# Referee Binder Essentials

**URL:** <https://discourse.tabletopadventure.games/t/referee-binder-essentials/143>\
**Category:** Gaming\
**Tags:** techniques\
**Created:** [March 25, 2025, 2:41pm UTC](https://discourse.tabletopadventure.games/t/referee-binder-essentials/143 "2025-03-25T14:41:59Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 7\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![MrMann](https://discourse.tabletopadventure.games/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/3e96dc/32.png) [@MrMann](https://discourse.tabletopadventure.games/u/MrMann)\
**Post date:** [March 25, 2025, 2:41pm UTC](https://discourse.tabletopadventure.games/t/referee-binder-essentials/143/1 "2025-03-25T14:41:59Z")

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A terrible storm has hit, localized entirely in your referee binder. The storm has rendered it completely ruined. What do you reach for to replace/rebuild what was in it?

More broadly, what do you like to see out of resources for your prep? Do you draw a hard line between tools you use to prep vs. tools you use to play at the table? How do you organize your materials?

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**Author:** ![nayba](https://discourse.tabletopadventure.games/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/n/41988e/32.png) [@nayba](https://discourse.tabletopadventure.games/u/nayba)\
**Post date:** [March 25, 2025, 3:28pm UTC](https://discourse.tabletopadventure.games/t/referee-binder-essentials/143/2 "2025-03-25T15:28:28Z")

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For me there are 4 essential elements to my GM Binder:  
Campaign Calendar & Notes  
Equipment List & Loot Tables  
Random Encounter Tables  
NPC Generators

Campaign Calendar & Campaign Notes:  
The bread and butter to allow the world to develop and have the players actually impact the world

Equipment List & Loot Tables:  
While at this point both my Equipment List and & Loot Tables are holy original and i keep tweeking them in case they went missing i would just start again with preexisting ones and not much would be lost. For me the main purpose is to allow for a smoother running game and not have to come up with weights and prices whenever a player asks for a specific thing

Random Encounter Tables:  
Similiar to the previous one I would probably start off again with a preexisting table but here i think it would realy hurt my game, in my opinion having random encounters tailored to ones game or campaign does a lot of heavy lifting and i would try to create tables of my own asap

NPC Generators:  
Probably not crucial in more dungeon crawly campaigns and might also be considered a form of a random encounter table, but because this might be the section in my GM Binder i use most i feel it needs to be mentioned seperatly. I am already using a preexisting one that is generic and than create NPCs that fit the specific situation on the spot so nothing lost if i was to loose my binder.

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**Author:** ![Panic\_Pillow](https://discourse.tabletopadventure.games/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/41988e/32.png) [@Panic\_Pillow](https://discourse.tabletopadventure.games/u/Panic_Pillow)\
**Post date:** [March 25, 2025, 8:25pm UTC](https://discourse.tabletopadventure.games/t/referee-binder-essentials/143/3 "2025-03-25T20:25:51Z")

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I tend to run stuff out of a shitty notebook, which tends to contain maps, a calendar/‘this is what happens over the xourse of X days if you do not intervene’ type thingies, and bespoke NPCs.

As I am trying to run a mega dungeon soon, I should probably try to collect some random tables to mitigate some of the prep, but that hasn’t been necessary in my games before.

So I guess I’d just remake everything from scratch… Not really efficient now that I think about it.

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**Author:** ![Jenx](https://discourse.tabletopadventure.games/user_avatar/discourse.tabletopadventure.games/jenx/32/15_2.png) [@Jenx](https://discourse.tabletopadventure.games/u/Jenx)\
**Post date:** [April 1, 2025, 5:02am UTC](https://discourse.tabletopadventure.games/t/referee-binder-essentials/143/4 "2025-04-01T05:02:02Z")

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This has come up a few times as a topic on discord too, but I have never quite figured out how people can simply “have a binder” with generic tools and use that for gaming.

Every single campaign I’ve run so far has required different enough things that I basically build a GM binder for it starting from scratch. I know people like to use various tables (ktrey ones or other offerings), have stuff like hex generating procedures and so on, but I have never had the desire or interest in playing in someone’s game when it’s clear **they** don’t even know what the game is going to be.

As such I do not have “a binder”, but broad categories of things I do have would be:

- Printed versions of any modules I may be using at a given session, with notes written on them if necessary (I always modify them to fit my campaign setting)
- A list of names to use for NPCs.
- Extra character sheets
- Player-facing reference sheets (I usually have those in player booklets that I make, but sometimes I need things in separate sheets)
- Extra pieces of blank paper.

I also carry a notebook that I use to track session information like players attending, turns elapsed, xp gained etc, and then whatever rulebook I am actually using, along with the player handbook booklets with house rules information.

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**Author:** ![ktrey](https://discourse.tabletopadventure.games/user_avatar/discourse.tabletopadventure.games/ktrey/32/29_2.png) [@ktrey](https://discourse.tabletopadventure.games/u/ktrey)\
**Post date:** [April 1, 2025, 1:15pm UTC](https://discourse.tabletopadventure.games/t/referee-binder-essentials/143/5 "2025-04-01T13:15:34Z")

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I have a few of my Tables that seem to migrate from Binder to Binder for most games ([Random Impedimenta](https://blog.d4caltrops.com/2019/04/random-impedimenta-d100-single-page.html) is probably the oldest veteran for this) obviously a lot of it does consist of these single page Random Tables (that I share on my blog for other Referees who might find them useful) but each is usually curated to a particular Campaign or group of Players I’m running for.

As mentioned, a good long list of Names is something I always like to have handy. The Ready Ref Sheets moves between Binders a lot. The binder is mostly used for Tools that I need during Play. Prep draws from a lot of other tables that might be unwieldy in a single binder…but if I come across one that might be useful in Play for a particular Session…into the Binder it goes!

In terms of organization, I usually insert the tables themselves in those plastic sleeves so that I can move them around easily. They’re usually grouped together vaguely based on need and separated by dividers (“Character Generation” “Encounters” “Vignettes” etc.)

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**Author:** ![jamiltron](https://discourse.tabletopadventure.games/user_avatar/discourse.tabletopadventure.games/jamiltron/32/4_2.png) [@jamiltron](https://discourse.tabletopadventure.games/u/jamiltron)\
**Post date:** [April 26, 2025, 8:59pm UTC](https://discourse.tabletopadventure.games/t/referee-binder-essentials/143/6 "2025-04-26T20:59:11Z")

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Interestingly, I build a new referee binder for each campaign.

I am very much a “swapper” in the tools I use. I don’t tend to consistently draw from the same sources all the time. There is something to be said for using a consistent set and getting really good at it, but for me I find I get bored with _how_ things work in one source or another, or the class of results you get from one or another.

For example - when using the d30 Sandbox materials, you get a lot more “vanilla” results, things that feel a lot like the kind of stuff that existed in settings in late 1e and 2e - lots of realistic ecologies, lots of consistent terrain sets, no unusual weather, etc.

When drawing from Perilous Wilds there’s a lot of hodge podge thematic collections - monsters that are one animal + another animal + another, etc.

This is all stuff that you can definitely curate and retheme as a referee, but you do get a kind of specific kind of opinion from the results.

So I tend to like drawing from a lot of sources, and changing up what I use, in addition to what I create.

Anyway, tl;dr - what do I rebuild?

- Hex map of the setting
- List of names from major cultures
- Encounter tables for typical regions and dungeon levels
- A process for downtime for players
- Referee process cheat sheet
- My usual method of cataloging topics
- A list of magical items not found in the corebook
- A list of spells not found in the corebook
- A means of creating ideas or helping with adjudicating (often something similar to Mythic GME’s tables and core procedure)

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**Author:** ![Fistful\_Of\_Dice](https://discourse.tabletopadventure.games/user_avatar/discourse.tabletopadventure.games/fistful_of_dice/32/126_2.png) [@Fistful\_Of\_Dice](https://discourse.tabletopadventure.games/u/Fistful_Of_Dice)\
**Post date:** [February 11, 2026, 11:46pm UTC](https://discourse.tabletopadventure.games/t/referee-binder-essentials/143/7 "2026-02-11T23:46:59Z")

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This has shifted for me over time but currently in my DnD backpack I’m trying a two binder system. Binder 1 is actually for running and has maze rats and it’s spark tables , JG reference sheets, some Ktrey tables that are particularly useful for crawls (how does this door open, dungeon sounds, where is that treasure hidden), a list of names, random encounter tables and monster stats for reference , calender/campaign notes, extra sheets, graph paper, lined paper, blank paper. Extra post it notes and tabs for organization.

Binder 2 is geared towards prep. Stocking procedures, blog posts about theory that I want to keep handy and reread, lore notes, tons more tables that are more useful for prep than running, blog posts that I’m less familiar with that I keep as reading material.

(This is kinda cheating but my other other binder is a tablet with a bunch of Wikipedia downloaded, Dragon magazines, art, and books on it both about ttrpgs and other things that still assist with all that and that goes in the backpack too)