A DM's Guide to Getting Organized

If your gaming group is anything like mine, they'll take a perfectly neat gaming area and turn it into a post-nuclear ground zero of scattered papers, wayward pencils, and lost 4-sided dice just waiting to be discovered by the first bare foot that treads near.

Post-game chaos is normal. But before the game, an organized DM should know exactly where to find whatever they need.

Since most game prep goes into planning the actual adventure, give yourself plenty of time to do so. Avoid waiting until game day, or even the day before, to get everything organized. I do a little at a time, breaking up my planning into sections. I might sit down and write out the basic plot line on Sunday night, then work on NPCs and monsters on Tuesday night, then figure up treasures and draw out maps on Friday night - all in time for Saturday night's gaming session. Breaking up your planning saves a lot of stress when game day rolls around.

But basic planning does not an adventure make. You will need details about the encounters, creatures, and people your PCs might interact with, and those details need to be easy to find. For my own ease, I make index cards. These are even color coded so that I know at a glance which pile I'm looking at (red for monsters, green for treasure, white for encounters, yellow for NPCs). The creature cards contain the basic information for each monster, along with the book name and page number where more information can be found. This way, if you have to pause to reference the rules, you know exactly where to look. The cards can be held together nicely by punching a hole in them and looping them together on a wire keyring.

I strongly encourage every DM to keep a notebook where they can store oft-referenced materials, such as pages from gaming magazines, or photocopies of each of the Monster Manuals' indexes (so that you know exactly where to look for any given creature). A simple three-ring binder with dividers works beautifully. (If you really want to make your players squirm, give it a sinister title, like "The Book of Vile Darkness".)

You should also keep a DM's "cheat sheet" inside your binder. This way, you can keep a personal record of the characters' statistics, and you do not have to ask each player what their armor class is.. again. I like to use a small dry-erase board for this purpose. They are quite inexpensive and convenient to use. Before the game, I make a note of each PCs relevant information, and mark it at the top of the board. Then, when we get into combat, I use the board to keep track of initiative rolls, hit points, and spell effects. With my dry erase board and index cards at hand, I seldom have to pause the game to look at a rulebook or character sheet.

Speaking of character sheets, I recommend that you keep track of them yourself. That way, no player will ever show up without one. Mine are kept in the form of Excel spreadsheets. If the characters need to level up, the players just take turns sitting at the computer and making any necessary changes. When they are done, the sheets are printed out and ready to go.

No DM is perfect, and we can all use a little improvement from time to time. Making an effort to get organized will ensure that you spend less time flipping through books and fishing around for item cards, and more time focusing on what's really important - giving your players a great gaming experience.