FreeMind Tips for Game Masters
I never understood mindmapping until I read one of Tony Buzan’s books, saw numerous examples, and clued-in. For game planning and tracking, mindmapping is now one of my essential tools.
My mindmapping tool of choice is FreeMind, a free application you can download for Windows, Mac, and Unix. It’s a natural fit for documenting relationships. For example, locations > NPCs > personalities; session notes > open loops, consequences, ideas > campaign elements.
FreeMind for RPGs Introduction
Go read the FreeMind for Roleplayers article by TheLemming for an overview. You might also want to check out epic preparation – p7 – politics by the same author for more mindmapping examples.
The beauty of FreeMind versus paper is you can brainstorm or document, and then change the structure – move things around – as you write. When I plan for game sessions, I’ll leap from one idea to the next, in no particular order once I get going. Sure, I could use a list or spreadsheet, but FreeMind lets me drag ideas around and connect them to other ideas, like one of those free form-word fridge magnet sets. After a bit of reorganization when I’m catching a breath or done with ideas mode, I can clearly follow relationships, which makes ongoing reference easy, even during game sessions. In addition, any new ideas or developments are quick to append or insert.
FreeMind Tips
TheLemming has covered some great instructions and tips for using FreeMind. Here are a few more gleaned from use:
- Use the direction keys (or ESDF) to move around. You could mouse around, and maybe I’m old school, but my vote is don’t make my hands leave the keyboard until necessary. ESC key takes you to the root node.
- Use INSERT key to create a child node. Use ENTER to create a peer node. Fast and easy. Don’t let mousing slow your flow of ideas. Just keep creating new nodes as required and then organize them later. Capture those thoughts.
- Use the Notes feature. There’s no shortcut for this unfortunately. Go to Insert > Note. Paste or write all the details you want here.
- Use node background colours to communicate more at a glance. For example, give NPCs red, blue, and yellow bg colours for evil, good, and neutral alignments. This simplifies your mindmap (one less node for each NPC, one less word per NPC). It also creates a neat metric: what is the balance of alignments in your cast of NPCs. I found with my Carnus campaign that I had more blue than yellow, more yellow than red. I need more bad guys in my game.
- Get friendly with Export. A great method is to export your maps to HTML for posting on your blog, website, or wiki. Other options include image maps, JPG, SVG, and PDF!
- Link like crazy. Use the linking feature to hook two related nodes together (click on one and get taken to the other – great for huge maps), link to files, link to your campaign website, link to DDI and other online references, and so on.
- Toggle nodes on and off (open / close) to make the view simpler to look at and digest. For example, only open the node you are working in and leave the others closed. Use SPACE to toggle nodes on and off quick.
- Change selection method preference to By Click. FreeMind installed by default for me with node selection via mouseover. I found it difficult to work this way and prefer, when not using the keyboard, to select nodes with a mouse click. As maps grew I found I had to weave in and out with my mouse carefully or accidentally select nodes, but choosing By Click fixed this. Go to Preferences > Behavior > Selection Method.
What about you? Do you use mindmapping? Have any FreeMind tips?
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February 5th, 2009 at 3:44 am
I have countless small notebooks with scrawled esoteric diagrams and all sorts of stream of consciousness ramblings written in them. That’s how I order my various creative endeavors. I’ve never tried actual mind mapping but I can see the benefits, and freemind seems like a pretty interesting piece of software. I think I’ll give freemind a try for the campaign I’m working on right now, but I doubt it would ever eliminate my notebooks… a gamemaster has got to love his notebooks.
Jack Crow’s last blog post..Down and dirty NPC creation
February 5th, 2009 at 4:12 am
Agree with you J. I use OneNote as my final receptacle, and use mindmapping, books, digital files, wikis, email, and whatever else is at hand or desired to do initial capture. Then, come serious planning time, I harvest all notes and draft a final version. I have a lot of filled notebooks as they are my favourite initial recording medium.
February 5th, 2009 at 7:42 am
For brainstorming I usually make tables organized by topics on google docs. For instance I’d make a table with 3 columns and 8 rows and head it with Idea, Milestones, and Encounters then I’d start filling it with whatever came to mind first, if I got stuck or thought of something that didn’t fit the table then I’d make another table.
Usually I end up with a dozen tables that are related to one another. Important events, Villains and their motivations, Magic Items and their history etc… Some end up partially filled, a few are sparse, but at least a couple of them ends up taking up the majority of the document. That’s pretty much the best brainstorming method that works for me.
kaeosdad’s last blog post..kaeosdad is now friends with Tuathal
February 5th, 2009 at 2:28 pm
Welcome to Campaign Mastert kaeosdad. Google docs is great. I’d love to see a screenshot of your tables.
February 5th, 2009 at 3:04 pm
This looks like a great piece of software. Like the others, my notebook is my initial place to brainstorm and jot down notes. It travels with me almost everywhere.
I do like how you’ve shown that FreeMind can be used to easily move ideas around and link them up. A very handy tool as often during the creation process new idea’s crop up that require the re-organization of the map etc.
I’ll be downloading FreeMind tonight when I get in.
Wimwick’s last blog post..Skill Challenge: On the Road
February 5th, 2009 at 9:16 pm
I have to admit that I rarely use mindmapping software of any sort, having generally found that it takes longer than doing lists in wordpad and dragging and dropping lines of text hither and thither. I treat them like a table of contents, and copy and paste a set to later in the document, which I then use as chapter titles. If I’m going to record the same information in many different ‘chapters’, I will do an empty one and then use copy and paste. I do most of the organisation and collation of ideas in my head and with simple lists. I do have a piece of mindmapping software which I will occasionally use, called Treepad. It exports the selected mode or submode to a single plain-text file – if you have one overarching node with the entire document under it, you get the whole thing as one file. I then just change the file type to rtf and away I go.
February 5th, 2009 at 9:56 pm
[…] Freemind and other such mind-mapping tools are getting some RPG Blogosphere loving (such as FreeMind Tips for Game Masters, and Free Your Mind…With Free Mind), I figured I’d give another plug for my favorite […]
February 6th, 2009 at 1:25 am
@Wimwick: let me know what you think after you’ve played with it for awhile.
@Mike: Didn’t know Treepad supported minmapping. That’s a free application too, isn’t it?
February 7th, 2009 at 12:23 am
Yes it is, Johnn. And while it supports mindmapping to a limited extent, I would expect that there are better utilites out there – treepad is essentially a chapter-driven text editor. ‘Link like crazy’ is something that it can’t do.
February 7th, 2009 at 10:04 pm
@Johnn
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dfvkqjnd_173f6qvbgg4
Here’s one that I chopped up into different documents. I took the different tables, combined some, moved some to different docs etc….
kaeosdad’s last blog post..kaeosdad is now friends with Tuathal
February 7th, 2009 at 10:37 pm
@kaeosdad: very cool. Thanks for posting that. Mind if I link to it in an upcoming e-zine issue?
February 8th, 2009 at 12:23 am
@Johnn: sure.
kaeosdad’s last blog post..kaeosdad is now friends with Tuathal
February 8th, 2009 at 9:40 am
Thank you!
February 8th, 2009 at 6:07 pm
you should give The Brain a go. I prefer this as a mind mapping tool. http://www.thebrain.com/
February 8th, 2009 at 8:02 pm
Welcome to the blog Relexx.
March 19th, 2009 at 10:26 am
This article definitely inspired me to give FreeMind a go, and now it’s my favorite way to organize my games! It’s a really convenient organization style with a lot of possibilities. Thanks, Johnn!
March 22nd, 2009 at 9:29 am
Cool beans, Patrick. Do you have any maps that would be interesting to share?
October 26th, 2010 at 12:34 am
I’ve though about using mind mapping to track campaign and character notes. Using XMind (and testing a plethora of other products) I have still to figure out how to track the correct type and amount of information. My current cunundrum is what to base the mind map on; character or campaign…
http://thebreach.wordpress.com/2010/10/25/a-techies-approach-to-taking-notes/
Any ideas?
Marius recently posted..A techies approach to taking notes
April 22nd, 2011 at 8:28 am
I actually started using FreeMind about 2 weeks before reading this article.
I was actually forced to use FreeMind for an Advanced Creativity in Design class, though I used to prefer pen/paper. Needless to say, I love the application now, and decided to use it for Pathfinder GM’ing.
April 22nd, 2011 at 10:18 am
@Marius – sorry, I did not catch your comment till now. It’s too late, but I would base the map on the campaign, and have a PCs branch.
@Josh – that’s great. You should also try hand written maps. I find the software does not completely reach the potential of mind maps, as the doodles and pics you draw cement your memory and anchor your “mental map” of the mind map better for easier recall and reference.
However, with hand drawn maps you often draw yourself into a corner, something digital maps do not have a problem with.