The campaign spreadsheet

We used to joke about needing a spreadsheet to run certain games, but, come to think of it, this can work WONDERS for your campaigns - especially if you're playing online, of course.

I'm a bit of an Excel nerd. Not that I know much about it - I just use it for everything, especially to manage my calendar, passwords, goals, new year resolutions, links, and so on.

I have been saving my campaign stuff in text format (see here), plus various PDFs, but I'm certainly using excel (or OpenOffice, etc.) for my next campaign.

The first sheet to consider is a campaign timeline. This it's both a schedule (of future events) and a diary. The diary is basically "set in stone"; the players have access to it (you can have a second column of unknown/secret events to yourself). The schedule is basically a list of things you have planned or rolled in advance: an earthquake on November 16, the Dark Lord is planning an invasion on the October 1st, etc. As the players move closer to the events, they can see some signs and even potentially alter it.

The second sheet to consider is your GM screen. Anything you'd put in your "GM screen": random tables, critical hits, a list of random names, THAC0  tables, etc.

I'd keep random encounters in their own sheet. I've been using my own Random Wilderness Encounters PDF, but come to think of it, it might be useful to be able to edit encounters. Maybe discard some used ones (and roll them again) You could even prepare some encounters in advance, make a d10 table, and replace them as you go.

Then you might have a glossary of sorts: places, people, monsters, and so on. You might list them alphabetically (adding a column to specify "type": location/NPC/ etc) or create different sheets for each.

Characters could have their own sheet too, especially in systems that require math for character building (for example, to figure out skill points for the 2e thief).

You can probably add a sheet of random ideas in the end: links, modules you might want to check, tables you don't use often, and so on.

Now, one might wonder: why not use a .doc or wiki instead?

Well, you can. But spreadsheets may have at least two additional perks.

First, spreadsheets can do math. For example, I can quickly add a formula to know how many HP each PC will have on each level (if I'm playing 5e, for example).

Second, they can roll dice. 

I'm not an expert at all; I know that "=RANDBETWEEN(1,20)" automatically rolls a d20, and so on. You could create an entire line of formulas to make all the six or seven rolls you need for a random encounter in just a click or two (I could have saved so much time!).

Well, this is just a brainstorming post. Unfortunately, I have little actual practice with campaign spreadsheets.

Hopefully, I can just give you my spreadsheet when I start my next campaign. But if there is one like that out there... let me know! It will save me some work!