Ok, let's get into the setup I used with Google Docs/Google Drive. For comparison, my Obsidian setup is described in The Nitty Gritty of Obsidian.
Structure
Each RPG system gets its own folder, and each campaign gets a sub-folder. This keeps any general rules or other material nearby with the campaign specific stuff.
Secret GM Stuff
I would typically create a main "GM File" that holds the bulk of my prep work. I've named it various things, but I'm partial to some variant of "What's really going on"1. I start with describing the main focus of the campaign, the primary factions, villains, etc. all at the top to give myself direction. If you're using something like Fronts from Dungeon World this is also a convenient place to keep and track them.
This file just continually grows over time. I'll use headers to group by topic (NPCs vs Locations vs...). Within each topic, each entity (named NPC or whatever) gets its own heading. That makes it work automatically with various built in organization tools and gives a convenient spot to add further detail as warranted.
I originally would insert a table of contents at the top & periodically regenerate it, but the automatic outline in the left hand panel has gotten useful enough that I don't bother with that anymore. Either way, as long as you have those headings in your Doc, the automatically generated structure will be super useful.
If there is enough to justify it, I'll sometimes break chunks out into their own file - detailed but generic world background, for example. A key difference vs Obsidian is that it feels (at least to me) much higher overhead to create and navigate between files in Docs. Where Obsidian is designed around small snippets of independent content that can be easily cross-linked, the heavyweightness of creating a new file, moving text around, keeping track of open tabs in your browser, etc. means that I would only do it a couple of times at most, and only when I was pretty sure I'd actually make use of the new file as its own thing.
This structure isn't really specific to Docs as opposed any other file-centric organization method. The exercise of going through, writing all this stuff down and making it concrete is valuable regardless of whatever else you do.
Player Facing Stuff
I'd usually end up creating a "Player Resources" or similar folder. tbh, I still do even when the bulk of my campaign prep lives in Obsidian. This folder usually gets shared with all the players, and holds character sheets + anything they should have easy access to - handouts, setting background summaries, etc. I just grant everybody in the game read/write access to the folder, we're all adults and nobody is worried about keeping secrets2 or someone else editing their character.
Session Notes
Finally, I create a running record of session notes. This is usually its own file, though a couple of times I've just mixed it in to the overall GM file. I'll decide on a template for the game in question (which often takes a few tries to figure out what is useful) and get a generic version set up at the end of the doc. Then to prep for a new session I cut & paste a new entry, update the session number and date, and start filling it out. This template will start with "stuff I need to run the session" and then have a section at the end for "what actually happened". This is where I will write down the things I need to remember going forward after the session ends. This is cobbled together from a mix of handwritten in the moment notes plus my memory. If I do it next day I'm good, but the longer I wait the harder this gets.
I first learned about this template method from Sly Flourish's Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master3. He provides a starting template oriented towards 5E D&D, but honestly the core of it is applicable to any game. Over time I've added or removed sections to better fit whatever game I'm running, but the key elements are that it 1) covers the important things that you need to remember to think about and 2) it's easy to use so when you sit down to plan a session, you can get rolling asap.
Other than exactly where they live, this concept of session template + notes is pretty much independent of a particular technology. I highly recommend using something like it, it really helps me avoid the blank page problem (when there is nothing, just getting started feels like an insurmountable burden) and makes sure I get the most important stuff hammered out first. I can always add more detail later if I've got time and am still enjoying myself.
What Works Well
The obvious big benefit of this setup (especially compared to plain Obsidian) is that it is all Cloud Native(TM), robust, backed up and available on any device you ever want at any time. Related, whenever you want to share stuff with your players, it's super trivial to do so and they'll have no problem getting it.
Aside from that, Google Docs is IMO a pretty good word processor. Writing in it feels nice, though like any similar program you have to be careful to focus on the writing, not getting caught up in the fancy formatting or messing with tables or whatever.
The native organization tools have gotten relatively useful. If you take a small amount of time to organize your work with headings (similar to what I'm doing in Obsidian anyway) then it will give you a really useful navigation panel that you can use to jump around. Recently linking between files has gotten a lot more powerful with the "@" commands that can quickly find and link other relevant docs without having to hunt for them in other tabs and grab the link. They've also added the ability to have multiple tabs within a single doc, which is likely useful but I haven't tried to make use of in an RPG context.
Integration with tools like Gemini and NotebookLM are prominent and easy if you want to use them. I'll talk more about this stuff in the future, but my quick opinion is that I don't want an LLM to generate my writing for me (Writing is Thinking), but editing, summarizing, searching are all useful supplemental kinds of things that still keep my brain in the driver's seat.
Downsides
The
biggest downside for me is the fundamentally linear setup of a giant doc. All
the things I mentioned above help with this, but I still end up spending a ton
of time scrolling or searching with ctrl-f when I use Docs on most campaigns.
The Scum and Villainy game I ran for about 12 sessions ended up with 43
pages of GM notes. Some of that was redundant - if I didn't get to something
in a session, a copy often got pasted into the next session's prep. But it was a
lot to deal with when I was trying to navigate.
There are a few games where this is less of a problem - spoilers for my Lancer discussion in the future - but most of the time for a reasonably complex campaign that is lasting more than 4-5 sessions I find the freedom to spread out and cross link my thoughts is incredibly useful.
Part of this is that creating a new doc feels heavy on my brain. Whenever you
create a new one it needs to reload the Docs app in a new tab, you need to name
it, find a template and copy/paste your standard structure, and figure out where
it will live. It simply doesn't compare to the process in Obsidian (literally
think of the name of a concept, put it in [[ ]], there is no step 3).
Takeaway
I don't mean to sound too negative here. Docs is overall a good tool, and I've used it on many many campaigns over the years. If Obsidian disappeared, I'd likely go back to Docs at least for a while. But in the end, for the games I'm running these days, the freedom to move freely between concepts and customize the tool to my liking and working style keeps me in Obsidian-land.
Conclusion
We've covered the basics of the major tools I've used in the last few years. Next we'll start getting into individual campaigns, and use that to dive into a few things that are more obscure or specific to particular games.
Previous: The Nitty Gritty of Obsidian
Next: A Deep Dive on Shadowdark (coming soon)