First time D&D DM - few questions

[arsheesh]

Organizing Combat

Hm, some really great ideas here! I think I'll join the fun. Regarding organization during combat encounters, I created my own "Battle Chart" in Word (though if you have access to Excel, even better). In this battle chart, I drew up tables for the party and all of the baddies that listed initiative order, and some quick info on the combat stats of the party and the monsters (see the attachment below). Whenever combat begins, I record the initiative order on the chart. Likewise, whenever HP are lost, or other combat modifiers are applied, these can quickly be recorded in the table. This has helped me immensely in speeding up combat.

Organizing Your Campaign

On another note, if your are not already familiar with the Obsidian Portal, you should do yourself a favor and check it out. Basically it's a web hosting site that allows you to create and maintain your own wiki based site. I can't tell you how helpful a resource this has been for me and my players. You can keep virtually all of your campaign and world info all in one centralized location that is accessible to all of your players. You can even create DM only pages, or append DM only sections to public pages for you to create your own notes. They also have a feature that allows you to upload your maps, though sadly, the resolution is quite limited. If you want to get a sense of what can be done with this site, I'd invite you to check out my Age of Legends campaign (it was last month's Featured Campaign of the month).

Cheers,
-Arsheesh