How I Prep (For Arden Vul), part 1: Spreadsheets

14 Jun, 2025

Weird Writer put out a blog challenge so people would talk about how they prep games. I have been foaming at the mouth for something like this.

Here's a list of who has done the challenge so far:

Arden Vul - Spreadsheets!!

I am going to talk about the prep for my game of Arden Vul 1e game.

I have a toooooooon I could write about. My prep and materials for this game are quite weighty and ever-changing right now. I've tried out a lot of different systems.

Spreadsheets

I use google sheets for this. Here are the two primary sheets I keep updated:

Dungeon Key and Encounters

I have been re-writing the Arden Vul key for areas that are visited a lot, based on Weird Writer's post which included the topic, which itself is based on Retired Adventurer's. I still have a copy of the book in front of me for reference but this does a lot of work.

I try to update the key for a section the day we play. If I didn't have the key for a dungeon, this is probably when I would start writing it.

There are also sheets for encounters in those same areas, extracted with Tabula(this is barely worth it over just copying out of a pdf), so I can edit them when things change in that dungeon area.

AD&D DMs Familiar

This is from the Blue Bard, partially edited and filled with my campaign's info. Notable prep sheets include (the italicized text are ones added by me)

NPC Roster

There's about 50 npcs in here, with basic info, location, faction, level, notes, etc. I haven't filled it out much because I don't end up referring to it that often. It's a lot of info from the book so far. This would probably be more helpful if it contains NPCs that are new or have grown beyond the book's description.

Factions/Institutions

Includes Name, Leader, Lieutenants, Roster/Inhabitants, Guests, Spies/Sources, Items/Resources, News, and Notes.

The news section is helpful when I want to keep track of their internal changes or rumors they care about. Truly though, this sheet isn't up to date.

Reputation Tables

Based on Luke Gearing's post (will link later). Some factions have bigger tables then others and many will include rumors from other factions (so the most knowledgeable have d100, with 90 being from other factions. Hypothetically, at least.

Pretty helpful tbh! I don't always refer to it but I do most of the time.

Faction Relationships

A version of the table from Arden Vul, but includes a section for the players so I can keep track of how they all feel about. The version from Arden Vul is based on the one that ADND 1e has for how races feel about each other, and I've always felt they could use more extremes, so my version has one or two more possible relationship types.

Having this handy is so nice when players are like 'what do you, random person, feel about X as a group?'

EOTP Characters

I haven't renamed this from the whatever campaign the Blue Bard was running, but this thing is a life-saver. This is where I record the info for characters, which gets populated into the party sheet I refer to at game time.

I asked my players to start providing me this info once per level up.

That's it for now

Thanks for reading! <3

#arden-vul #how-i-prep #refereeing