Trackers 12 min read
How to Catalog a Collection
A collection is an inventory you never wrote down. Here's the field list and the three-pass method for cataloging one in a weekend.
Templates for Game Masters.
Everybody at the table shows up. One person does homework. These 4 templates are for that person — a system-neutral prep kit you print and fill in with a pen, and the trackers for the games and books stacked behind you.
Prep situations, not plots
A plot is a sequence of events the party is supposed to move through, and it breaks the first time they do something you did not think of — usually inside the first twenty minutes. A situation is a set of people who want things, in a place, with a clock running. It cannot break, because there is nothing for the party to get wrong. Everything here is built around that difference: a short prep sheet you can finish on a weeknight, a page for the things you improvise, and tables to roll on when four people are looking at you.
It is all paper, deliberately. A sheet behind the screen works in somebody's basement with no signal, does not sleep, does not show a notification mid-scene, and is still yours in five years. If you are weighing that against a hosted tool, we wrote up the printable kit versus a campaign management app honestly, including the four things an app does better.
Recommended templates
For the one who does the homework
4 templates
The prep kit for running it, and the trackers for what you own and what you have played.
- $9.95 PDF
Tabletop RPG Game-Master Session Prep & Campaign Kit — 10 Printable Sheets, NPC and Location Cards, Session Zero, and 472 Improv-Table Entries
A system-neutral print-and-run kit for game masters: 10 fill-in sheets, cut-out NPC and location cards, and 472 improv-table entries. Print at 100%.
TrackersView details - $6.95 Spreadsheet
Board Game & TTRPG Collection Tracker — Excel & Google Sheets
A board game & TTRPG collection tracker for Excel & Google Sheets — catalog your shelf, log plays, and track cost-per-play, win rate, and campaigns.
TrackersView details - $6.95 Spreadsheet
Set Collection & Build Tracker for LEGO® Sets — Excel & Google Sheets
A LEGO set collection tracker for Excel & Google Sheets — catalog every set, compute cost per piece and gain/loss, and count what's still sealed.
TrackersView details - $6.95 Spreadsheet
Reading Challenge & TBR Tracker — To-Read List, Reading Bingo & Yearly Wrap-Up (Excel + Google Sheets)
A reading challenge & TBR tracker for Excel & Google Sheets — a prioritized to-read pile, 30 curated prompts, a self-tallying bingo card, and a wrap-up.
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Start here, free
The sheet you print every week
The one-page session prep sheet is free and ungated — five boxes and a forty-five-minute order to fill them in, with the dangling-threads page on the back and one improv table so you can see what they read like. It comes shown filled in for an invented campaign, and it asks for no email. When you want the other eight sheets, the cut-out cards and all twenty improv tables, they are in the Game-Master Session Prep & Campaign Kit.
Before you roll a die
The two conversations worth having first
- What is a session zero? — the hour that prevents the campaign everybody enjoyed for six weeks from quietly not being scheduled in week nine.
- What are lines and veils? — the ten-minute safety tool, and the part most tables get wrong: you hand it out to be filled in alone, and collect it face down.
- How to prep a session in thirty minutes — the sequence, with what to cut when the week got away from you.
Reading list
For the shelf behind the screen
Guides on cataloging the collections that pile up around a long-running game.
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Trackers 6 min readHow to Track Hobby Spending in 10 Minutes
How to track hobby spending in ten minutes — turn a year of scattered purchases into one real number, then into all-in cost per item and cost per use.
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Trackers 8 min readVideo Game Backlog
Your backlog isn't a failure list. Reframe it as a curated library and use a simple triage system to play what matters.