Using Trello for your Game

#1

Since I started my online game I tried to use OneNote to organize and manage my game. OneNote is amazing but also cumbersome and a bit “too much” for the way I like to do things. I am pondering to try Trello with a GM and a Player Board. I could have Loot cards that I can move from my GM Board to the Player Board into the respective PC list, have location and NPC info Cards in the world section etc. So far I like the idea. Has anyone done something like this before and can share their experiences?

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#2

That screenshot… are you running a game with Trelli, or is that just notes?

#3

It’s just notes to share with the players as an add-on to Roll20 at this time. I also have a game prep board instead of a notebook.

But it has a Hangout Power Up so I could see running a game with this and Hangouts and the Google Slides VTT that was shared here.

#4

Yesterday I switched from OneNote to Emacs (with org-mode) to manage all my todos, notes, contacts, agendas and all other text based things. I keep everything in there. It is kinda amazing what Emacs with org-mode can do. I usually work with text and I find OneNote’s drawing facilities fairly limited and don’t use that. Therefore OneNote became a drag for me and I abandoned it.

Having said all that I won’t recommend it normal people even though this setup is amazing.

A Fantasy Grounds ruleset is being created as we speak and I suggest that you make the jump to that when it is released and save you some pain. FG is superior to anything else out there. That is if you don’t find Roll20 enough (which I certainly don’t).

#5

I will absolutely, it will make a lot of things esier

#6

I have been using Trello for a while now. I have a GM Screen with all the useful notes in and a Players One where they can see relevant notes. It’s also easy to transfer a card from the GM screen to the players board. Here’s one I used for an old Flash Gordon game for the players https://trello.com/b/f5TsdQmv/flash-gordon

#7

Great Board, exactly what I am thinking of! Thanks for sharing it.

#8

@Chaosmeister since you mentioned you’re running your game(s) in rill20, I’m curious what you have found to be the benefits of using Trello as opposed to the handouts in roll20.

I can see Trello being better feature wise , but I have found the handouts/folders/share settings in Roll20 to be adequate. While it might not be as feature rich, I’m hesitant to add another place to have to go for me and my players assuming Roll20 handouts and notes get the job done.

#9

It was mostly born out of the frustration that I couldn’t do drag and drop things in R20 and that the sheet is horribly limited. No real space to put item info and you can’t use item cards. I find the Handouts OK but find no one looks at them because frankly they are just unwieldy to sort and categorize. . I could have an NPC handout folder listing important NPCs and a folder for locations with little location notes but the NPCs and Locations and other stuff couldn’t be linked in a way I like and it’s not really visual either.
. Not to mention that I can’t really edit and prepare the handouts on my phone, which is a must due to time constrains. I haven’t run this in practice with my players yet as I am still figuring out if this will work but after what @pete284 posted it looks pretty much like what I expect. I have been using OneNote and Google docs in the past but so far this Card based approach seems to work best for me.