Review: GameMastery Campaign Workbook (part 1)

I received a complimentary copy of the GameMastery Campaign Workbook from Paizo one of the times I ordered five display boxes of Item Cards. While I enjoy free stuff as much as the next gamer, I left the book in its wrapping for several months, because I didn't expect I would use it much in my Age of Worms campaign. DM's Familiar does a great job of keeping track of PC and NPC stats, and my stack of Dungeon magazines provides most of the details on the campaign setting. However, I recently cracked it open to see what's inside, and discovered a few surprises. Among other things, the book has an area for tracking Item Cards (gotta love that cross marketing), so I decided to review it here.

The first thing I noticed about the book is that it is small (about 5" high and 4" wide). This makes it very portable, but it also requires the user to write relatively small. I compared the line spacing in the Game Log section with the notebooks I use at work, and it's about 2/3 the size.

Page 1 is a nice cover page with blanks for the campaign and gamemaster, and Page 2 has space more details about the two (contact information, setting, start and end dates). Pages 3 to 5 allow you to enter contact information for up to twelve players (including character names). Somewhere in here a gamemaster friend of mine would probably put warnings threatening players with dire consequences should they look further into the book.

Pages 6 to 19 contain the PC Registry, with a greatly reduced version of a typical character sheet. There are blanks for character name, classes, race, alignment, deity, ability scores, hit points, armor classes, saves, passive skills (Listen, Sense Motive, Spot), and status (dead, cursed, diseased, other). More than half of the page is a lined Notes and Gear section. I imagine this section of the book would get quite a workout over the course of a twenty level campaign, with lots of erasing required.

Pages 20 to 27 are the Basics section, with lined sections for campaign synopsis, major organizations, major villains, rules and rulebooks used, and house rules. Pages 28 to 39 are the Calendar, with one page per month (with spaces for the month and day of the week names). Pages 40 to 45 have graphed pages for the World Map, Continent, and Local Map and lined pages for listing locations on the facing pages. I usually write up this type of information in a campaign expectations document and distribute to the players at the beginning of the campaign.

Part two of this review covers the Game Logs, NPC Registry, and Item Cards sections.


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