Hey friends, Ginny Di here! And today I just wanted to do a really indulgent, highly aesthetic tour of the journal I have been putting together for my D&D character, Aisling It's kind of like, part character sheet, part campaign notes, part scrapbook I've designed it to be both useful and pretty as sort of a celebration and documentation of Aisling so far Just in case you want to make a similar notebook I will link to athe items I use to put it together in the description It also features some art, both gifts and commissions So I will also link to each artist in the description in case you want to check out their work and maybe commission them for yourself! So, let's get started! I... [Doorbell rings] Ooh, hang on a second (Singing to the tune of Hello! from Book of Mormon)
♪ Hello! My name is Ginny Di ♪ ♪ And I've been sponsored to tell you about a brand new book! ♪ ♪ It's called ♪ ♪ The Scarlet Citadel ♪ ♪ It's made for 5th edition, you should really have a look! ♪ *Ding Dong* ♪ It's from ♪ ♪ the folks from Kobold Press ♪ *Ding Dong* ♪ And it's a classic dungeon crawler, such exciting news! ♪ *Ding Dong* ♪ It's made ♪ ♪ For levels 1-10 ♪ ♪ And it has online features your whole group could really use ♪ *Ding Dong x2* ♪ It has ♪ ♪ A path of battle maps ♪ -Hi! ♪ Their poster sized have these awesome color overlays ♪ *Ding Dong* ♪ You can ♪ *Ding Dong* ♪ Read all about it now ♪ - Hello! ♪ Go pledge a couple dollars to their Kickstarter campaign ♪ - Hello! ♪ It will ♪ ♪ be so much fun, I know ♪ ♪ It starts out in a ruined fortress in the depths below ♪ - Hey friends! ♪ I'll just leave the link ♪ - Click here! ♪ In case you have to think ♪ - Oh boy! ♪ I can fully guarentee you that this book will change your game ♪ ♪ (Oh no) ♪ ♪ This book will change your game ♪ ♪ (Oh no) ♪ ♪ This book will change your game ♪ ♪ This book will change your game! ♪ *Sighs* - Solicitors So rude Okay, so, my D&D journal When I first started playing my Warlock, Aisling I kept a little notebook, and then I hand wrote her stats into the first few pages Then I used the pages after that to take notes during sessions We use a lot of homebrew features, so it didn't really make sense for me to use online tools like D&D Beyond This notebook works fine for a few levels But as Aisling gained abilities I started to outgrow the pages I had laid out in the beginning And when I decided to multi-class into Druid, it became clear that my system needed to be updated I wanted something where I could easily replace, or update, or add pages But I also care a lot about aesthetics So, I didn't just want to make a big, ugly, unwieldy binder or anything I hunted around for resources online And I eventually found this cute little miniature faux-leather three-ring binder I'm also using plastic sleeves Mini notebook paper Plastic trading card sleeves And these little floral dividers I will link all of this in the description, in case you want to use the same things to put together a similar journal Okay, enough explanation, let's look inside! Thanks to commissions and gifts, I have some beautiful art of Aisling that I wanted to include in the journal This cover page is by Sarah Mills, an old friend, and an extremely talented artist I've also added some fake flowers and leaves to a few of these pages Sort of, scrapbook style This is the main character sheet page with all of Aisling's core stats It also features this gorgeous portrait of Aisling by Joe; aka, Art of Joenni One thing that kind of sucks about D&D is that you have to mark at least some of your stats in pencil Because they are going to change over the course of the game But also, pencil smears when you touch it, which drives me absolutely nuts So I got a bunch of plastic sleeves, so I could keep my pages contained and safe And then remove them when they needed to be edited The net page has languages and proficiencies, features, and traits; and all of her money and equipment To be totally honest, we don't keep super close track of money and equipment in this game Our Barbarian has a bag of holding, and she manages inventory for that And otherwise, this stuff just doesn't come up that much I could see needing more than one page, or a more organized page for a game that puts a little more preasure on inventory Of course if it does become a problem, I can just easily add more pages here I also added some cute little floral dividers to help me quickly navigate between sections This purple one is for Nightshade, Aisling's pseudo-dragon familiar The coverart is a commission from Wingbuffet And I cannot tell you how lucky I feel to have gotten one of his commission slots He even portrayed Aisling's hair in a transition point between Summer and Autumn colors Which is so cool Most of the art so far is spring and summer themed And my own cosplays have only shown her in Spring and Summer form But, I can't wait to share her Autumn and Winter looks with you guys some day This spread is all of Nightshade's basic stats As well as the spell information for the Find Familiar ritual The art on the right here is by Liz Kramer The sketches on top were some of the ideation phase, and the bottom is the finished art But, I just love the sketches so much that I wanted to include them Liz is a actually open for commissions right now And offers 10% off, if your character is a lizard or a dragon Which is just amazing Next up is spells Aisling has levels in Warlock and Druid So I definitely wanted a specific section where I could reference all of her magical abilities during games The first page here is spell basics for both classes, and then a list of her Warlock spells After that I have written out each of her Warlock spells in full Some of them had to be pretty heavily condensed to fit into this space But, the good thing about this style of journal is that if I realize this method isn't working I have the flexibility to swap it out And maybe print off spells or write them onto larger pages if I need to For Druid spells, I was lucky enough to buy a deck of spell cards which don't appear to be available for Warlocks But it all works out, because Druids can change their spells every long rest Whereas Warlocks are kind of stuck with whatever you picked So it's super helpful that these are the spells that I can easily pull out and replace as necessary I did the same thing for her most common wildshapes Which right now are Dire Wolf, Giant Spider, Spider, and Cat I have a whole deck of these, so as her wildshape improves And as I find use for other forms I can add as many as I want for easy reference Finally, the back half of the journal is for session notes These are not usually very pretty, or I would have looked for a more aesthetically pleasing paper But usually these are just me noting down NPC names and lore information And keeping track of damage and spell slots and such So I don't have to constantly erase and update my main character sheet page My favorite thing about this style of character journal is that I can change my mind as many times as I want, which will probably be often I'm easily influenced by seeing other people's ideas or cool layouts on Pinterest, or hearing an interesting concept on Twitter So the fact that I could redo, for example, my spell section anytime if I stumble across a more efficient or cooler idea for how to do it is really attractive to me For me, this isn't just a character sheet it's also a creative representation of Aisling's character As I continue to play her I would love to add pages with narrative pages about her backstory Or scrapbook style recountings of some of the quests and adventures she's been on I hope you enjoyed seeing my character journal and if any of you keep a journal or scrapbook for your character I would love to hear what kind of stuff you include in it in the comments Even though I've cosplayed Aisling a few times already It's always with pieces from other costumes But I am finally putting the finishing touches on a complete Aisling costume that was specifically desgined and created for her And I cannot wait to show it to you I've been posting some updates about the build on my Twitter, in case you aren't already following me there And don't forget to subscribe, and click the little notification bell, I guess I guess I'm supposed to be asking people to do that Because I guess subscriptions have become functionally meaningless Because YouTube doesn't show you the things you are subscribed to anyway I don't know, algorithms are terrible; and analytics are meaningless
This is really cool and I'm totally doing it