How do you organize your notes, text etc. about a map or an encounter

Hi, I'm searching the best way to organize my GM stuff. Since I'm preparing a sort of Sandbox game campaign (huge number of side quests, NPCs, facts, places, without any Main Quest that players have to solve to save the world), I'm having a hard time in keeping things behind the scenes clear and tidy. So far I've created a lot of wrapping macros and links to handouts so to have a menu like a tree with branches and submenus. For example for the quest: "The disappearing of Solomon" I have one big macro that opens a menu in the chat window and from there I can then click on submenus that lead to further sections and details. This system, although time consuming to set up, allow me to run the game smoothly. The negative aspect is that my macro folder is filled with very little macros, such as: &{template:desc}{{desc=You find bla bla bla}}. To overcome this issue I've tried to assign a Character Sheet and a token to a Quest, to put it somewhere on the GM Layer and make all the macros I need as Attributes and Abilities of that Sheet and then set them as token actions. The goal should have been to have the macro buttons appear only with the Quest token selected, but it seems that I'm not able to use a specific sheet-linked macro to call another macro that belongs to the same sheet, so I still need to write the macros in the collection section. Has somebody any tip?

To call abilities (as opposed to macros from the collections section), look into using  ability command buttons , a close cousin of the API command buttons I'm assuming you are currently using.

I frequently write notes right on the map on the GM layer. It's really only good for quick bits of info: Ceiling height, Door or Trap DC, etc. I also use GM Notes tokens which post the GM Notes from the token into whispered chat (Big thanks to The Aaron!). But I think you'd need a pro subscription for that.

I would really love to see the ability to link handouts or some type of map object that allows you to have clickable Notes / GM Notes. For now I'm just creating private handouts, and putting text on the map. I tried playing with putting links to the handouts in drawings / tokens on the map, but it's just too many clicks for me to get to it even with a macro, as I have to switch layers, select the token, then click the macro. I've found this to be suitable. Though it would be nice to be able to attach a handout to a token just like a character sheet, so you could shift click on it and have it pop up. Likewise it would be great to have these selectable from the Object / Token layer in some way avoiding the need to switch layers.

Jeremy R. said: I would really love to see the ability to link handouts or some type of map object that allows you to have clickable Notes / GM Notes. For now I'm just creating private handouts, and putting text on the map. I tried playing with putting links to the handouts in drawings / tokens on the map, but it's just too many clicks for me to get to it even with a macro, as I have to switch layers, select the token, then click the macro. I've found this to be suitable. Though it would be nice to be able to attach a handout to a token just like a character sheet, so you could shift click on it and have it pop up. Likewise it would be great to have these selectable from the Object / Token layer in some way avoiding the need to switch layers. A work-around for this that I'm considering is to use characters rather than Handouts for map objects. Set the token for the character as an invisible token, but add an aura that only the DM can see.  Place it over the 'room number' which is located on the GM layer.  Then you can shift-double-click the token and get the character sheet to pop up. The advantage to this is that you can use the Actions section of the character sheet (assuming you use one that has such a section) to quickly spam text to chat for the players, if you so choose. The negative is that more characters means slow loading maps.  But that's supposedly based on the number of attributes your character sheet has.  So if you use a character sheet that has fewer attributes, it might not be an issue. Just tossing out an idea I thought of.  Not sure how it'll work.

This is how I've been setting up my stuff till now: First I've made a set of icons as a rollable table which I use as tokens on GM Layer (I use choose side function to quickly shift from number 1, 2, 3 and so on) to note things on the map (Description 1, Description 2, Investigation 1, Object 1 etc). These tokens are reusable of course because each of them is just a reminder that has a different meaning depending on the map.  I have a quest sheet (1) attached to a character entry in a folder called "Quests" inside my journal. The sheet contains the macros I need as abilties and the maps related to the current quest (which are the only thing I make visible as token actions). I do this because every description, info and object inside my maps are described as macros, as you can see here (4) and I prefer to write them as character abilities and put them into a sheet to not fill the collection menu with macros. I'm not totally sure about the usefulness of the token (1). So, when my players arrive in "Desc 1" room I switch the layer to GM Layer with ctrl+k, select the sheet token, then click on Q3A (the current map code) and finally select the description 1 from the chat menu. Too many clicks. So, a solution for me could be to bypass the passage 1 so I don't need to switch to GM Layer and then select the quest token and directly put in the macro bar the Q3A button, like this: With this method I need just two clicks to get what I need. I won't win the nobel for the smartest solution of the year but I think this is a reasonable compromise. The rest is a DM's ordinary administration, You know, DM's life is not simple :D. 

You can load your macros into the Bars of a token. That way your 'menu stuff' only needs to be 'one room large' and you don't need behemoth menu items.

Gianmarco V. said: I'm not totally sure about the usefulness of the token (1). I said a stupid thing here because I can't use the ability without selecting the token. Andrew (Halfling Gypsy) said: You can load your macros into the Bars of a token. That way your 'menu stuff' only needs to be 'one room large' and you don't need behemoth menu items.Hi Andrew, I haven't understood what you mean, can you explain?  When I say "to not fill the collection with macros" I mean this: