Druid Cycle Player Matrix

I love a lot of aspects of 4e D&D, and one of my favorites is the concept of level tiers. For those who aren't familiar with 4e, character levels 1-10 are known as heroic tier, 11-20 are paragon tier, and 21-30 are epic tier. There are specific game mechanics associated with these tiers (for example, players can select a paragon path at level 11 and an epic destiny at 21), but I find them more useful for organizing characters and storylines.

In the Druid Cycle campaign world, we have a lot of stuff going on. Currently there are eight players and a total of sixteen characters. (Timothy alone accounts for six of those heroes!) Some characters are very active, while others may not see any action for months at a time. How do I keep track of all these moving parts? In a handy-dandy spreadsheet, of course! The rows are the names of the players, and the columns are for the three tiers (heroic, paragon, epic). I put the character names in the individual cells, along with their class and level. This allows me to see the breakdown of the characters in the different tiers (at the moment, we have seven in heroic, six in paragon, and three in epic) and which characters would be suitable for which storylines.

Not surprisingly, then, we have three multi-player Druid Cycle stories going on, one for each tier. (This doesn't include the many solo adventures.) The heroic-tier folks are adventuring in the lost city of Tadjeser, the paragon group is searching for the Castellan's Journal, and the epic-tier guys are hunting Ekhis and his minions. Now, as it turns out, all three of these storylines are related, but perhaps that's a topic for another day...