How to Bullet Journal an Adventure Path / Campaign

Note: This post contains spoilers for the Pathfinder Adventure Path #97-102: Hell's Rebels. If you plan to play that adventure, and want to be surprised don't read the written text in the photos.

Also If you've never heard of a bullet journal, take a moment and go check out bulletjournal.com.

Now that you're back, you need a a few things to make your own journal. A notebook, a writing implement, a straight edge (ruler or spine of a gaming book), and possibly something to make quick reference tabs. I used a regular college ruled composition notebook, and just looking through the ones that I own these seem to come with between 80 and 100 pages. I'm going to go through the pages in my bullet journal with you in order.

This is my AP bullet journal.

These are some post it brand tabs that I've added to my most used pages.

• Legend -  In my journal I use certain symbols to help me quickly find things in my session notes. I don't have these marked in my journal, but they could be easily added to the inside front cover
  (if you have trouble remembering or just utilize a lot more symbols than I do).

• Index - The first step to setting up your journal is to create an index page or pages if so inclined. Check the number of pages in your notebook and count the number of lines per page. My college ruled book has 30 lines per page (Checking a wide ruled notebook that I have on hand it only has 25 lines per page). Now if you plan to use an entire line to note every page in your book, you would need to leave the first two pages (front and back) set aside for the index. As you can see below I devote a line to each of my titled pages, and then I note major events during sessions. You could also make multiple columns per page. After setting aside space for your index, begin numbering the pages in your notebook (front and back).
  
  


• Spending Money - My first title page is for money expenditures. I've got the gold amount from where I started tracking, and everything that I've bought listed. I set aside two pages for this. I think I may run out of room for this, but the nice thing about a bullet journal is that I can just annotate it in the index and make a new page (I can also just move the sticky tab to the new page as well). Many, many bridge crossings.
  
  


• Session Notes - After sorting out money, I jumped right into adventure notes. You can see some of my identifying symbols for cast, location, loot, and rumors. (Note that I don't pay much attention to spelling errors when I'm quickly trying to write this down. I'm looking at you Squassation. All names are also spelled phonetically.)
  
  
    
  Some later notes that show a lot of loot items.

• Cast of Characters - A list with a brief description of the non-payer characters.
  
  


• Locations - A list of locations, numbered as they are in the adventure path. Bullet journals are great for recording lists of things.
  
  


• Timeline -This is where I pulled out that straight edge and some colored pencils. The college ruled book gave me enough room to put eight weeks on each page, and I gave a brief description of what our group did each day. The first column is not filled out very much because I added the timeline after we had been playing for awhile. I wanted a rough estimate of when we did things, and this helps me to remember. Also good for tracking when days were skipped while waiting for something to occur, or for keeping track of how long it takes for magical items to be crafted.
  
  


• Expendable Items - A page to check off items that can be used up. When something is completely used up I will fill in it's square to know that I don't have it anymore. It's very helpful to keep this all in one place.
  
  


• Tally Pages - This type of page is mostly just for fun. It seems like my character has caught every affliction she could possibly get so I started writing them down on my Diseases, Curses, and Poisons page. You could also use this for any number of lists: kill tally, monsters types encountered, number of bridge crossings...
  

This is not everything you could include in your notebook, but using a bullet journal allows you to completely customize what you include.

 Other ideas:

• Typical marching orders w/diagrams with needed
• Party items - Our cleric forgot he had a wand of cure serious during a difficult fight, and reminding him of this probably prevented a tpk.
• Character specific things like resistances, immunities, etc. - again other players forget sometimes.
• Make a sleeve behind the cover and put in a table tent for buffs - a reminder for inspire courage helps the other players add on those points
• Background write up for the adventure
• History of the local area
• Organization of opposition
• Character to do list
• Character background detailing family, home life, friends
• In-character journal entries
• Challenge checklists - previous adventure path I wanted to use all of my domain spells for each level at least once or a goal list,one shot kill, rendered unconscious in battle, saved someone from imprisonment, captured a foe, successfully negotiated a what could have been a combat into diplomacy, party barely survived a fight, fought an underwater/aerial combat, etc.

 I've having a great time playing this adventure path, and the notes in my bullet journal will ensure that I will be able to fondly remember it in great detail.I hope that you consider trying this method for your adventure notes.