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Section 6 of The Essential Guide to a GM’s Notebook mentions putting together a Word document and creating tables within it of all the equipment your players may possibly want to buy, using the core information from the System Reference Document and then adding to that any additional material from other books you may own.

While the guide seems to suggest using a single Word document, I recommend using separate ones just for the sake of keeping them organized. I recommend have one each for weapons, armor, misc. equipment and goods, spell casting services (with specific spells), and magic items. And it’s possible that you may want to split up the magic items into their own files, one each for potions, scrolls, wands, etc.

However, the order of the items given in the official SRD may not be what you want. I personally like to have various items sorted alphabetically, so that they are easier to find on a table. Unfortunately, the core books sorts magic items, especially wondrous items, by price instead. Furthermore, wondrous items I split into minor and major items, which can make it a bigger pain to find a price on a particular item using the tables.

I found it better to copy all that information into spreadsheet instead. Then you can just select the columns you want to sort, and sort it however you want. I generally sort the items first alphabetically, then by price. That way, items that have multiple versions (such as the amulets of natural armor) are nicely grouped together. This can save you a lot of time if you were looking up the price for such an item.

After doing your sorting in a spreadsheet, you can then copy the tables from there and into Word documents, and format them however you wish. For weapons and armor, I stick with the default page formatting. However, for everything else, I find it better to split the page into two columns, and flipping the page to landscape rather than portrait if needed. In this way, you can use as much of the paper for information, rather than having a huge block of white to around your tables.

Also, take advantage of page and column breaks. I use these to keep tables all together, rather than split across pages. Have all items of a particular type on a single page makes life much easier, and also takes less time when searching for a price.

Give this a try as you’re building your GM/DM Notebook. You may find that it helps you get through information more quickly when you need it in the middle of a gaming session. And hey, it never hurts to try out something that can make you a better DM!