed. A few other categories have wormed their way in since I took this picture (being items, previous adventures, and one more- but fuck all I can’t remember).
My Barbarians of the Ruined Earth group has been adventuring in the Western Sands for the past seven sessions (we only get to play once a month and we haven’t played in three months now…) and I don’t see them leaving the area anytime soon.
While tracking everything on note cards won’t be any different than how I currently write my games- in short hand and lite to keep the players and their agency the focus, I think that my way of organizing has become a sloppy mess, like the floor at a rest stop bathroom.
Once I get all the cards written, I plan on typing them up and releasing them for free on the blog to anyone who is interested and wants to run a game in BotRE and the Western Sands.
DIY RPG Productions 
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