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D&D Campaign Management: Keep Your Campaign in One Place
Learn how to manage a D&D campaign: what to track, how to prep without overplanning, and how to keep GM notes private while players join with no setup.
Good D&D campaign management comes down to three jobs: keeping your world information organized, prepping only what the next session needs, and recording what happened so it feeds the next session. The easiest way to do all three online is a campaign manager that sits next to the table you play at, so sheets, dice and notes live in one place. That is why we built Aeternum as a browser-based virtual tabletop: you open a link, and your campaign, character sheets and dice are already there.
This guide is for game masters and players who want a campaign that runs smoothly without a stack of tabs, files and group chats. It covers what to track, how much to prep, how to separate secret notes from shared ones, and how to get players seated without tech trouble.
TL;DR
Campaign management is a loop: world information informs session prep, play produces session notes, and those notes go back into the world information.
Prep until you can answer the questions your players are most likely to force, then stop. Overbuilt lore is wasted evenings.
Keep GM-only and player-facing material in the same system with separate visibility, so secrets stay secret and nothing gets copied twice.
Rehearse the tech for five to ten minutes before session zero: audio, sheet, handout, test roll, token move.
Aeternum runs in the browser with no install or server hosting, and the Free plan costs $0.
Table of Contents
What campaign management actually covers
Prep for the next session, not the whole campaign
Keeping GM secrets apart from what players can see
What to look for in an online campaign manager
Homebrew: build it, then put it in front of real players
Getting players in without technical barriers
Aeternum plans and limits
Our view: the table and the notes belong together
FAQ
Sources
What campaign management actually covers
A lot of people hear "campaign manager" and think of a wiki. A wiki is only one part. Gnome Stew describes three areas of information a GM handles:
Campaign Management: world building and information about NPCs, events, locations, items, lore and off-screen events.
Session Prep: what is going to happen, plus maps, stat blocks and rules text.
Session Notes: the decisions and events from play, which can add to or change the campaign information.
The useful idea is the cycle. Campaign information shapes what you prep. The prep runs the game. The game produces notes. The notes flow back and change the campaign information. When any link in that loop breaks, you feel it: you forget the name of the innkeeper the party loved, a villain's plan ignores something the players did two weeks ago, or you re-read a stat block you wrote last month and cannot find.
So the question to ask of any system, whether paper, documents or software, is whether it keeps that loop short. Every extra step between "something happened at the table" and "it is recorded where I will find it" is a place where information leaks away.
What to keep, and what to skip
You do not need a record of everything. A working campaign file usually holds:
Party and players: who plays what, current status, and anything a character is carrying that matters.
NPCs: name, a one-line description, what they want, and where the party last met them.
Locations: only the places the party has visited or will likely visit soon.
Open threads: unresolved quests, promises, debts and enemies.
Session log: a short summary of each session, written while it is fresh.
Rules and creature references: stat blocks, spells and items you will actually use.
If an entry has no bearing on what the players might do next, it can wait.
Prep for the next session, not the whole campaign
The most common management mistake is overbuilding. MageGate Games advises that there is no universal number of prep hours: prepare until you can answer the most likely questions the players will force the game to answer, then stop. For most sessions that means:
the immediate situation,
the important NPCs,
the locations most likely to matter,
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