As much as I have tried to integrate digital tools into my Gamemastering, the practical upshot of all the experimentation over the past few years is that I think I prefer analogue notes: the humble notebook, pencil, dice, character sheets, and the ever-flexible index card.

In getting myself organised to play the next session in Mystamyr, for example, I found it most fruitful to migrate my thoughts away from the computer tools onto simple paper notes. I can shuffle the index cards but also experience a need to more clearly summarise my ideas when space is limited.

More than all of that, however, there is a deeper creative well that I access when I work with my hands to prepare the game. Scribbling notes, sketching maps, hashing out ideas with a pencil is much more fun and a lot less time-consuming. I can move things around, cut and paste things (literally), and add colour or image through the forgotten art of collage.

Perhaps it is a symptom of my age and the skills I learned as a teenaged gamer. Yet I have long been an early-adopter of digital tools, ever since my late 20’s when I first owned my own PC. In hindsight, I have never quite been able to bring the digital skills to fruition and it seems much simpler and more rewarding to grab up a pencil instead.

Game on!