Welcome to Tempus

On this site you will find my DM notes for my Tempus 5e D&D campaign. This campaign was my first foray into creating my own setting. As with any creative endeavor, I pulled inspiration from a lot of sources, including:

The structure of my notes is based on Mike Shea’s notion notebook, which I have since ported over to Obsidian . I’m a big fan of the Lazy DM Books by Mike Shea, and my GM prep is largely built on the advice in The Eight Steps of the Lazy DM

Note & Prep Tour

Below are the folders in my Obsidian notebook and my purpose of each folder. You’ll find a menu option on this site for each of them.

Session Notes

Prep notes for individual sessions.
These evolved over time and I find what worked best for me at the table.
Originally, I used my iPad at the table to access my prep notes in Notion. I included links to D&D Beyond for monsters and split content into different Notion pages, like pages for individual monsters or locations.
In a effort to be more present at the table, I changed my approach and only worked off a set of printed notes. One or two pages if I could get away with it.
I now take in-game notes on these printed pages and transfer anything important back to Obsidian after the session.

Characters

Significant NPCs and monsters
Main party notes

Locations

Fantastic locations I need to track
Usually include descriptions and/or maps.
Most maps come from Chezpeku, which I support on Patreon.

Items

Homebrew or third party items, which usually get translated into custom items in D&D Beyond since all of my players have their character sheets there.

Planning

A variety of notes for larger concepts or quest plans that didn’t seem to fit in my normal session notes. These are usually for things that might not happen next session or that I need to significantly foreshadow.

Factions

Significant groups the party interacts with.
Guilds, gangs, secret organizations, etc.

Rules

Any homebrew or third party rules I need to track and disseminate.

Recap

Various types of notes capturing the ongoing campaign.
Tempus Campaign Session Notes: a fairly raw combination of all of session notes captured during play and transferred back to my Obsidian Session Notes.
Tempus Campaign Recap: a summary of the raw session notes. I start by feeding a section of raw session notes into ChatGPT and refine a bit from there. These are ready to share with the players.
Tempus Campaign Dramatization: a prose version of the raw session notes. Again, I start by feeding a section of raw session notes into ChatGPT and refine a bit from there. Throughout the campaign, I’ve been updating this document and sharing it with the players. In a long running campaign, I feel like this has ended up being very helpful for the entire group.