Campaign Database in Notion

Welcome back to Earthmote. We are continuing our discussion on how to create a campaign management system in Notion. Today we begin our case studies on the last type of database: Meta Databases. They store information that supports your campaigns. Meta Databases help you as a game master create adventures, offer advice, or knowledge to help your game.
 
Today’s focus will be the Campaign Database. The campaign database captures information about your active or past campaigns. The campaign database’s primary function is organizational. It lets you tag all your content used in a specific campaign you are running.

Value of a Campaign Database

The campaign database offers a few benefits:
  1. The ability to search for content by campaign. Let’s say you are trying to look something up, but forget the specifics. You can search by campaign if you remember the game you originally used it in.
  2. You can study the cross-pollination of your campaigns. I like running games in my same homebrewed world. Its valuable to see which NPCs/Locations/Items show up in which campaigns. This lets me manage the actions and changes that happen from campaign to campaign. It creates a living world for players that play in more than one of your games.
  3. You can study adventure themes/notes all in a single place. I often look for inspiration, or try to avoid too many same-track games. So, I look at what I have run in the past for influence or an understanding on what to avoid.
  4. You can see the success of your campaigns. Ever curious how long certain campaigns last? That’s easy to figure out if you have tagged your adventure notes in your campaign database.

Descriptive Properties

The Campaign database does not contain any descriptive properties besides one. There is a Campaign Name column that has the title property type. You should give your campaign a name. Campaign names can be a great way to sell your game to your players when first starting out. But that only works if you have a strong vision for the type of game you are running ahead of time. If you are doing more freestyling, then you can be generic.

Relational Properties

 Adventure Notes tie to many different databases in my Notion system. They include:
  • PCs. Which PCs are playing in your campaign?
  • Fronts. What are the major fronts in your campaign?
  • Adventure Notes. Which adventures have you designed and run for your campaign?
  • Factions. Which factions are central to your campaign?
  • Locations. Which locations does your adventure take place at?
  • Characters. Which NPCs are important to the campaign?
  • Media Tome. Is the campaign tied to a third party source? Or take inspiration from it?
When I put everything together, this is an example of what my Campaign database looks like:
 
Campaign Notion Database Preview

Notion Template for Campaigns

Currently, I don’t have any standard templates for my Campaign Database. My primary use for the campaign database is tagging and searching. I don’t actively create new information to store within its own content pages. I could change that in the future if I saw more value in capturing that information. You could include things like
  • Your general inspiration for the campaign.
  • Any media sources that influenced your design.
  • What themes are you exploring in the campaign?
  • Are there an symbols or ideas prominent in your campaign design
Then you could review this information as you create your adventures. Making sure that you stick to your original premises for the campaign. Next time, we will go over the Player Characters database.

Further Reading on Notion:

Feature Art Credit: Ede László