Do you take notes when preparing for your campaign? Are you one of those guys who prepares the entire world ahead of time or do you just jot some stuff down?
sometime I look down and have no idea what the frick any of my notes mean
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I recommend to whoever do this to use a program called "outliner" that uses plaintext format (".txt", or even better ".org"). So you can write stuff orderly.
Thanks for the recommendation anon
I daydream about it for days and then wing it.
This.
If I cannot accomplish this with daydreaming or need an actual reference, I make my own.
I posted this on /tg/ before a while back but I'll post it again. It's one of the few notes I did take to understand what a sunrise and sunset looks like on a moon tidally locked to a gas giant that orbits the aforementioned star that the sunrises and sunsets are because of.
and Part II
Holy shit it’s the Voynich Manuscript
The Vojnič Manuscript that I at least understand
It's one of the rare few books that filtered me.
Mind giving me a quick rundown?
You mean my notes, or the actual Voynich manuscript?
ideally both
The Voynich manuscript is undecipherable to this day and has been written in an unknown script back in the Renaissance.
As for my notes, the biggest take-away is in the picture in
The other stuff was me trying to get visual references to derive the perspectives of what sunrises and sunsets look like on a tidally locked moon orbiting a planet that in turn orbits that star.
I'll begin with some definitions, such as "The Node". I'll use our planet Earth and out Moon for example. Earth orbits the Sun on the ecliptic plane, but the Moon orbits the Earth at an angle compared to the Sun, so that the Moon dips below the ecliptic plane, and rises above it at points. That threshold between what's above and what's below the Ecliptic Plane; that point where the Moon's point in its orbit aligns with the Ecliptic Plane is call its Node. The Moon has two Nodes, a North Node (the point where the Moon begins to rise above the Ecliptic), and the South Node (the point where the Moon begins to set below the Ecliptic).
From
we see that the orbital period of the moon (Thalogas) is 28 hours, but it has a "Nodal Rotational Period" or 4 of the planet's (Oseunos) years. This "Nodal Rotational Period" indicates that the North and South nodes also cycle around the planet the moon is orbiting. Earth's Moon's Nodes complete an orbit around the earth after around 19 years. Earth also has a Nodal Rotational Period around the Sun and it takes 25,765 Earth Years to complete one cycle (also known as the Procession of the Equinoxes). Going back to my notes, the moon named Thalogas goes through one Equinoxical Procession every 4 planetary (Oseunos) years.
4 is an easy number for me to work with because I can separate the heavens into quadrants, which correlate with seasons and the angles of heaven in astrological terms.
Cont.
Cont from
I called the angles "Ascent, Zenith, etc" where I did and gave them a season when I did, but it honestly didn't matter which one I called Ascent/Spring/etc, except that I had to call them something for my own references. I could have called them, "I, II, III, IV" too and it would be the same difference conceptually.
I also used Earth as a reference for understanding where the Sun was in the sky depending on your longitudal location. If in the Northern hemisphere, the light will shine from the south during the day even if it still rises in the east and sets in the west. In the Southern hemisphere, the light shines from the north during the day while still rising in the east and setting in the west. At the equator, the sun will be directly overhead (still rising to the east and setting to the west).
But because Earth orbits the Sun, it's pretty straightforward to imagine what its sunrises will look like at any point. The sun will rise and set at consistent points throughout the year.
But if we have a moon that is tidally locked to its planet, and that planet in turn orbits the star that causes sunrises and sunsets on that moon, the sunrises' and sunsets' angles in the sky will be in an oscillating pattern.
Keeping that in mind, I will transliterate my notes to here in the next post.
Transliterating my important notes from
to here:
Note: The "Node" refers specifically to the "North Node" from this post
"Ascent" (The Node is between the planet and the sun): The light starts rising from the north before it reaches its northernmost side in the morning. At noon will the light be at the equator before it goes more south before it sets as the light progresses north towards the equator.
"Zenith" (The Node is "beside the upper side" of the planet in view of the sun): The light starts rising from the north before it reaches the equator in the morning. It reaches its northernmost state by noon. It goes south towards the equator before reaching it near to its setting. It finally sets as the light continues south.
"Descent" (The Node is "behind" the planet, out of sight of the sun): The light starts rising from the south before it reaches its southernmost point in the morning before going further north. At noon will the light be at the equator before it goes further north. It reaches its northernmost point by the point the light almost sets. It then sets as the light progresses south towards the equator.
"Nadir" (The node is "beside the lower side" of the planet in view of the sun): The light starts rising from the south before it reaches the equator in the morning. It reaches its southernmost point by noon. It goes north towards the equator before reaching it near to its setting. It finally sets as the light continues north.
If any physics anons are here and I made any mistakes, do let me know.
>The Voynich manuscript is undecipherable to this day and has been written in an unknown script back in the Renaissance.
I'm aware, but I had to ask anyway, on the off chance radom Ganker schizo somehow managed to crack the code...
I get you, but no, I'm not the Ganker schizo you're looking for
>No idea what my notes mean.
Look at the fricking STATE of your handwriting.
Yeah no shit you can't tell what it says. It looks like the insane scribblings of a mad man.
Learn to write block capitals swifty. Also known as architect writing.
>tavern crossed out
>just to write brothel instead
SOVL, feels like the kind of notes I took when I was 15.
I used to be like that. Create world maps. I then realized people had a lot of fun the few games I was ill-prepared. I found a book called something like guide-to-the-lazy-gm.
Now I make flexible tools, broad ideas of how the plot could go, make sure I know myself of a few ways forward, and I go with the flow.
Pic related: Most of them foes are based on 4th edition's modularity.
Pretty good handwriting, anon.
Matter of survival as a GM when your campaigns last more than a couple of months.
Or at least it is for me.
Is this the book you're thinking about? It is pretty good.
I carry two notepads and two pens of different colors.
The blue for 'in progress game'
the green for 'boy that would be fun to do'
I write events as I think of them. Something that would be fun next session? In two sessions? To end the campaign?
It all just goes in my notepad.
I wish we had more normie apps using orgmode format, I recognize Emacs might be too high of an entry point.
Pic related.
If this thread is still up when I get home from work I'll post a pic of my chaotic notes. I am pretty bad at taking notes mid session, writing a wrap up after the session is over usually grounds my prep for next session, but don't wait to do it or you'll forget details.
As a child, and even in university, I hated taking notes because it distracted me from learning and I couldn't read the damn things anyway. Ever since I became a real adult who dose real adult things like worry about cholesterol, and I only make notes on my own time; I love 'em.
Open up any lightweight text editing software, write in short sentences for things you need to remember or want to add, and skim them whenever you want to do something in game. However, do not be tricked. Always write in full sentences so future you can read it, and never write anything more substantial than ideas. This is the secret to happy note taking.
>are you one of those guys
I am one of those guys and I don't think I could read my notes if I tried. I just scribble, sketch and doodle so everything sticks in my mind.
OP had a stroke on the tenth line of that page.
But yeah, I use notes. Have a ton on of them in oneNote. It’s pretty neat to organize stuff there.
>tfw my worldbuiling notes are safe in orgmode
>tfw I am writing all day and dont lose a thing
>letters with too much spacing between them
>on graph paper
>but they don't even line up with the cells
Frick's sake, if you're going to take notes on graph paper, step one should be improving your handwriting by sticking to one letter per cell. That will make it more legible and more consistent and save you space. Then you can work on refining letter shape and then condensing it overall. What you have there should have taken up no more than a quarter of a page.
nta but improving handwriting is hard, adults rarely can change
Adults rarely will change
Yeah, I just jot it down usually (if the setting or the game is from the box, otherwise more preparations needed).
Yep. I try to write at least fifteen pages of notes between sessions to keep all the conflicts and npcs living and breathing. So I get their developments and reactions to hearing of the events of session even if they didn’t make an appearance.
I also prep a half-page physical description for every NPC and a two-page bio for each major NPC. I have, at this point, written over 600 pages of notes for the current campaign.
Mirin' your handwriting
I use Obsidian to manage everything. Its free and uses markdown under the hood. Really easy to link notes together and keep everything organized.
> Are you one of those guys who prepares the entire world ahead of time or do you just jot some stuff down?
I usually start just by jotting some things down and flesh out a bit where the players are. I'll then fill in details based on the the players connect with or where they're headed
I'll also have per-session notes with a summary of what happened and any major changes to the world based on what happened. The obsidian links really help here as i can see how everything connects and keep track of how things are unfolding.
My issue with Obsidian is that there’s no real way to reference it during a session.
How so? I have mine up on a laptop behind my DM Screen
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outliner
Hierarchical notetaking works for fast reference, speaking from experience.
OP here, surprised that this thread still survived and that people enjoyed my handwriting so much.
My notes are usually 10 pages that look like this, when I need to connect stuff I draw super long arrows between the text, or I mark the pages and say "look to page x".
Also whenever I'm out of space I write vertically, usually notes or magic items or the like. It's why I chose square paper instead of line paper.
Thanks for the compliments!