Back to My Roots: Running My Campaign Old-School Analog!

When I first started playing Dungeons & Dragons back in the ‘80s, all we had were pencils, paper, binders, and a whole lot of imagination. If you were lucky, you had access to a photocopier to duplicate character sheets, and if someone in your group had an IBM personal computer? That was practically wizardry. Most people didn’t have home computers yet—they were expensive, clunky, and not exactly built for gaming. So, for me, planning a campaign meant getting my hands dirty with graph paper, notebooks, and stacks of handwritten notes.

Fast forward to today, and I’ve realized I’ve let digital tools take over. Programs like Obsidian Notes, OneNote, and other apps have made my life easier, sure, but somewhere along the way, I lost touch with the craft of running a game. Clicking and typing just isn’t the same as scratching out a map with a pencil, flipping through a binder full of ideas, or rolling dice on a table covered in papers.

So, I’m going back to the analog way—binder, pen, and paper in hand. Here’s how I’m setting up my one-inch campaign binder:

The Setup: Old School, All the Way

• Campaign Calendar: Simple, straightforward—just a regular calendar. No fancy homebrew months or moon cycles, just a January 1st start date and tracking from there. I’ll mark major events, travel time, and exploration days as we go.

• Hex Maps: I’m testing out a Cornell Notes-style hex map system, and so far, it’s working great. It gives me space for quick notes on encounters, landmarks, and anything else players might stumble across.

• Dungeons & Locations: Hand-drawn dungeon maps, keyed rooms, cryptic caves, eerie towers, and the dark corners of the world all mapped out in a way that I understand.

• Tables, Tables, Tables: Wandering monsters, treasure generation, weather conditions—whatever I need on the fly, I’ll have it in easy reach.

• NPCs: This section is divided into two parts—a master list for quick reference, and dedicated pages for major NPCs, complete with motivations, quirks, and how they fit into the world.

• House Rules & Character Creation: A living document with tweaks, additions, and guidelines specific to my campaign.

The Tools I’m Using

• Basic Fantasy RPG – Keeping things streamlined and fast.

• AD&D Dungeon Master’s Guide – For dungeon design and inspiration.

• Scarlet Heroes – For hex mapping.

• My own collection of random tables—because rolling up weird, unexpected details is half the fun.

I started putting this together last night, and it took me about an hour to roll up and design a full dungeon. But you know what? It felt good. No program did the work for me. Every corridor, trap, and creature was mine—something I built, not something an algorithm spat out. There’s something deeply satisfying about flipping through a binder and seeing the world come to life in your own handwriting.

This feels like a return to what got me excited about D&D in the first place. Hopefully, this method sticks, and it turns into a system I can run with for a long time. If nothing else, it’s gonna be a hell of a fun experiment.

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