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MNBlockHead
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Dec 2014
Location: Twin Cities Area, MN, USA
Posts: 1,325

Old April 26th, 2020, 09:58 PM
There are a number of ways to do this. I'll just share some approaches I've tried and which I've found helpful and others that I don't bother with any more.

First, Realmworks has a session manager functionality built in. But I've never found it useful. If you remember to click Begin Game Session at the start of your session and click again to end it, it will record the IRL start and end date and times for the game session and you can enter the in-game dates. If you forget to do this, or want to edit previously created session records, you can do so by going to the Manage tab and clicking on the Realm button in the Realm Settings group. Then click on the Game Sessions button under Realm Aspects.

I've basically stopped using this feature. The session notes are plain text, displayed poorly, are located inconveniently within the program's interface, and do not have any linking features, which is the killer feature of RealmWorks.

What I do is create custom event topics. I have two types: Downtime Activity and Session Notes.

My downtime activity custom topic template is pretty complicated as it is a form to record my mix of official and homebrew downtime activity rules.

My Session Notes are very simple. Just one big snippit that I type notes into after a game it contains information on what happened during the game and ideas/reminders for the next session. I review it before the next game.

I've thought of structuring it but find that keeping it free form makes it more likely that I'll use it and I rely on RealmWorks's autolinking to autostructure it.

Another thing I do is add an "In-Game Dates" snippit to location and scene topics. I'll also record important events as Incident topics. That way a history of the party's explorations and activities is created in the Timeline.

The reveal history is another way of showing the party's activities on the timeline.

RW Project: Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition homebrew world
Other Tools: CampaignCartographer, Cityographer, Dungeonographer, Evernote
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