The Magic of Index Cards
Or, How to Take Smart Notes for your D&D Campaign
No version of D&D, and no RPG I can think of actually tells you how to keep track of everything you need to run a dynamic, long term campaign.
OSR games make a lot of noise about ensuring players actions are important and echo through the setting, yet in order to have dynamic play like this, you need a rich setting that responds realistically to player actions. When players arrive in a town, there must be interesting NPC’s for them to interact with, and when the players return, the same NPCs should be there, and be able to respond to whatever shenanigans the players have got themselves up to. If you add all these interactions up across a whole game session, the DM has quite a bit of information to juggle in his head to provide a consistent experience. If you sum them across the entirety of a long running campaign, tracking all this information can become a Herculean task.
Since my very first game session as a DM, I have struggled to take notes both in game, and during prep that are useful. It seemed no matter what I tried, be it comprehensive spread sheets, paper notebooks, 3 ring binders, complex bi-directional linking software, the notes I took were never useful to me later.
Sure, the act of making the notes helped clarify parts of the game as I wrote them, but as I filed, linked, and expounded on each note, the whole collection would grow to an unwieldy mess that quickly became unusably dense. In any campaign, my notes would eventually only become a source of stress and anxiety, and I stop using them altogether.
Taking Smart Notes
It wasn’t until I read the book “How to Take Smart Notes” by Sonke Ahrens, that I understood what one key part of the problem really was. I never actually learned how to take useful notes in the first place.
"How to Take Smart Notes" details the Zettlekasten system of note taking. It focuses on splitting your notes up into different types of notes, taking those notes mindfully, and linking the notes to each other in a web of connections that makes going through your notes spark new ideas and inspiration. The end result is a system of interlinked notes that, if you engage with it, will help you generate new original thoughts, allow for better recall of previous ideas, and allow you to organize your notes dynamically using links.
I found the promise of the Zettlekasten method intriguing at first, and so started trying to create my own Zettlekasten system using Obsidian (software for writing interlinked notes). I stumbled quite a bit, and ultimately gave up on the specific implementation recommended in the book. However, I did pick up some good habits that are useful to me as a DM and in other note-taking ventures.
First, that my notes must be engaged with. I need to push myself to use them, and make them useful. This won’t happen by itself. You won’t get notes right the first time you write them. You must read and re-write them over and over to make truly useful notes.
Finally that notes must be atomic. Each note should try to represent one and only one idea. If a note is going to be useful in the future, it needs to be disentangled from all the context you find it in originally.
Digital folly
With my newfound note-linking habits, I set out to run a new D&D campaign. I wanted to run a sprawling, epic sandbox campaign in the world of Mystara, using the Worlds Without Number system. I fired up my linking note taking software of choice (Craft.do), and started generating hexes, and prepping for the first session.
My notes grew and grew as I prepped more and started our first session, and despite my hard-won knowledge about how to make atomic notes and engage with my system, my notes still became bloated and overwrought. Again I started to dread my campaign notes as they grew in size and number and eventually became nearly useless once again.
Where did I go wrong? Well, Craft.do, and really any digital tool, does not enforce any limit on the size of your notes. You can create dense, deeply nested notes. You can write reams of text on each note. You can embed images and maps and more notes all into other notes. The software is powerful and the possibilities are endless. Because I had no guard-rails preventing me from doing so, my notes once again grew too large, in the aggregate, to be useful for actually playing D&D
Making Connections
Shortly after I finished reading a book about using index cards and slip boxes for organizing all your academic writing purposes, I also received in the post, a wonderful little game called Index Card RPG master edition.
ICRPG is a great little game that is packed to the brim with amazing advice & oozes with a DIY attitude toward running and playing RPGS. Index Card RPG, despite being named after the humble index card, doesn’t have a lot to say about exactly why it’s named after them. The author suggests you write and draw on index cards with a sharpie marker and use them in play as props and for taking notes, but it doesn’t elaborate on the benefits of doing this. It leaves that exercise to the author.
So, I was inspired to try something new. I would run my entire game from index cards only. I would use a sharpie marker to write on the cards. This would be my only note-taking tool. I purchased some index card boxes and some sharpies and I got to work on my next session.
Economy of White Space
My new found method of taking notes was an amazing success. The size of the index card, and the width of the tip of a sharpie drastically constrains the amount of text you can put into one note. The extreme brevity you must write with to fit your idea on a card forces you to think very clearly about what actually belongs on each card.
My process involves throwing a lot of cards in the trash as I write and re-write them in order to boil down each note to its essence. When a concept cannot fit onto one card, it is a clear indication that I need to split something up into two concepts, and make two separate, atomic notes.
The physical properties of the cards and the marker are actually forcing me to engage and re-engage with my notes. They are forcing me to write each note as one atomic idea. Also, by a happy accident, I purchased some rather small index card holders, which limits the total number of cards I can actually store. The tools and the process are lining up perfectly to create a workflow that is enjoyable and effective. But this isn’t the only benefit of using index cards for prep and in play.
Organization
I have a loose organization system for my cards that is holding the system together. Using tabbed index card separators, I have created a few different sections.
Oxford Index Card Guides with Blank Tabs, 3 x 5 Inches, 1/5 Cut Tabs, Manila, 100 per Box (40352)
- Next Session - This is where I pull together all my notes for the next session. It's just a dumping ground for everything I want. It can contain any cards which may be useful.
- Procedures & Rules - This has some custom procedures we’ve developed for our game, and reference for some of the less frequently used ones (downtime, hex crawling, that kind of thing)
- NPCs - Self explanatory
- Monsters - I always run monsters from an index card instead of from the book.
- Treasure - Self explanatory
- Locations - Locations defined at the level of rooms. Collections of rooms can be a dungeon, a town, etc.
- Rumors & Quests - Little bits of lore, pointers to interesting locations, and other disembodied information you want to dole out to the players.
- Factions - I track each faction, who belongs to it, what their goals are, and what their progress is in the factions section.
The Amazing Index Card
There are lots of add-on benefits to using index cards to run your D&D games, some of them I have listed below. Please share any you discover if you use a similar method!
NPCs
- Writing NPCs on cards lets you easily move them around in your system.
- File them away alphabetically in the NPC section for easy retrieval.
- File them with a location card to indicate their location in your game world.
- Write notes on the back of each NPC to record players meetings with the NPC.
- NPCs written on cards can easily be handed to players to run if they bring them along as hirelings.
- Write rumors that can only be learned from a specific NPC on the card.
Treasure
- Treasure can be filed along with locations to indicate where the treasure is hiding.
- Treasure can be filed along with Monster cards to indicate that the monster has equipped the item.
- Treasure cards can be handed to players when they acquire the treasure.
- Consumable items can be torn up and thrown away when used.
Monsters
- Write monster stats on a card so you don't have to look them up in the book.
- Draw a random monster card from your deck as a wandering encounter.
- Use monster cards to track individual groups of monsters, tracking the total number of monsters in the group for instance.
- File monster cards in a specific location, or move them from location to location to create a dynamic environment.
- Record player encounters with monsters on the back to have monsters hold a grudge.
- Use a whole monster card as an army ‘unit’ on a battlefield to track its position.
Locations
- Write each room on a different card, and group rooms together to create dungeons.
- Lay location cards on the table to create a dungeon map or point crawl.
- Put other cards (NPCs, Monsters, Treasure, Rumors, events, etc) underneath a location card to track locations.
- Use location cards as zone-based battle maps, moving miniatures between cards.
- Hand a player a location card as if it were a rumor card when they hear about a new location they should visit.
Rumors
- Draw a random rumor card whenever players go to the tavern instead of rolling on a table.
- Hand the rumor card to the players so they don’t forget it.
- File rumors along with NPCs, Locations, and Monsters if you want that rumor to be discovered in that particular context.
Procedures & Rules
- Pull less frequently used, relevant procedures and rules into the current session so you don’t have to go flipping through the book to remember it.
- Lay out procedures and rules cards in front of you to form an ad-hoc, customizable DM screen.
- Pass a card with the procedure written on it to each player in turn order to help them remember their options.