Obsidian! Can’t recomment it enough! It’s simple, has everything I need and a shitton of plugins (dice roller, statblocks, Initiative tracker, fantasy calendar, a tool for working with maps with pins and everything, ability to embed all sorts of generators from generators websites, wiki styled notes and more!)

I use obsidian, and git to sync between devices.

For notes during/right after a session I have a notebook where I write by hand.

For planning, loose ideas etc I used to use Trello. It was serving me well for a long time (I’m still using it to save maps I might want to buy, interesting systems, links to tools, etc) but with time I felt I’m lacking a kind of big picture view.

So for campaign and adventure planning I’ve switched to obsidian.

• I like markdown
• With plugins you can create random generators
• I like that it’s simple. It’s just a bunch of files which I sync to my cloud
• The graph view lets me take a look at arches as a whole and find loose ends/underutilized facts

Obsidian is a personal favorite.

Between sessions: Google Docs (one document per campaign)

During the session: I’ll print out the document and scribble on it with a pen as needed. I’ve tried editing the doc live (via laptop) during the game but it takes too long and requires too much focus to type as opposed to just jotting down/crossing out as we play.

I used to keep text files on my computer, I got into a rabbit hole creating a bot to roll dice, store characters and also notes, and eventually I found Notion, I started to use it and so far it’s been great, I haven’t kept too many notes, but I’m organizing a Monster of the Week world and it’s been great for creating monsters and planning sessions that link with the monsters so I have all of the info available easily.

MS OneNote is my preferred tool for this as you habe an infinite notebook and can doodle anywhere on its infinite pages. I usually have a chapter for rules, NPCs, Fluff (locations and past events), PCs (their history and plot hooks), with pages for e.g. combat rules, 1 page per NPCharacter etc. You can import pictures (and also paste them directly from ON to Discord) and share the notebook (or single pages) with others online.

Poorly! I do it poorly! :D

Characters are in GURPS Character Sheet, an (awesome!) open source character management program. I run our games through Foundry VTT, which handles all the combat tracking, HP/FP management, maps when I have them, etc. It also imports GCS files (and GCA, if that’s your flavor of character editor). Most of my other notes (events, generated people names for unexpected NPCs, etc) go in Google Keep notes. Notes that I have to take on the fly go into my notebook, where they go forgotten until the next session, more often than I’d like…

I use the superior method, a mess of illegible scribblings in a journal. I am trying to get better about it, though. And one thing im really trying to do is focus my prep on what the region is like, and what the important actors there are doing, and not on what i think the players will do. Every time I try to predict the pc actions they completely flip my prep on its head, so I want to go for more of an “informed improv” type prep

@jursed I use Google Docs for just about everything. That way, I can call them up on any of my devices whenever I need them.

Paper in a folder with index sheets. Old school as hell.

I tried Obsidian recently for a homebrew game and it worked really well to however.

Haphazard scrawls on a notepad during the session, trying to not lose it in between the initiative orders and scribbled HP tracking from combats. After the session I try to collate it all into a OneNote where it’s all organised by campaign and plot element and theme.

Lately I’ve been moving from OneNote to Obsidian. Obsidian’s ability to link between files and then see the visual map of all the links is handy, and it can even detect mentions of a thing even if you didn’t link it at the time, so if something becomes important enough that you later decide to create an actual page for it, it’ll find all the places you previously mentioned it. Very useful.

I have a perfect system. I write my notes in a Google Doc when I have access to a computer. I save a player version that players can see and a GM version for just my secret stuff, so that I can frequently forget to update one or the other and not be able to find a specific note easily. I often store game notes on recipe cards in game because they’re what I have close at hand, so that I can easily misplace them and forget what I named an NPC. These both work well with my habit of doing most of my story and world design while walking, hiking, or trying to fall asleep, so that I can’t write it down anywhere anyway.

Oddly enough I somehow maintain a coherent world for decades at a time but it’s mostly because I have very good players who take notes, and a very well honed improv skill as a necessity.

Gm notes? what are those?

seriously though, I have someone in the party keep a journal of things that have happened. Then I keep a bullet point notes in a notepad or piece of paper that I have behind the GM screen.

I use WorldAnvil for all my GM stuff :D Got my notes in their notebook, my worldbuilding in articles, etc etc. It’s a bit of a heavy program unless you’re going hard on worldbuilding, but I do go hard on worldbuilding so it’s perfect for me.

Used to use onenote before, but those aren’t really searchable last I checked.