Easier Solo

Game Journals

Peter Rudin-Burgess
Credits
Written by Peter Rudin-Burgess
Cover Art by Gordon Johnson
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording,
or otherwise, without the publisher’s prior permission.
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events
portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance
to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
Easier Solo Game Journals © 2023 Parts Per Million
Limited, International House, 12 Constance Street,
London E16 2DQ.

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Contents
Credits....................................................................................... 1
Contents ................................................................................... 2
Foreword .................................................................................. 4
Introduction ............................................................................. 5
Scenes ....................................................................................... 7
Ironsworn ............................................................................ 9
What is a scene? ................................................................ 10
Ending A Scene................................................................. 11
Bullet Journals ....................................................................... 14
Loose-Leaf ............................................................................. 17
Cornell Notes ........................................................................ 19
Long-form .............................................................................. 20
Mindmaps or Spidergrams................................................... 22
Mind Maps & Oracle Questions .................................... 24
Lists ......................................................................................... 26
Digital Techniques ................................................................ 28
How to Make a Digital Character Sheet ........................ 28
Long-form .............................................................................. 29
Turn Taking ....................................................................... 29
Footnotes ........................................................................... 30
Spreadsheets .......................................................................... 31
VTTs ....................................................................................... 33
Fantasy Grounds............................................................... 33
Roll20.net ........................................................................... 34
Alternative Software ............................................................. 36

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 Notion ............................................................................... 36
Obsidian ............................................................................ 36
Audio...................................................................................... 37
Video ...................................................................................... 39
Seeding Scenes ...................................................................... 41
Reverse Seeding & Removing Elements ...................... 42
Setting the Scene .................................................................. 44
The First Scene ..................................................................... 46
Conclusion ............................................................................ 50

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Foreword
Normally, I buy a game, read the rules, create a character,
run a few scenes to get a feel, set up an adventure, and
play the game. Then, if it is fun, I turn my notes into a
book and list it for sale. I have several games on the go
simultaneously, a chance to play different styles and
genres. This book is slightly different.
I often take requests. People say, can this game or that
game be played solo? There is nothing like a challenge,
and most games can be. The ones that are the most
difficult are the ones that rely on player interaction, such
as Paranoia, rather than GM to Player interaction.
Sometimes a request isn’t for a game but for advice and
guidance. I tend to think that my gaming knowledge is
wide but shallow. I often buy a game’s core rules and
maybe an adventure module, but I rarely purchase
supplemental books. The core rules often have everything
you need to run a solo campaign and more.
My knowledge is also constantly evolving. What I was
doing two years ago is not how I play now. The core is
the same, but as I discover new ideas, I like to play with
them and see if they work for me.
This book is all about keeping game notes. I had a
revelation moment with my note-keeping last year, which
changed everything for me.
In this book, I hope to explore different ideas for keeping
records of your games and some of the ideas I have tried
over the years.

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Introduction
Game notes are possibly not the most exciting topic
in the world of role-playing games. When we are
solo playing, they take on more importance than
they do in a regular game. The difference is that we
are responsible for everything in our games. In a
group game, the GM may have notes from their pre -
game prep, then notes made during play, and they
can reflect on what worked or didn’t after the
session. As a player, you are only concerned with
your personal notes of things you want to remember
for next time or clues to a greater mystery.
As a soloist, all of that falls on us.
There is another big consideration. Us. Are you a
list person? Is a mind map or spider diagram
opaque? Do you lose interest if you have to write
entire paragraphs? Do bullet points lose all their
sense of drama?
If we are going to keep notes that work for us, they
have to be in a format that works as our brains
work. This means that a great portion of this book
will be entirely useless to you. I would suggest
trying the different techniques, see if they work or
offer you anything, but if they don’t, don’t use
them. Move on and try something different.
It isn’t just about how you keep your notes. What
do you have to record? Are you writing with dice?
Are you just prompting your memory? Do you need
tactical maps for battles you have already fought
and won? How about lists of NPCs, places, or story
points you haven’t finished with yet?

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The amount of information we can record is nearly
limitless. How much we need to record will change
from person to person. We also have the choice of
analog, digital, or hybrid. We can use paper, cool-
looking journals, documents, and files on a
computer or save everything to a virtual tabletop.
What do you want to do with your game notes? Are
they the first draft of a manuscript? Are they
LitRPG 1 in the making? Do you want to, or like to
share an actual play? Or just a personal record
should you wish to play this character again?
How much else have you got to juggle while
playing? Are your notes adding to your experience
or becoming a burden? Are they an essential
memory aid or a barrier to becoming absorbed into
the game?
All of these considerations and more have to be
taken on board, and the right answer will be unique
to you.

1Roleplaying games written up a stories, often with the game rules,

or rolls included along with the descriptions of the action.

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Scenes
I want to start with scenes as, for me, they are the
skeleton from which everything hangs. If you can record
scenes, you have the game continuum.
So how much to write?
For most people, the granddaddy of all solo systems is
Mythic GME by Tana Pigeon. Mythic is over 20 years old
and is the gold standard in solo play. It has also recently
been updated to version two, which I feel is a welcome
evolution rather than a revolution. Whichever version of
Mythic you use, it still feels like Mythic.
When Mythic talks of
recording scenes, it gives you
a record sheet that you
would be lucky to record a
dozen words per scene.
What Mythic means by
recording scenes is not what
I mean or need. But what do
I mean? I want to be able to
skim-read my scene
summaries to get back into
the story and into character.
Does the Mythic form do Figure 1Scene record sheet from Mythic
Game Master Emulator 2nd Edition
this? Yes, it does. Several
scene summaries on a single page are possibly better than
my current format.
What else do I want from my scene records? I want
everything in one place, so I am doing less paper
shuffling. I can cover up one sheet with other papers and

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then forget something important. Out of sight, out of
mind is a cliché for a reason.
It is in this requirement where the Mythic record sheet
falls down. Mythic is based on lists, and those lists all
have their own record sheets. Lists, for me, do not impart
a great deal of flavor or context.
So, what does a scene have that we need to record? I like
to see the scene notes to have who was there, what
happened, and some gaming essentials like quickly
sketched maps if I needed them, and combat or skill stats
for opponents, so I am not having to flick between books
or combat record sheets.
I also like to see my questions and answers in my scene
notes. Sometimes, a decision creates a branch in the
narrative that has repercussions. More than once, I
revisited a game and picked a key moment, flipped the
answer, and played an alternative ending to see what
would happen. I couldn’t do this if the questions and
answers were not in the game notes.
A compact scene list gives a better bird’s eye view, five
scenes at a time, but at what could be too great a loss.
The compromise would be to have a different set of game
notes, and number your scenes there, and then transpose
a brief summary to the record sheet to have that high-
level view. It would be slightly cumbersome if you had to
find the corresponding scene in your notes to clarify
something.
I will revisit some of the Mythic’s ‘ways’ in later chapters.

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IRONSWORN
Ironsworn is Shawn Tonkin’s solo game based on
Powered by the Apocalypse. For many soloists, it is the
default solo game. It is easily hacked into any genre, and
Shawn has created a sci-fi version called Starforged.
In Britain, we have a phrase for things that are polarizing;
we compare things to a sandwich spread called
Marmite™. Marmite is something you either love or hate
and people who cannot be put into either camp have
either never tried Marmite or are not trusted.
Ironsworn is a Marmite game. It is very common to see
online discussions started by people new to solo play and
asking for advice on getting started, and regardless of
what they want to get out of solo play, they get advice to
play Ironsworn.
This is the solo role-playing equivalent of asking for
advice on what would be a good game for playing a
gadget-toting spy adventure and being told to play
Dungeons and Dragons. Of course, one size does not fit
all, but the fans of Ironsworn are so dedicated that it
appears that Ironsworn is the default answer to
everything. We got in this position because Ironsworn is a
good game, and its fan base is dedicated and often
evangelical.
So what does Ironsworn have to say about scenes?
Firstly, the scene is still the default unit of play. What
Ironsworn has to say about scenes and recording is
somewhat brief.

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 “To help ground your session, keep a record at
whatever level of detail you prefer. This can be
a few bullet points in a text file, a journal
filled with sketches and notes, or even a
detailed play report you share on a forum or
blog. There’s no wrong answer here. Use
whatever approach works for you and is an
enjoyable aspect of your play.
Creating a record also makes it easier to pick up where
you left off when you return to the Ironlands.”

That is the sum of all the advice given. It isn’t wrong, but
it isn’t enormously helpful either. There are no proforma
sheets to print and use and no concrete advice.
No help here, then.
WHAT IS A SCENE?
What are we trying to record when we record a scene?
For me a scene is the embodiment of an idea. It could be
an action scene, a social interaction, exploring a location
(both literally or figuratively), and having a cast of
characters, even if that cast is just one. Scenes also
normally involve rulings or resolution of game rules and
choices, either by your character or by you, while wearing
the Gamemaster hat.
All the components come together to form a defined unit
of play. We can sum it up as “You are in this situation.
What do you do?”
Thinking of all the components, there can be quite a lot
to record.
Every scene starts as an idea or situation. Depending on
your style, it may involve some questions or prompts or
be pure imagination. How much of that do you want to

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capture? If you are using prompts, do you want to include
them or just their effect on your narrative? Personally, I
would suggest the latter.

I am starting a scene, it is a murder mystery

adventure, and I roll for two prompt words. I
get Host and Bang. My first instinct says
that the victim is wearing a dinner jacket and
has been shot. Do the two words add
anything to this image? I don’t think so, so I
don’t record them in my notes. What I do is
extrapolate from the dinner jacket to imagine
an opulent apartment overlooking New York
at night with all the city lights shining in the
darkness.
In that example, I want to record as many details of the
victim and the circumstances as I can. I don’t know yet
what is a clue and what isn’t. The same is true for the
location or scene of the crime. So I don’t necessarily want
full sentences, but I do want details.
I could have tested my first instinct of the apartment
being opulent with a yes-no question. If I got a negative
answer, it could have been an interesting discrepancy or
contrast to the victim wearing a dinner jacket. It didn’t
feel necessary at the time, and the ideas flowed freely, so I
didn’t need any assistance. I had also thought of host,
meaning the host of a party and the party guests were to
be my first witnesses and possible suspects. This is, even
more to include in the scene notes.
ENDING A SCENE
When does a scene end? My normal trigger for
ending a scene is when I change location or jump a
block of time. I can add to that changing focus. If I

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were to interview six party guests, I would likely
start a new scene with each interview. I could just as
easily conduct all the interviews in a single scene. I
quite like light entertainment crime shows where the
detective does the big reveal of how the crime was
committed in front of all the suspects, and they
unmask the killer. In that instance, I wouldn’t dream
of changing scenes as I moved from suspect to
suspect, revealing their role in the case.
The end of the scene is, therefore, subjective. It
ends when you think it is over.
One of the important lessons I learned from the
Gumshoe™ system was to end scenes when they are
done. Pocket Gumshoe even suggested having a
director’s clapper board and ending the scene as
soon as the clues had been found and there was
nothing left to learn. The goal was to stop the
players from languishing in a scene, thinking that
they may have missed a clue or digging for
something that wasn’t there. The solo version of
that is to just jump from the current scene to the
next as soon as you have a clear expectation of what
should happen next.
The logical progression of scenes is based on
expectations. If someone has been shot and the
witnesses are interviewed, the next logical thing to
happen is that the CSI people will want to secure
the crime scene and start the forensic collection of
data.
That progression from one scene to the next is a
key moment in most solo systems. That is normally
when we check for plot twists, interrupted, altered,

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or derailed scenes, and think about the villains’
actions or other forces at play. A lot of work
happens either when a scene ends or when the next
begins.
Whether you do that when one scene ends or the
next begins rather depends on what bookkeeping
you need to do. If it is recording changes that have
happened, then do that as soon as the scene ends. If
it is related to preparing the next scene, do that
before the scene starts, so it is all fresh in your
memory when you start the scene. The only time
this becomes important is when you play the last
scene of the game session, and there is a long gap
before the next scene takes place. If you have done
all your scene prep and then do not play for a week,
sometimes choices you made a week ago make no
sense, or you come up with better ideas after
looking at them again, and you end up repeating the
same prep before you get to play.
Your scene transitions will give your game its
structure and continuity. Normally, the game master
would be doing that, but random choices drive our
adventures. Our transitions need to make sense of
those choices to make the scenes the building
blocks of an engaging and coherent story.
It should be obvious now that the core of keeping
your game journal is going to be all about recording
scenes. In the following chapters, I will explore
some of the options for keeping those game notes
in ways that can enhance the gaming experience.

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Bullet Journals
When I play entirely offline, bullet journaling is my first
choice. My solo bullet journals probably do not come
close to using all of the features and benefits of bullet
journaling, but if this works for you, you can delve deeper
into the method and adopt the elements that work for
you.
To start a bullet journal, you need a notebook. I like
cheap exercise books but often end up using more than
one per game. I find bigger pages to be better than
smaller pocket notebooks. Exercise books are stapled
together, which means that they will lay flat, which I like.
The first couple of pages will become your index. Write
INDEX at the top for now, and you will fill this in as you
play.
If your book doesn’t have numbered pages, start
numbering them as you go.
Page three of the journal is used for your personal
shorthand. If you are going to use different colored
highlighters to mean different things, put a slash of color
and its meaning on this page. If you want to use different
bullets to mean different things, such as a ? for a
question, an X for combat, and a > for travel, list them
here with their meanings.
You can evolve this as you go. I play a lot of mysteries
and investigations, and I found myself using ! to make a
clue, evidence, or fact, so I added that to my list of
bullets.
Having a reference of what each bullet means helps you
keep consistent, and it isn’t set in stone. You can add new
bullets whenever you feel the need.

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Once I play, I have several types of pages. I use a double-
page spread for each scene. That gives me enough space
to keep all my notes together, and if I need to sketch a
quick battle map, I can do that. If I want snatches of
dialog, there is room for that as well. All the key points
are recorded as bullets, and I like to keep them short, but
that is purely my preference.
As I set up a scene spread, I add its page numbers to the
index at the beginning of the journal.
The second-page type I use is called collections. Think of
a collection as a collection of facts about a specific thing.
A typical character sheet is a great example of what a
collection page may look like. If your game has vehicle
reference sheets or starship records, these are all
collections. Essentially, collections are related details that
all live on the same page.
Another page I have is for random tables. As each table
has its own page, I can start with just a few entries but
revisit them and add more as inspiration hits. These are
literally a collection of ideas
If I create an NPC, recurring location, or special item, it
goes on a page, and that page number goes into the index.
The next page type I use is maps. I use a double-page
spread for maps, with the floor plan on one page and
space on the facing page for locations and descriptions of
places of interest. The page number then goes into the
index.
I also include ‘to-do’ pages. These are simply bulleted lists
of things I want to remember to complete before next
time. If I shunt something from a previous to-do list to a
later one, I cross it out and add the page number for

15
where I have moved it to. Each to-do list gets a unique
name and goes into the index.
I don’t always complete everything on each to-do list.
Often the items are important when I add them but lose
their urgency as the game progresses, particularly if it is
location specific and the action moves to a new location.
The power of bullet journaling is that it keeps everything
in the same document, character sheets, maps, scene
descriptions, and world-building. It is also all easy to find
as you have a detailed index that grows as you play, and
because you made a note of what red Xs mean and blue
exclamation marks, it will even make sense next year
when you have forgotten half of what happened in the
game.
Each journal is personal, and you can print off maps or
art and paste them into the journal if that helps you
imagine places and people. A collection page is meant to
be a place to collect all kinds of related ideas on a specific
topic, and you can use that power to work the way your
brain works.
You also have as much space as you need. I use double-
page spreads for my scenes, but you can just as easily use
2, 3, or 4 pages if that is what a scene needs.
Despite having as much space as you need when writing
about your scenes, bullet journals are quite compact.
Everything is contained in a single book, making them a
good option for analog gaming on the move.

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Loose-Leaf
In this set up, you use a ring binder and insert loose
pages as you need them. This is how I started and is
strongly implied by Mythic GME. You can have
every list on a separate sheet. Pages for Story
threads, NPCs, scene summaries, and as much space
as you need for scene write-ups, maps, and
character sheets.
Just as bullet journals are compact and keep
everything contained in a single book, loose-leaf
game notes are the opposite. You can spread your
sheets out so you have all your lists and maps in
view at a time, and you can reference them at a
glance.
The last time I used a loose-leaf binder for a solo
game, I was playing Rolemaster™ 2 , and that is a
game that has a great many record sheets, sheets for
combat tracking and wounds tracking, and character
sheets are often five or six pages long. The loose-
leaf binder can accommodate these heavy
bookkeeping games with ease.
I feel that this is the strongest feature of the loose-
leaf format.
My loose-leaf notes also included collections of
printouts; if I found art that fitted my idea of an
NPC, I could print it off and insert it into the right
place in the binder.
You can buy or make divider sheets with tabs that
protrude beyond the edge of the pages that, make it

2 Published by Iron Crown Enterprises.

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easy to divide your game journal up into adventures
or by months, game months, or real months. The
choice is yours.
The burden of keeping your notes organized falls on
you with the loose-leaf binder. The bullet journal is
built around an index which makes everything easy
to find. The loose-leaf binder can have pages moved
around or carried forward to every scene that
requires them. I used an NPC list, Location List,
and Plot List. I made these the last three pages in
my binder and inserted the new scenes before them
as each scene was inserted. I also kept all my NPCs
in a separate division and in alphabetical order. This
enabled me to find them quite quickly if they were
needed.
When using a loose-leaf binder, the format of your
notes is entirely open. You have as much space as
needed for long-form notes, or you can bullet just
the key points. I have a format that I feel is about
optimal for solo games, and that is what I will
discuss next.

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Cornell Notes
Cornell note paper is typically divided into three main
areas. There is a narrow
lefthand column, a wide
right-hand column, and a
full-width section at the
bottom of the page.
The left-hand column can
be used for notes that have
a greater scope than the
current scene. This could be
world-building questions or
about events happening off
the screen.
Figure 2 an example of Cornell notepaper
If you are using timers,
countdowns, or drama dice
techniques for events that may span multiple scenes,
these can also go into this first column.
The main body of the page is used for your scene notes.
It gives plenty of space for scene notes and quick sketch
maps; you can easily flow over to the back of the page if
you need the space.
The final bottom section is reserved for a two- or three-
sentence summary of the scene.
These summaries are useful to read when returning to a
game. Just reading the last few scene summaries will help
you come up to speed with what has been happening and
assist you in getting into character.
If you are bullet journaling, you only need to draw two
lines on your page, one across for the summary and one
vertical to create the two columns. For example, when I

19
use a double-page spread, I put the left column on the
left-hand page and rule off the last few lines of the
righthand page for the summary.

Long-form
This is the method I am the least familiar with. I
have attempted it twice, and both times I faltered
and failed after two scenes and about 3,000 words.
The idea is to play the entire scene and then write it
up using full paragraphs and sentences. Typically
each scene becomes its own chapter.
Two variants seem to be commonly used. The first
includes pop culture references, such as describing a
location in terms of places in books, movies, or TV
series, for example, describing a desert town as
being just like Tatooine from Star Wars. Then
describing a spaceship as being like Battlestar
Galactica, and so on. These references enable you
and any audience to visualize the town and the
spaceship without describing it in any detail.
The alternative is the novelist approach, where you
describe everything in a way that your game record
stands alone. You describe each location, place, or
thing as your character experiences them.
The two approaches are not mutually exclusive. You
use the first method as you play and then treat it as
a first draft. Then, once the game is over, or when
not playing, you can read back over that first draft
and remove the pop culture references and describe
what your character saw, what the places are like,
and so on, when and where those details fit and add
something to the story.

20
This game record style aims to turn your game into
a novel or short story, often for public
consumption. It is very easy to self-publish as a
Kindle book.
It is debatable where the line falls between writing
up a game and writing a novel with dice.
The enjoyment is the same if you enjoy the writing
process. You are still playing to find out what
happens.
In both my attempts, I struggled to maintain
momentum, but I type faster than I write and found
writing up long-form scenes very slow, and I
became frustrated. But, again, the problem was
more in my writing speed than in the actual game
recording style.
Writing with dice 3 and solo playing are very close
relatives; the only difference in my interpretation is
intent. If you are doing it to enjoy the gameplay,
then that is solo playing. If you are doing it to write
a story, that is writing with dice.

3 Using the dice to decide the plot and outcomes in a piece of fiction.

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Mindmaps or Spidergrams
If the entirely linear format of the long-form game is not
for you, mindmaps or spidergrams are the opposite
extreme.
A Mind Map is a special kind of Spider Diagram, or
spidergram, called a “node-link diagram” and the key
word in there is link.
This is a non-linear way of recording facts and details
about your game as they happen. You place a central
element in the game in the middle of the page, typically in
a circle or box. As you learn facts about that element, you
add them to the page, close to the central element, and
connect them with a line to the first element. Each
element you add to the page is a ‘node’; the lines you add
are the links. The links can form long chains as you learn
more facts and continue exploring a particular aspect of
your game. You can also cross-link nodes if they relate to
more than one thing. For example, if the central node in
your mind map was a murder victim, and the victim
owned a 911 Porsche Carrera. Later, you learn that the
victim’s brother was seen driving the same vehicle that
day. You would have added the brother as a connected
node to the victim, and you would have added the
Porsche to the victim as a second node. Now you can add
links to the Porsche to the brother. You do not need to
add a new node, just a new link.
Mind maps suit games where you expect to have few
scenes per adventure. They are also suited to episodic
games, where you solve a crime or mystery each game
session.
This is a method for recording scenes, not entire
adventures. It isn’t just for investigations; you can run

22
action scenes the same way, but what it works best for is
games where you develop each scene in detail. It is superb
for collecting rich details.
If you introduce color, either by highlighting nodes or
using different color pens, you can separate world-
building and location facts from more dynamic facts, such
as the thoughts and actions of NPCs. This enables you to
reference previous scenes in the same location and
quickly see the established facts. It helps keep the world
coherent and maintains continuity.
A mind map is a dynamic tool. It gives a top-down view
of what you have learned in a scene. It can also show you
what you don’t know, the missing links that you need to
exist. For example, I was running an investigation, and as
part of my tools, I had a table of hair colors. I had
established that a long red hair had been found on the
body of the victim. As I had created my NPCs and
suspects, I had rolled on the hair color table, and none of
my suspects had long red hair. There needed to be one of
two possible missing links. Either the killer was not one
of the identified suspects, there was someone missing
from my mind map, or the killer wore a wig as part of a
disguise, and one of the suspects must either own a wig
or had bought and then disposed of the wig. When I
found the source of the red hair, I had the missing piece
of the puzzle. In the end, I found red hairs on the pillow
of one of the suspects’ beds, which led me to a new NPC
who was sleeping with the victim’s brother. The missing
links were found because I went looking for them.
Mind maps do not have a timeline. They represent a fixed
point in time, much like a photograph. They work best
for the investigation or mystery genre because you are
often attempting to discover exactly what happened at the

23
time of the crime being committed. You are building up a
picture of that moment.
In action scenes, the moment is often the precise point
that the characters enter the scene. You can describe a
dungeon room and its inhabitants and then create links to
who killed them and how, but most of the effort goes
into the scene construction and establishing concrete
facts, the number of doors, the fixtures, and fittings, etc.,
as long as they are interesting.
If you are familiar with the Three Things improvisation
technique,4 it is easy to fill out the mind map of a new
location by creating nodes for each of the three things
you create. They are then there for you to dig deeper into
if you want to.
MIND MAPS & ORACLE QUESTIONS
The mind map is normally created from the viewpoint of
the character. What they see, hear, know, etc. Because of
this, there is no place for oracle questions, just the
interpreted answers. You may ask the color of the hair
found on the victim, but you don’t have a node for the
question and a new node for the answer. You are more
likely to have a string of nodes all focusing on a forensic
level of evidence.
When I first started using mind maps for solo play, I used
to include answers in shorthand form underneath the text

4
With Three Things, you list three facts about everything you create
for your game. Whenever your character’s attention falls on an
object, place, or person, you create three more things until you hit a
level of detail where you could not learn any more without specialist
equipment, skills, or magic, or your character’s attention moves on to
something else.

24
of the node. For example ?Y+ would be a yes-no
question with a yes… and… answer. The ? told me it was
a question. A Y or N gives the base answer and the + was
optional for and… modifiers. For open questions, I
would use something like ?growing+menace if I had
asked a question that had generated those two words.
These notations would be in smaller text beneath the
main text in the node. The node is my interpretation of
the answer. I soon realized that the questions and answers
did not add any value to the map of ideas.

25
Lists
This has to be one of the simplest methods. Every
time you create an NPC, you add them to a list.
When you create a location, add it to a list. Spot a
potential storyline? Add it to a list.
When I used to use this method, I would have
several columns on each list. If I was listing NPCs , I
would have their name, a couple of keywords to
summarize their description, a space for any skills I
know they have, and the location where they were
met.
I did something similar for the list of locations, a
name, keywords to summarize its nature, and just a
number to cross-reference with the list of NPCs
that were there.
When it came to the scene list, I started with the list
taken from the Mythic GME, a few lines of
summary, and I could pick out the numbers for the
NPCs and locations.
This worked fine when my games were rather
conventional, your typical kick-in-the-door and kill-
the-monsters, hack, and slash type stuff. As soon as
I wanted to do something less linear or more
character-driven, the system no longer worked for
me.
In my handwriting, I would get about 20 words in
the scene list summary. There was nowhere to
record questions and answers or dice rolls. I spent
more time writing on scraps of paper than using the
lists.

26
If you want to do what if…? branches, you need
access to the questions that, in hindsight, proved
pivotal.
My next evolution moved away from the scene
summary list and to a page with several columns.
One for the summary, one for the NPCs present,
one for the locations, and the largest section for the
summary. Because these were open columns, I could
write as much as I needed and then rule off once
the scene was finished.
This method lasted me several years before evolving
into Cornell Notes and the bullet journal. Cornell
Notes add greater functionality by separating off
questions that have a scope beyond the current
scene, and they have a neat summary area that
serves the same purpose as the original Mythic
Scene Summary list.
Bullet Journals are physically neater than having
separate sheets for NPCs, locations, scenes, and
plotlines. When these are on individual sheets, they
take up a lot of table or desk space when added to
character sheets and rulebooks.
I like to think of lists as a starting point, not the
destination. They are simple to start using and are
functional, but all soloists are individuals. I would
expect people to iterate through different versions
of listing game facts until they find the right format
for them.

27
Digital Techniques
Everything discussed so far has been about analog or
offline play. A lot of gaming is done using PDF rulebooks
or recording your games on mobile or computer. It is
easier to work with text and images on screen than it is on
paper, but often harder to draw freehand.
I am certainly more comfortable playing digitally than on
paper.
Not every game has a form-fillable character sheet. These
are remarkably easy to make as long as you have a blank
character sheet to hand.
HOW TO MAKE A DIGITAL CHARACTER SHEET
What you need is a word processor and a character sheet
from your game’s rules. These are often provided as a
separate PDF or as a page in the back of the game rules.
Get the sheet on screen and take a screen grab, PrtSc on
Windows or Command + shift + 3 on a Mac. Save the
image and then insert it into a blank word processor
document. Set it to Behind Text using the text wrapping
tool or as a Watermark, adjusting the image to fit the
page.
To make it form fillable, we need to add text boxes over
the areas you want to fill in. Insert a text box. Set it to
word wrap, and set the font and size. If you have, the
option set it to no border and no fill. Now place it over
the top of the first part of the character sheet you want to
fill in, typically Character Name. Now Copy the text box
and Paste it over the top of each field of the character
sheet in turn, resizing it as required.
Once you are done, you can save the document and have
a custom form fillable character sheet.

28
Long-form
I have had much more success with long-form write-ups
using both WordPress for saving games online and Word
for saving games locally.
For me, the differences area that I can type faster than I
can write, which makes recording the games less arduous.
I can also search the text. If I wanted to find something
that had come up before, CTRL+F or Command F
would let me search a game record for keywords.
I like to include my questions and interpretations in my
long-form scene notes. I am not writing a novel and have
no intention of publishing my scene notes except to show
other soloists who would understand and appreciate
seeing the solo tools in use.
I have tried two methods, and both work equally well but
have a different feel while reading or writing up the
scenes.
TURN TAKING
In this style, I use two different styles of text for the
narrative and the solo tools. This could be as simple as
typing all the solo rules interactions in Italics and the
narrative in plain text. If your word processor has built-in
styles, you can have a specific style for all your questions
and answers. You can also use a third style for game rules,
rulings, and resolutions.
What this does is draw attention to your solo playing and
away from the narrative. It emphasizes the natural turn-
taking process as you swap between player and game
master many times within the scene. It is obviously a
game and not a story.

29
I found this most useful when using WordPress, and each
scene was a separate blog post. It is a very good format
for teaching or demonstrating how to solo play. I
explicitly wrote out everything, even things that I would
normally do in a moment in my head. This is the solo-
playing equivalent of showing your workings.
You still have the option of skipping from narrative block
to narrative block and not reading the rules and solo
sections when coming back up to speed before starting a
new game session.
If you want to create a short story or novel, you can select
and delete each of these sections once you know you no
longer need them during the editing process.
FOOTNOTES
This is one of my favorite methods! Footnotes are easy to
insert into a document. CTRL + Alt + F or Command +
Option + F on a Mac will insert a footnote marker in
your text and place the cursor at the foot of the page,
ready to type your footnote.
What I do is have all the narrative content in the body
text, and whenever I resolve a game rule or use the solo
tools to ask and answer a question, I insert a footnote and
put all of that detail in a footnote.
The top half of the page can be read from start to finish
as prose, and the rules interactions can be completely
ignored if you are not interested in them.
They are also very easy to remove, in Microsoft Word™
at least. You can Find and Replace, look for ^f, leave the
Replace With field empty, and then Replace All. This will
delete all your footnotes in one go. In Google Docs, you

30
can delete each footnote by deleting its superscript
number within your text.
Footnotes are superior to endnotes because your notes
stay on the page their marker lives on. Even if you edit
your text and insert more above, the footnote will move
with its marker. This saves having to scroll back and forth
between notes and narrative.

Spreadsheets
Not an obvious choice for recording what is
natively a text format.
Using a spreadsheet is similar to recording bullet
points for each fact, question, answer, etc. The
scene is recorded vertically in one column.
I suggest selecting the entire spreadsheet, turning
word wrap on, and making the columns wide
enough to enter eight to ten words per line.
As you play, you record key events in a cell and then
move down to the next row, growing your scene
record as you go.
Your game will start in column A.
When your adventure comes to an end, good or bad,
you can scroll up the column until you find the last
branching point, typically a yes/no question. Copy
the question across to column B, and flip the
answer. Now play this scene again, but you are now
on a ‘what if…’ alternative history track. If this
adventure ends abruptly, you can scroll up to the
next previous branching point, copy the question
into column C and flip that answer. Now, play the
scene again.

31
This is the solo-playing equivalent of loading a
saved game and trying something different.
When I have discussed this method of playing with
new soloists, their first reaction is often that this is
cheating. I don’t think it is if you set out with the
intention of exploring these ‘what if’ alternatives.
It is debatable if you can cheat in a solo game at all.
You are one player running a game with your own
rules.
The downside of spreadsheets is that they are
generally not pretty. They often have built-in styles,
allowing you to highlight certain cells, such as
having all your questions in the same font and
colors to make them easy to spot.
In most spreadsheets, you can import images, but
ultimately you are using a tool in a way that was
never intended to be used. You will likely hit limits.

32
VTTs
I have successfully used and enjoyed playing solo using
Fantasy Grounds. The advantage is in the automation
that the virtual tabletop offers. Rules are often
hyperlinked, attacks, skills, and saves are all resolved
automatically, and character creation is assisted.
FANTASY GROUNDS
Fantasy Grounds has a drag-and-drop interface,
where you can import images such as maps or
images for inspiration and drag them into your game
notes, called a Story Panel. Each scene would be its
own story panel, and you write directly into the
panel. You can drag maps into the story panel inline
so the link appears at the correct point. You can
also create encounters that include random
elements, so you don’t know what you will
encounter until you open the encounter panel, and
you can drag those encounters onto your Story
Panels just as you can with images and maps.
Fantasy Grounds also imports simple spreadsheets
if they are saved as CSV [comma-separated values],
and it will turn them into random tables. You can
drag images and encounters into random table s, so
you can build random dungeons using something
like geomorphs and random encounters.
Story Panels are saved automatically and in
alphabetical order, so I found numbering my scenes
using leading zeros, e.g. 001, 002, 003, etc., and then
each has a descriptive name after the number.
Everything can be grouped to make it easier to find,
so you can create a group for each adventure.

33
Fantasy Grounds is free for individual use, but the
rulesets are not. It does come with some
introductory rules, such as the D&D 5e rules for
levels 1-3. There are plenty of community rulesets
available for download if you want to try out new
games.
I found it was easy to recreate my favorite oracles
inside Fantasy Grounds by recreating the tables
from the books in a spreadsheet and then importing
them. This unified rules, characters and solo tools in
one onscreen tool.
I found the experience to be very visual. The
software makes strong use of top-down maps and
tokens. I could see my character sheet all the time,
and I could open the rules and create stats at the
click of an icon.
Although Story Panels can be almost any length, I
found their default size was quite small, which
encouraged me to keep shorter notes. It suited
bullet points, which is one of the built-in formatting
options, over long paragraphs. There is nothing to
stop you from writing full paragraphs, but reading
your game back would involve a lot of scrolling.
ROLL20.NET
Roll20.net is a free, online virtual tabletop. What is
nice is that solo player is one of the first options
when signing up and joining the site. I could not see
any impact this had on my profile, but it is nice to
know that solo play is recognized as existing.
Compared to Fantasy Grounds, Roll20.net is rather
rudimentary in appearance. This is the difference

34
between a native app running on your PC and a web
app delivering everything through your browser.
It also lacks the automation functionality without
developing macros to add the features you want.
The advantages of the service are the rules look up;
you can click on most things and have the
description or effect sent to the chat window. There
was also a character wizard tool to speed up
character and NPC creation.
You can import PDFs and documents to keep your
game rules and tools together.
Does this add to the soloing experience? I didn’t
think so. Both Fantasy Grounds and Roll20 offer
dynamic lighting, but the GM has to set it up
manually. This is fine when running a game for
other people, but it is pointless in a solo game.
Fantasy Grounds has more sophisticated lighting
options that can be applied to an entire map, such
as moonlight, dawn, dusk, the angle of the sun, and
even rain or underwater effects, without having to
edit the map room by room.
The biggest missing feature in Roll20 was the ability
to create and compartmentalize notes. If I wanted
to have notes on a scene-by-scene basis, there was
no obvious way of doing this.
Roll20 is a viable way of accessing your game from
any connected device, a rules reference, and a dice
roller, but it does not have easy ways of formatting
your notes to differentiate from your roles GM and
your character actions or to separate out solo
questions and answers.

35
Alternative Software
I have mainly used Word, WordPress, Excel, and Fantasy
Grounds for recording my games. These barely scratch
the surface of what is available. I will touch on a few
other options below just for completeness.
NOTION
There is a lot of interest in Notion for recording games.
Notion uses Markdown to give simple formatting
options, so you can quickly move between headings, body
text, and bullets within your document. Where Notion
has caused a stir recently is that it integrates with
chatGPT, if you have a chatGPT subscription, to insert
generated text into your page. You can ask chatGPT to
describe a room, location, NPC, or item, and it will insert
the description straight into your game notes.
If you are looking for something to take some of the
creative burden off of you, using AI text is an option you
may want to explore.
OBSIDIAN
Obsidian is a cross-platform text and markdown app for
mobile and desktop. There are hundreds of plugins to
extend its capabilities. At the time of writing, there were
two AI text plugins.
I used Obsidian for a day or so to see what people were
so excited about, and its strength is in mobile gaming. I
struggle to type on a mobile screen and rarely need the
functionality it offers. If you want to game during your
commute, Obsidian may well be the answer for you.

36
Audio
This is an interesting option as you can record voice
memos on most mobile devices and computers.
The method that worked best for me was to play my
scenes without worrying about recording anything. I used
any random tables I wanted, and I did keep lists of NPCs
and locations and clues, but nothing long-form. At the
end of the scene, I turned on the audio recorder and
recounted the action into the microphone. Once the
scene was recorded, I switched my attention to the dice
and papers on my desk and continued playing.
I used this with a Star Trek game, and there is nothing
nerdier, geekier, or cooler than starting an audio recording
with “Stardate 20181021: Captain’s Log supplemental”
and then describing what has happened.
I tried to keep each audio recording in character and
described the action from the character and crew’s point
of view.
What didn’t get recorded were dice rolls, table lookups,
questions, answers, etc.
I have listened to shared actual plays recorded as purely
audio. The narrator explained everything they were doing,
why, what the dice rolled, what that meant, what the
prompts were, and their interpretations. This was very
informative if you are interested in how someone else
plays their games solo, but I am not sure how it works for
keeping a journal. It felt like there were five minutes of
audio for every two minutes of play because of the need
to explain everything. There was no easy way to skip
through the audio to help refresh yourself over what

37
happened last time before you started a new scene or
game session.
On mobile, voice notes are often saved automatically with
the date and time, keeping them in order. You can easily
listen to the last few if you want a recap.
I think audio can be exceptionally good if it fits the genre
and you have the confidence to do a bit of voice acting.
Giving your NPCs accents or turns of phrase. The Star
Trek Captain’s Log was an example, as is mocking up a
modern-day true crime podcast as a game record.
Finally, I think you need the skills to make this work,
being comfortable with the sound of your voice and with
the recording technology. I conversed with the creator of
the actual play podcasts that I referred to, and they said
that the recording took twice as long to edit as it did to
record. It was a labor of love and an end unto itself. I
would suggest then that this is probably out of bounds
for most soloists wanting to save their scene notes.

38
Video
Unlike audio, video is a viable method of recording your
scenes. The big question becomes, what is the visual
element?
When I recorded games, the main display was my VTT,
Fantasy Grounds, showing the map and character sheets
and combat tracker5, and my dice roller. In essence, I
don’t think anyone would have been looking at me in my
little boxout in the top corner.
Each video was about 20 minutes long, and I picked the end
of scenes as natural breaks to stop one video and start the
next.
One reason this is easier than audio is that you can skim the
video and use, say, the map as a visual clue as to what was
happening or if you showed another image such as an NPC
portrait. It was much easier to come up to speed skipping
over videos than it was trying to do the same thing with only
audio.
I used Open Broadcast Software, OBS Studio, which is a
free download6. I used a two-monitor set up with the dice
roller on one screen, Fantasy Grounds on another, and a
browser window open as well. OBS Studio allowed me to
arrange all these different parts and my webcam image of
myself all in a single display and save the setup for each
video.
The automation offered by Fantasy Grounds cut down on
book lookups and delays when resolving rules.

5 A list showing all the characters in initiative order, the foes, hit
points, attacks etc.
6 https://obsproject.com

39
If you had the skills and talent, you could make videos
within touching distance of Geek Gamers7 or Me, Myself,
and Die8. I would treat those as two extremes. Geek
Gamers is eminently achievable. In my opinion, if you are
prepared to show your face on video you can exceed the bar
set by Geek Gamers because people respond to faces. Geek
Gamer focuses on their hands, dice, and books. Me, Myself,
and Die is a professional production and out of reach to
most of us.
If this interests you, then you can look at people sharing
video actual plays of solo games and borrow what looks
good and is within your capabilities, and ignore what you
cannot do.
Video is equally viable for personal use, as a demonstration
tool to spread the word about solo play, and as a potential
side hustle to earn some extra income through a youtube
channel and maybe a Patreon to produce each episode.
I was once asked the riddle, “What is the only
labor-saving device that the more you use it, the
fitter you become?”9 Video and solo play has
similar potential. If you wanted to try and build
an audience for solo actual plays, it could
eventually mean that you could reduce your full-
time hours of work. You would have a leisure
activity that the more you did, the less work you
would need to do. The magic ingredient would
need to be that none of the solo playing or video
editing should feel like work; otherwise, you are
just swapping one form of work for another.

7 https://www.youtube.com/c/GeekGamers01
8 https://www.youtube.com/@MeMyselfandDieRPG
9 The answer is a bicycle.

40
Seeding Scenes
Seeding a scene is a technique where you decide before
starting the scene some of the elements that you would
like to appear in the scene. These are almost a wishlist of
things.
In a regular game, sure, we have all had characters arrive
in a town and think, “I hope there is a wizards guild here
so I can learn…” or something similar.
If you created a really cool magic item, you could seed a
dungeon hoard with that item. If you created an NPC
that you wanted to have in your game, you could just
place them in a location. You are not entirely beholden to
the yes-no oracle or random treasure tables to insert these
things into your game.
When I was young, on Saturday mornings, there
used to be black-and-white serials on TV. Shows
like Zorrro, Lone Ranger, and Casey Jones. In
one of these shows, the villain had a useless patch
of ground. He took a shotgun shell, laced it with
some gold dust, and fired it into the ground. He
then told a new prospector that there was gold in
the ground, and they then found the traces of gold
that the villain had ‘seeded’ the area with. The
prospector then bought the land for much more
than it was worth.

Once you have seeded these things into your game, they
then become controlled by the yes-no oracle, just like
everything else. Does the retired Samurai live in this
village? Yes, we know that because we put them there.
Are they home? Now that is a question for the dice to
decide.

41
Is seeding scenes cheating? No, but that doesn’t mean
that you could not use it to cheat if you wanted. You
could make yourself a 1st level D&D character and seed
the scene with an ‘inheritance’ of a +4 sword of
sharpness, +3 plate mail, cloak of invisibility, and a ring
of regeneration. You could then wade through adventures
with relative ease. Would it be fun? If that is what you
enjoy, then feel free to do it.
That is not how seeding is supposed to be used, but it is
your game. In regular group games, we often leave the
gamemaster loose threads in our character backstories
that they can then seed their games with.
REVERSE SEEDING & REMOVING ELEMENTS
I once set up a scene for a group game where a wizard
was about to open a portal to hell and let a horde of
devils out right in the middle of town. Before that
happened, the players who had come to town to stop an
evil ritual, but not knowing what the ritual was supposed
to be, suddenly declared that it was almost certainly going
to be someone gating in demons or devils. They said this
as if it was a real cliché, and they were right. So I pivoted,
and the wizard opened a portal to the distant past, and I
threw dinosaurs as the party. I took the idea from the
players that the intended action was clichéd and used the
feedback within the game to insert something else.
There can sometimes be many months between when you
create a plot thread and when you get to bring it to a
conclusion. It is entirely possible that your expectations
have moved on in that time, and the story thread doesn’t
seem so great anymore.
I had one game where I was playing one PC and a
sidekick character. The first character died, so I continued

42
playing using the sidekick as my character and added a
new NPC to support them. Eventually, the sidekick died,
and I played the supporting character as my PC. By this
time, some of the story ideas that were of great personal
interest to my first character and the sidekick had bought
into had no relevance to any of the characters in the
party.
A villain sworn to slay my original character now had no
beef with the party as it stood. Every single character that
had ever stood against him was dead.
It was time to decide what that villain was doing now.
Did they have better things to do than terrorize a party of
adventurers? In this case, I kept the villain in the world,
but I was hundreds of miles away from their sphere of
influence. It was time to retire that thread and keep it for
another day when I passed through those lands again.
Reverse seeding is also related to when you overrule the
dice. Sometimes we ask a question when we probably
should not have. They then throw up an answer that isn’t
what you want. I have seen this when you are about to
wrap up a satisfying adventure, and the next scene is an
alternative scene. Sometimes I just want to finish the
scene, kill the villain, rescue the innocents and get my
reward. In that situation, the dice were wrong, and I was
right.
When I am seeding a scene or removing an element, the
choice is made before the scene starts. I will write down
my decision and then highlight it so it does not get lost in
amongst the notes until it comes up in play, and then I
fold it in as I would any newly created fact.

43
Setting the Scene
This is sometimes called Painting the Scene. It comes
from improvisational theater and specifically monologs. It
is very useful for solo play, and I am a great advocate for
using this method.
At the start of a new scene, you consider what the single
most obvious ‘thing’ that your character would be aware
of is. Now describe it as vividly as you possibly can.
Indulge your senses. This is not a time for rolling the dice
or consulting tables. Just let your imagination go.
This is a method that can create that chill factor of being
alone in a dark place with something evil or the colors
and smells of the circus big top in a way that a random
table never could.
I like to think of setting the scene as being a slice through
the scene that is maybe five seconds long. It is enough
time to hear a drip of water fall from a cave roof or the
throb of attack helicopters over the jungle canopy.
Once you have imagined the scene in as much detail as
you need, then you insert your character into the scene,
and you are ready to start playing.
I often start my scenes by rolling a couple of prompt
words or images and then go into setting the scene.
Combining anything that the prompts inspire into the
scene. Most of the detail comes not from the prompts but
from what I expected the scene to be like.
This can also verge on being quite cinematic or a video
game cut scene. It is not that often that you get to let your
mind just describe something without the interaction of
the dice or game rules.

44
How you record a painted scene is a personal choice and
will be influenced by how you record your scenes. If you
are using audio or video, then you can simply vocalize it
all. Run your mouth off with as much detail as you want.
If you are writing long-form, then this could be too much
description in a single block. It can become a lore dump,
which readers will probably have little interest in.
I typically reduce it down to a single line, something like
“Dark jungle, helicopters approaching above the canopy,
shafts of light through the branches.” That is enough to
remind me of what I imagined at the top of the scene.
I find scenes set this way are much more vivid and
engaging, and they do not have to add reams to your
game notes or scene records.

45
The First Scene
The story so far: in the beginning, the universe
was created. This has made a lot of people
very angry and been widely regarded as a bad
move.
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams (1980)

The first scene of a solo game is a bit like the opening

paragraph of a great novel. That first scene carries all the
weight of getting you hooked into your game and want to
play to find out what happens next.
I am an advocate of starting in media res, in the thick of
the action. You have your character, and you have an idea
of the kind of game you want to play and the style of
setting. Start a scene that is tense and dramatic; during the
scene, you want to use questions to answer the following
questions:
❖ Who are the other people in the scene?
❖ What’s going on?
❖ When and where are we?
❖ How did we get here?
❖ What will happen next?
Some examples from my own games are:
I started a wild west game on a runaway train. The first
scene was my character making his way outside of the
locomotive and tender to get to the driver’s platform.
There was no driver, and the train was picking up speed
as we headed towards a curve and a bridge up ahead.

46
The immediate unanswered questions included where
were the driver and stoker. Would the train make it across
the bridge, or were we going too fast? What is going on?
In a Victoriana-themed game, my character started in the
audience for a public hanging when someone nearby
dropped a letter into his coat pocket and disappeared into
the crowd before I could get a look at them. In that
instant, a policeman blows his whistle and points to me
and shouts, “There he is!” and starts to push through the
crowd to get to me.
What am I suspected of? Who gave me the letter? Was it
a warning?
In both cases, there is danger, a train wreck or a capture
and incarceration. There are plenty of unanswered
questions, which means avenues to explore through play
and a strong visual image of the scene. Above all, doing
nothing is not an option.
This is the key to in media res. You cannot do nothing,
and as soon as you do something, you are going to start
the scene evolving. You will start to build expectations.
When I run from the police constable, I expect them to
chase me. If I pull on the break of the runaway train, I
expect a screech of brakes and possible sparks from the
tracks.
Once you have expectations, you have the start of what
the next scene will be, and then you can start interacting
with questions and derailed (no pun intended) or
alternative scenes.
Unanswered questions that are important to your
character tell you what you need to do or learn next.

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Now you can pause if you want to Set The Scene to give
you more details or carry on with high action and just a
few broad strokes for the setting.
You can ask and answer questions using the solo tools
and seed the scene with cool things that you want to be
part of your game.
When I started a wild west game, I wanted there to be
train robbers, so that is my big idea, and I will make sure
that that features. In the Victoriana game, I wanted it to
be a crime mystery, and originally, I was thinking Sherlock
Holmes-esque. Given that, I knew that there was going to
be a mystery to unravel.
This first scene only has to give you enough to get your
game going.
All the preceding scenes will help you resolve the who,
what, where, when, why, and how until you reach a
satisfying conclusion. Even a dungeon crawl fits into this
question structure. Sometimes you start with some of
these answers already. Maybe the Who was the Knight
Templars, and the Why is to protect their secrets. What
become those secrets and the ultimate goal. The rest you
will have to adventure to figure out.
If in media res is too much for your first scene, then you
can start with a patron giving you a task. It serves the
same purpose; this is what needs doing; now you have to
do it. Patrons are typically less dynamic. In detective or
noir games, they can leave you with few initial leads. “My
husband has gone missing”, “Where were they last
seen?”, “I don’t know.” What do you do next?
The danger of in media res is that you stack up too much
danger, and you die in the first scene. The police

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constable catches you, the train plunges down to the
canyon floor, the end.
A middle ground can be to use random events or bought
random tables. These are often in media res without the
label on it. Something suddenly happens, and you need to
act and react.
What random tables can give you is an idea that has come
from outside of yourself. Something that you may never
have thought of or not thought of in this context.
Once you are playing, you will build expectations of what
will come next, and that is your game up and running.

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Conclusion
I have tried to cover a range of techniques to make
keeping your game notes easier. Good game notes will
make picking up a game tomorrow and getting into
character that much easier. If the method you are using
does not sit well with how your mind works, then this will
hamper your gameplay.
One size does not fit all. We are all unique. I do not
expect anyone to take any of my ideas and use them as
written. You will hopefully try them, adapt them, and
make something unique to you.
If I had to make recommendations, I would say:
Offline, use a bullet journal. It has all the advantages of
lists, mind maps, and Cornell notes in one book.
Online, I am torn between using WordPress (or another
blogging platform) and Word (or a suitable word
processor). You can swap between bullet points and long-
form or make notes as bullets and revisit them and turn
the bullets into long form.
Mobile, I see a lot of love for Obsidian, but I cannot say I
have had any success with it. Maybe if I could type with
just my thumbs, I would find it more useful.
Non-written, this has to be a video and a VTT. This is a
super-rich medium. You gain the automation of the VTT
and the free-wheeling ease of just talking your way
through the scenes. I am pretty sure that there is a terribly
bad voice actor inside all of us.

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