No need to see a good thread go stale.
Warning: Troll Ramble
When I think of campaigns, I think of plot, background, settings, and encounters.
A campaign tool should organize these elements into a navigable and editable format so the GM quickly finds the information needed and updates it based on character interaction.
In the case of the plot tree, the GM creates plot points assigns of any of the other elements to a particular plot point. Plot points have a success/failure or decision conditions that allow for story branches. I'm thinking of a flow chart here. Plots are things like 'The princess is kidnapped', 'Players find a clue', 'Players defeat the bad guy' was well as 'Players loose to the bad guy'.
The background tree contains history points and back story for NPCs and adds texture to the story. Backgrounds branch and cross-connect allowing the GM to quickly look up related data.
Settings involve maps, text, and visuals that help describe settings to players. Basically its places to go and things to see.
Encounters list all the vital stats for game interaction. Encounters involve information for combat and non-combat encounters with NPC and obstacle information. Encounters include stat sheets (character sheets) and tokens.
When you define a campaign element (plot, background, setting, or encounter) you relate it to other campaign elements that support it. For instance, a basic plot is; bandits attack the town. This is followed by a plot branch of 'players help/don't help defend the town'. The GM builds the plot tree from there. After defining a plot point, such as bandits attack, the GM assigns an encounter to it. In support of this, the GM defines backgrounds for the town and the bandits and assigns these to the 'attack' plot point. Settings for this plot point might include the town gates, a local tavern, or where ever the GM want the battle to occur. Encounters for this plot point include the bandits, city guards and local non-combatants.
For encounters, you might pull in a setting giving you a map view allowing you to place tokens. If you aren't sure where an encounter will occur, you might just pull in a list of plot points and pull in the setting later. Background and Settings work in a similar method.
So, now to the GUI view of this. I like the tree view concept but I like the Eclipse perspective idea better. In this case we have four perspectives the user switches between; plot, background, setting, and encounter.
The plot screen perspective shows a folder with each plot point the expands along a decision tree. Of course, all of this is editable on the fly allowing copy and paste of folders so a GM can quickly change base on character interaction. Once you have your plot point defined, you add in background, setting and encounter information as sub folders.
When you switch to the background perspective, you get a view of all the plot points, encounters and settings that this background feeds. Likewise, with encounters, you see all settings, plot points and backgrounds affected by the encounter list. Etc. etc.
I reckon that's enough of a ramble for now.
