Root's Ramblings Issue 17

Not much has happened RPG-wise in the past two months for me due to a mixture of stressful life and feeling burnout. Now that things are a bit more settled down, I've decidde to revisit my planning/journaling approach. I've been using Hobonichi as a planner for this year, and it's amazing. However, I tried to order a new one for next year, and the shipping is... just no. So, it's time to find an alternative, and I've found one in a Sterling Ink notebook. I also am going to give Bullet Journal another shot and keep it strictly functional and streamlined.

I'm sure you are thinking... so what? This is not RPG-related! Well, this is where I've started to think about how to streamline my journal further, and I've been using multiple thin notebooks for my campaigns, and they are a bit hard to keep track of, and my ADHD definitely doesn't help here. I bet there are folks out there who've tried to incorporate RPG-related planning and record-keeping in their bullet journal. In the first search entry, DJ Allen blogged about his concept of gamifying Bullet Journal with RPG-like mechanics. Look neat, but not what I'm looking for... I want to see how someone would utilize the Bullet Journal philosophy with their prep and/or tracking their sessions.

Surprisingly, I only found a few blog posts about RPG prep and Bullet Journal. Ken Newquist wrote the best one so far, in my opinion, and even included pictures of his Bullet Journal entries - very helpful! After reading through his post, I can see some parts where I definitely will copy and other parts I'm unlikely to use or maybe revise to better suit my needs.

What I DO like:

• The Campaign Overview - I really like this and definitely will use similar structure, but with small tweaks such as a section to set up an index just for the campaign content.
• NPC Collection - pretty self-explanatory and essential. Gotta keep track of those obscure NPCs that the PCs fall in love with for whatever reason.
• Location Collection - love this and can see this being a staple in my journal. The hex location can be easily replaced with another type of signifier, such as a room number if it's a dungeon or some kind of location signifier depending on what tool you use to track the locations (hex map, dungeon map, etc.).

What I DON'T like:

• Player Character Spread - TWO pages for that? Crazy! I realize Ken used a much smaller notebook than I do (my notebook is B5), so that would make quite a difference in how you would layout and the amount of space you have with each page. So please take this with grain of salt. I still would keep it one page maximum personally, as I do not keep too detailed tracking of my players' characters in general.
• Major and Minor NPC Pages - not too sure about the amount but hard to judge due to the size of the notebook being quite different than what I use. I probably will change the type of information I track for the NPCs I consider important to the story. Also, I would set up a section to keep an index of their references somewhere. Gonna play around and see how this will form over time.
• Game and Session Log - I honestly don't understand keeping those logs separate. I think it would be more efficient to merge both into one log. I kind of understand the logic behind the game log—a very brief summary and quick to read. However, it feels very repetitive writing down a bunch of the same information twice in different forms. It might be helpful for some to retain the information, but that would feel pretty tedious for me, and I think I would lose motivation over time due to slipping up and forgetting to update two separate logs. I think I'll experiment with this and try to merge both together and see how it goes.

I'm going to take pictures and share my progress in the future ramblings, so let me know if that is something you are interested in reading!

Wish me the best of luck, and hopefully it will stick this time.

My goal here is to rate a few games on itch.io every issue, especially those in need of reviews.

Abyssal by MandalaStudio: I like the concept of invisible giant squid-like monster using bio-luminescence to attract prey. However some text are extremely tiny and hard to read and the last page seems to have some information cut off, so I'm not sure how much of it is usable. Good thing it's for free. 2/5

Blood Fish Isle by Crumbling Keep: A two-pages (or one front and back page) isle scenario with a small hex map and locations plus random encounter for each location. The content is decent but I feel like the layout is bit too blended,so it's hard to keep track of the details. Some of it is little awkward with part of a random encounter list on the front page and the rest of it on the back page. 3/5