Adventure Notes Database in Notion
Welcome back to building our D&D campaign management system in Notion. Today, we are looking at the last of our procedural databases: Adventure Notes. This is the most prominent database within our entire Notion system. In some way, all the other Notion databases feed into or support our adventure notes. After all, Dungeons and Dragons is a game about adventuring heroes. And as the game master, it is your job to come up with the adventures!
Your adventure notes are there to support your games. You want to make sure you are as organized as possible. Being efficient and organized will give you the confidence to run great games at the table. And it will keep the sessions flowing well. Every time we have to stop to find something, we are stopping the narrative. That reminds our players that they are playing a game. And not experiencing a fantastical world.
Descriptive Properties
The Adventure Notes database does not contain too many descriptive properties. I prefer to keep it fairly simple because the meat of the adventure content is in the page itself.
| Column | Property Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Title | Title | The name of your adventure. |
| Dates Played | Date | The time frame in which you ran the adventure. Could be a single day, or a time span if it took multiple sessions. |
| Story Arc | Multi-select | Adventures can contribute to a great story arc, if you run your campaign that way. It can be helpful to tag which one it is if you have multiple arcs going at once, or want to reference back to an old arc later on. In theory, an adventure could touch on more than one story arc, which is why I use a multi-select rather than a select. |
Relational Properties
Adventure Notes tie to many different databases in my Notion system. They include:
- Locations. Which locations does your adventure take place at?
- Sublocations. Which sublocations does your adventure take place at?
- Factions. Which factions are players in the adventure?
- Characters. Which NPCs are important to the adventure?
- Items. Which items play a main role in the adventure?
- Campaign. Which campaign does the adventure take place in?
- Encounters. Do you have any random encounter tables for the adventure?
- Events. Which event (if any) is driving the adventure?
- Ideas & Notes. Did you have any ideas that inspired the adventure? Did you capture any notes while running the adventure?
- Media Tome. Is the adventure tied to a third party source? Or take inspiration from it?
- Secrets. What list of secrets did you make for the adventure?
- Traps & Puzzles. Do you have any traps or puzzles that tie into the adventure?
When I put everything together, this is an example of what my Adventure Notes database looks like:
Notion Template for Adventure Notes
The adventure notes template is the most critical template in our entire system. It saves us a lot of time by structuring our notes up front. It also reminds us of the critical components we need to successfully run a game. Lastly, it structures our notes in a way that is easy to reference and run at the table. We want to reduce time searching for information and spend more time focusing on the game.
The adventure notes template is so important that it is going to warrant its own post. Which is exactly what I’m going to do. So join me next time for part two, where I go through how I structure my adventure notes template.
Further Reading on Notion:
Feature Art Credit: Ede László
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