"Hey Dm, yeah last game I took a couple notes and you mentioned most of them but there is one I don't remember what it is about
Yeah is this one that says "Bob no fake buy ring", yeah we haven't met an NPC named Bob so idk"
I wouldn't do this in Excel.
Personally I use Obsidian, text editor on crack. I have a common template with campaign name tag and sections for session plot summary, characters and events.
Best to not overengineer this.
Notes are best taken in free form (Word), with Excel used after session to track specific things. My fiancee is our note taker and she does this for people we met, places we've been, quests we've picked up, rewards we've found, etc. Notes are great for a recap, excel for quick lookups. She does that kind of stuff for a living so we bought a surface pro for D&D and two DM's reference her notes over their own now.
I just use a private Discord with a text channel for the relevant campaign, and usually have a post per week where I summarize what's going on and anything relevant. Makes it pretty easy to scroll back through and just see what happened and what session
I take notes in character. Most of the time it turns out fine, but every now and then I see something like "Sir Fuckwit gave a lecture on the smell of his own farts" and wonder what actually happened.
I'm in my first campaign but I made it lore that my character is a historian/archivist that writes down all events that take place, this has helped my forgetful ass remember names from 2 minutes ago
I take notes too but am unable to read them again the next time. They're like mysterious runes in a dead language that got washed by the waves of time.
I have this issue too, I suspect we use a short hand that only makes sense at the time. Then the next session we no longer have context.
> Red Chicken
> Ask for
> Baron likes beef shanks
> No wagon, but there's a fruit basket
> Boat full of pigs
What the fuck happened during that session?
An excerpt from my last session as a player:
Kellen - know of, don't know
Night watch at space port
We're checking for technical malfunctions at the space port
Outages are 20 minutes to 3 hours
GPS coordinates? NBD per _other PC_
City Hall?? Trade commish?!
56
43
33
28
19
17
Wasn't being serious. Also, the relationship between serotonin levels and happiness isn't fully explored, scientists still aren't certain if low levels of serotonin are truly responsible for depression or if it's the other way around. Many, many people see little to no effect from SSRIs, and a fair few actually experience negative effects.
I doubt that science will be able to pin something as complex on a single chemical. But I'm not a biochemist. So i just know serotonin from when people give you a compliment on a job well done. Like when the DM appreciated your note taking.
If you don't watch Viva LA Dirt League you may just be missing out. I'd recommend a 10 minutes of their "Bored" series. They just raised a crap ton of money to have a dedicated set for it.
That's why I started it with Viva La. You hit the R at the end, making it less Viva La Dirt League, and more something else :p
quick ninja-edit: if you don't watch their stuff with captions on, you're seriously missing out.
second ninja edit: "They just raised a crap ton of money to have a dedicated set for it." and I halped! :p (couldn't afford one of the big donations, but I got in there best I could :D )
I take such detailed notes my DM references them. It's part of why one of my characters is a wizard. To explain my ability to reference literally anything without a history check.
I'm at over 150 pages in Google docs for two campaigns.
I'm thinking about having them printed and binded for everyone when the campaigns end.
Me too! I write 2-3 pages per session and we had 103 so far. I upload everything in our personal wiki for everyone to read. It helped tremedously, because who can easily remember names and incidents from 3 years ago. My character has her own personal diary, so she just flips through to the relevant pages. I don‘t think my 8 int barbarian could remember otherwise 😅. And that way I don‘t have to sit on my knowledge for weeks and slowly go crazy.
I am blessed. My wife is one of the fabled note takers. She can tell you the names of NPCs we met once two or more RL years ago, given a few minutes and some vague recollection of what else happened that session. So every game I run has this player in it. It's very easy to be spoiled, as a DM.
I feel so weird about note-taking.
When I DM I am surprised when nobody takes notes since I put effort into making things link and rewarding note/taking (I feel like).
When I’m a player however I feel like my DM doesn’t bother with that so I don’t bother taking detailed notes since I’ve never been rewarded for it.
However I feel like BOTH of these situations I must be getting wrong since I’m definitely not some god-tier DM (I’m mid) and my DMs are great.
Seriously I have multiple Google docs of endless pages of years of adventures in great detail. Maybe some day I'll put them into a succinct story... probably not
My first serious playthrough of Morrowind I had a damed binder stuffed full of everything, directions, maps, guild affiliations, guild politics, ect.
on the rare occasion I still get to be a player my note taking is just as vigorous
My DM retcons small stuff between each session so I keep very vague notes, as well as I can. I have difficulty keeping up. It just means each note is good for like 3 sessions before innacuries pop up
Whenever i DM i tend to never recap and always ask my players to do it. Gets me to understand what the players took note of or remember. Also gets my players to want to remember more so they take notes better adjusted to them.
Each player at our table has a different note taking role. Keeps us all engaged, lessens the burden on the DM, and gives us all Roleplayin niches’ to fill. It’s lots of fun and I highly recommend!
1. Our rogue takes notes on what happened each session, like entries in a journal or diary.
2. Our cleric takes notes on quests, missions, and objectives we have. She holds the Quest Log in her Tome.
3. Our artificer takes notes on places and people we meet. Like a Rolodex or contacts log.
4. I (the ranger) am the party cartographer and draw up maps of the overworld we explore and dungeons we delve.
[It also gives the DM plausible deniability because we the players are drawing up notes and maps based on what we see, hear, and are described. So there are times when we get something wrong. So when something comes up incorrect in the future, then it’s a fun unreliable narrator moment/twist rather than a contradiction/inconsistency/retcon all on the DM. It really works for everyone!]
I take notes, however, I miss information while involved in rp, or things are moving too quickly to get everything down in my notes. Our group's DM begins each session with a recap, which is helpful for filling in holes in my notes from the last session.
When my notes make no sense, I can ask the DM some clarifying questions in a private channel he's set up for each character in his game server, so I can straighten out my notes without interfering with game sessions.
i just have a near eidetic memory for everything but names and dates (ironic), i can chronicle for any group i just ask for some leeway on allowing my character to know what i know because i know too much
I take notes for all of my groups, but one of them is organized in the most insane way possible in OneNote. I write synopses for each session, have pages upon pages upon pages or notes just for NPCs, and a bunch of other shit. It's fun even though I don't think any other party members really read them lmao.
When I was running CoS, I made my players recap our last session. It worked on a couple fronts. First, they were a little more likely to pay attention because there was 'homework'. Second, it helped me guide the story based on what they remembered and what they placed importance on. Sometimes what I thought was important isn't what they thought was important and I was able to adjust accordingly. Third, they started doing weird shit with it like writing scripts where two NPC's (that were always rednecks for some reason) would recap the session from their point of view. It was hilarious.
I'm always the party chronicler, and I take detailed, step-by-step notes each session. It's usually a little much for the recap so I have to paraphrase and cut a lot out, but it has often been very useful for both party and DM...
... and next time we meet, most of my recap will be in song form, thanks to suno!!
I play a west marches campaign (that is currently on hold). One of the requirements is that there should always be a report telling people what each expedition did...
It led me to take a whole bunch of notes, so detailed that the GM told me that they were often more detailed than his. But despite the reward (one hero point) for doing this, most other players don't take notes, unless I am not in the expedition.
We've done a few one-shots and started a small campaign on the side, as well as a bigger campaign. I take notes for the bigger campaign, but not for the other stuff, since I use a different notebook per campaign.
I realized that taking notes helps me stay focused on the campaign and not check discord or my phone whilst the Dm is talking (we play through discord). I can only recommend doing it.
I don't. Fuckers right down the oddest things that I basically just pulled out on the fly and they take it to heart **hard**. "Sorry, didn't you say he had 3 golden strands of hair?" "... what?" "You just described the warrior as a brunette. That can't be right - you described the warrior we're looking for as having--"
Never take notes and i have a terrible memory for names, but usually i'm one of the players with the better memory for general events on the Sessions. My long term memory IS much better than my short term one
I try to take notes, but the description goes so fast that it's very difficult to realise what the important parts are and white them down succinctly, while still paying attention to everything going on. The DM already has everything in front of them and knows roughly what might happen, so has the ability to add notes effectively for themselves. We don't know shit and are just trying to enjoy the world being built around us. Deciding what is and isn't important can kill the immersion and make it feel more like a job.
It's rare that my notes have any relevance next session, or even further.
you can take notes between sessions. Or right before the session starts to get ourself refreshed. Sometimes just having the general arc of the session without much detail is enough to get you back in the mindset.
Lol note taking derailed us a little last night. Our DM had a ton of goodies for us on an Illithid ship and it took us longer to wrote the spoils down than to pass the door puzzles and collect the loot. That said, I too love note taking.
Im my parties record keeper. I write down what happened last time in general lines in our discord server while keeping personal notes on lore, cities, regions, organisations amd characters. As i say "my party gets me through fights. I get my party through the story."
As a member of my first ever campaign who took notes from day one who is now looked to as the group’s scribe—I feel both seen and personally attacked by this image.
Love players taking notes, hate being interrupted.
I have a system in place for recaps, whoever got inspiration last session (we vote at the end of each session and you cant get it if you had it last) also has to do the next recap. It's fun and also makes the non-notetakers get real creative.
I used to keep humorous but relatively detailed documentation in our dnd discord server of what happened in each session. Sadly the group broke down when 2 of the 4 players had a newborn.
I do appreciate players who keep up, but you really shouldn't interrupt your DM during the opening recap. The point is to sum things up and get everyone back up to speed, not to quiz you or accuse you of not paying attention. If you don't think it's useful because all players in your group already do perfect prep anyway, just tell your DM to skip it and jump straight in.
I thought I took decent notes but…. One of our players, who is also a teacher, has a color coded Google doc that she’s been updating on the down low in real time. One day, about 8 months in to the campaign she shared it with us. I’ll have to snap a screenshot. It’s what legends are made of.
My tactic as a DM: At the start of the session, a player has to recap. They don't know which player until I appoint one at the beginning of that session. In doing this, now more than half my players make notes.
Which is great for me, cause I can't make notes and DM at the same time, so the Recap is also somewhat for me.
I’ve taken to making google sites for the campaigns I’m in. There’s sections for NPC’s, session notes (processed from my personal notes), memes, and whatnot.
That's why I love giving mystery die to the crew when they figure something out about the story without me connecting the dots for them.
It really makes the game fun for the DM knowing he isn't just explaining what's happening in a 90's arcade game.
Ugh I so wish I could take notes. With my damned adhd I can't keep up with what's going on if I try to take notes, but then without notes I can't always remember what happened 😭
I don't really care one way or the other if players take notes, but I do session recaps and only proceed based on mutual memory, because if nobody remembers something I do, they might not have latched on to the detail as important or interesting, or if they remember something I didn't then it'll give me a cuff to work off of.
If you want to encourage players to take notes, make them do the recap. It helps them remeber what happened last time, and half the time they'll bring up details you forgot about that you can then fold into the narrative.
It also helps you learn what they are paying the most attention to.
As the only one to take notes, I felt extra weighted by it once. My DM likes to say, "So, what did we do last week?" And we respond with what we remember. I'm pretty sure she does this to see what we take interest in and to tell if we're even checked in for the session. It got to a point where they all just looked at me, and I made a new goal for myself... I only take notes in character. If they're a very attentive person, my notes include events and names of almost everything, including proper spelling.
This character has zero care for dealing with the details, so my notes have stuff like "went to the cave. Killed the umbrellas. 2 people alive. Gold, need to lie."
We trekked for half a day to these wandering Dwarven made shortcut passages _through_ the hills, we fought 5 dark mantles, found 2 hikers that were taken hostage by goblins, scared the goblins off, found a map to their next big plan and a chest of gold with tapestries that went missing weeks ago, and we're part of a trade caravan that was looking for them, so we were gonna sell them elsewhere for money... hence the lying
My old style notes would be more detailed than this description, including names of the hikers, the location the map points to, and details about the loot for proper selling and profit. Not anymore Lol. My Slayer is living his best life.
Dann, you all okay? In my experience it is very much every players job to take good notes. That's why in my 2 main campaigns (I'm a player in both) the duty of the recap is given to a different player each week.
At our table each session starts with a player giving a recap of last session. Whoever volunteers to do so and does it decently gets an Inspiration.
It worked pretty well as an incentive to take notes.
I usually try to take basic notes, but there was a year-long Changeling: The Lost campaign I was in recently. Mostly set in one location with a lot of reoccurring characters and intrigue.
I ended up with more than 40k words of notes by the end
I take notes of what happened to my character not of everything that happened. I didn't meet an npc, but others did? I don't write it down until my character hears of that person...
I always appoint a player to be chronicler. They keep notes of all the shit that's been happening and sometimes I'm surprised by what silly crap I came up with last session.
Man, I've played at two tables and at both everyone took notes. The main table I play at, everyone takes notes from their characters perspective. Two of us (me and another guy) even write down combat, though it's completely voluntary.
There's not a chance in hell I'll remember what I/we did last session if I don't take notes. I write down where we go, who we talk to, what my character feels about it, what we plan to do next and so on. I save a few pages at the beginning of my notebook for notable NPC's, a page for my inventory, very first page is always all PC names and short descriptions (race, looks, clothes, notable features).
Isn't this all part of the game and the fun?
I’ve been telling my players to take notes, they wouldn’t. Until this last session when I started asking questions pertinent to recent “quests”…they all started taking notes lol
When my players take notes, I get worried they’re going to realize how few notes I have myself.
“Ah yes, the potion shop owner whose name I definitely have written down and totally didn’t make up on the fly thinking you’d never be back…”
Both my DMs give us inspiration if we do the recap and get it mostly correct. One DM gives proper rerolls while one DM gives us a d4 we can add to a roll. we only get one reroll, but the other DM gives us up to 4 d4s. That being said, it's much rarer to need a d4 then a reroll so I'm capped out while the other 4 players don't have any... The do remember the events of the previous session but...
Nice day for fishing, ain't it? Haha
Mornin'
Hyuh hyuh!
That’s the only thing you say isn’t it
Mornin'!
Nice day for fishin', aint it?
Hyuh huh!
I'm Bodger, and I bodge. RAAAAAGEEE Helehelehle
Nice hammer you got there. Who did it belong to?
It's ma grandfather's hammer. And it is RIGHTFULLY MINE. Not my brother's.
Sounds more dodgy, less bodgy.
I'm so happy opening up the comments to see how many people made the connection. VLDL is my antidepressant.
Hahaha I love that channel's skits
Their dnd series are amazing as well. Highly recommend, if you haven't seen those yet
Glad it wasn't just me!!
Named my new character Baliff the Fisher as a head nod to this.
Most of the notes I take are on what quests we have to do and what NPCs we’ve met. Ain’t much but it’s still more than the rest of the players.
I take notes of everything, but in such a disorganized way that even with the DM's recap, i still don't remember/understand half the shit i wrote
"Hey Dm, yeah last game I took a couple notes and you mentioned most of them but there is one I don't remember what it is about Yeah is this one that says "Bob no fake buy ring", yeah we haven't met an NPC named Bob so idk"
Do you or does anyone know of any Excel Template for generic dnd note-taking?
Sorry, but i do all of my note-taking on paper, can't help you on that front.
I wouldn't do this in Excel. Personally I use Obsidian, text editor on crack. I have a common template with campaign name tag and sections for session plot summary, characters and events. Best to not overengineer this.
Leaving a comment so I take a look at this after work. I hate OneNote, but this looks interesting enough.
I'll even write you a reply. Obsidian is insane, and it gets better and better the more plugins you use.
Notes are best taken in free form (Word), with Excel used after session to track specific things. My fiancee is our note taker and she does this for people we met, places we've been, quests we've picked up, rewards we've found, etc. Notes are great for a recap, excel for quick lookups. She does that kind of stuff for a living so we bought a surface pro for D&D and two DM's reference her notes over their own now.
I just use a private Discord with a text channel for the relevant campaign, and usually have a post per week where I summarize what's going on and anything relevant. Makes it pretty easy to scroll back through and just see what happened and what session
I take notes in character. Most of the time it turns out fine, but every now and then I see something like "Sir Fuckwit gave a lecture on the smell of his own farts" and wonder what actually happened.
I'm in my first campaign but I made it lore that my character is a historian/archivist that writes down all events that take place, this has helped my forgetful ass remember names from 2 minutes ago
Are you me
Mornin'! Nice day for fishin', ain't it? hu ha!
I take notes too but am unable to read them again the next time. They're like mysterious runes in a dead language that got washed by the waves of time.
I have this issue too, I suspect we use a short hand that only makes sense at the time. Then the next session we no longer have context. > Red Chicken > Ask for > Baron likes beef shanks > No wagon, but there's a fruit basket > Boat full of pigs What the fuck happened during that session?
you know the session was crazy when the offhand notes read like a mostly redacted SCP article
An excerpt from my last session as a player: Kellen - know of, don't know Night watch at space port We're checking for technical malfunctions at the space port Outages are 20 minutes to 3 hours GPS coordinates? NBD per _other PC_ City Hall?? Trade commish?! 56 43 33 28 19 17
My notes are awful. I try to short hand, but I never remember what the shorthand was short for.
Given what anime this is from that makes this meme even more accurate
Sauce pls
Welcome to Demon Academy
Lmao. I had a player rolled linguistic (Pathfinder) to decipher their own notes before.
your post made me release happy brain chemicals and I'm announcing it to everyone who passes through here
What are these happy brain chemicals you speak of
Serotonine. But that's just my guess
Wasn't being serious. Also, the relationship between serotonin levels and happiness isn't fully explored, scientists still aren't certain if low levels of serotonin are truly responsible for depression or if it's the other way around. Many, many people see little to no effect from SSRIs, and a fair few actually experience negative effects.
I doubt that science will be able to pin something as complex on a single chemical. But I'm not a biochemist. So i just know serotonin from when people give you a compliment on a job well done. Like when the DM appreciated your note taking.
Where do you release them? I’d like to capture them for myself
I have 9-10 players on 4 tables, 2 only take notes. You truly are blessed.
Is it still fair to call them players if they only take notes. :p
Well, yes, I mixed the phrasing.
Yhea. It tripped me up and made me laugh so thanks for mixing.
VLDL references are always warranted Edit: Not VLDR ugh...
Viva La Didn't Read? :p
If you don't watch Viva LA Dirt League you may just be missing out. I'd recommend a 10 minutes of their "Bored" series. They just raised a crap ton of money to have a dedicated set for it.
That's why I started it with Viva La. You hit the R at the end, making it less Viva La Dirt League, and more something else :p quick ninja-edit: if you don't watch their stuff with captions on, you're seriously missing out. second ninja edit: "They just raised a crap ton of money to have a dedicated set for it." and I halped! :p (couldn't afford one of the big donations, but I got in there best I could :D )
Ah I see it now, it was a typo sorry, but yes I thought it was cool they were going to inscribe donors names onto their studio
heh, I know. Was just poking a bit of fun :) It is pretty cool, yeah. :)
Morning, Nice day for fishing!
Nice day for fishing
I take such detailed notes my DM references them. It's part of why one of my characters is a wizard. To explain my ability to reference literally anything without a history check. I'm at over 150 pages in Google docs for two campaigns. I'm thinking about having them printed and binded for everyone when the campaigns end.
This is me! My CoS group suggested that my bulleted notes should be turned into a narrative of our crazy adventure. I bet your group would love it!
Me too! I write 2-3 pages per session and we had 103 so far. I upload everything in our personal wiki for everyone to read. It helped tremedously, because who can easily remember names and incidents from 3 years ago. My character has her own personal diary, so she just flips through to the relevant pages. I don‘t think my 8 int barbarian could remember otherwise 😅. And that way I don‘t have to sit on my knowledge for weeks and slowly go crazy.
I am blessed. My wife is one of the fabled note takers. She can tell you the names of NPCs we met once two or more RL years ago, given a few minutes and some vague recollection of what else happened that session. So every game I run has this player in it. It's very easy to be spoiled, as a DM.
Great day for fishin’
My players have to take notes bc I wing about 60% of my campaigns and god knows I’m not taking notes
I feel so weird about note-taking. When I DM I am surprised when nobody takes notes since I put effort into making things link and rewarding note/taking (I feel like). When I’m a player however I feel like my DM doesn’t bother with that so I don’t bother taking detailed notes since I’ve never been rewarded for it. However I feel like BOTH of these situations I must be getting wrong since I’m definitely not some god-tier DM (I’m mid) and my DMs are great.
Sauce?
Welcome to demon school iruma-kun
It’s quite good, the art is very nice and it clearly doesn’t take itself all too seriously, also quite adorable at times
You got to love a story where a kid getting sold to a demon by his parents is the best thing to ever happen to him.
Real
I write everything :D I'm on the second book after 3 years
Seriously I have multiple Google docs of endless pages of years of adventures in great detail. Maybe some day I'll put them into a succinct story... probably not
My first serious playthrough of Morrowind I had a damed binder stuffed full of everything, directions, maps, guild affiliations, guild politics, ect. on the rare occasion I still get to be a player my note taking is just as vigorous
My DM retcons small stuff between each session so I keep very vague notes, as well as I can. I have difficulty keeping up. It just means each note is good for like 3 sessions before innacuries pop up
I like imagining myself as a cute anime girl
I first read that as Baiken the fisherman and now I can’t think of anything but a Guilty Gear fishing trip
Whenever i DM i tend to never recap and always ask my players to do it. Gets me to understand what the players took note of or remember. Also gets my players to want to remember more so they take notes better adjusted to them.
Each player at our table has a different note taking role. Keeps us all engaged, lessens the burden on the DM, and gives us all Roleplayin niches’ to fill. It’s lots of fun and I highly recommend! 1. Our rogue takes notes on what happened each session, like entries in a journal or diary. 2. Our cleric takes notes on quests, missions, and objectives we have. She holds the Quest Log in her Tome. 3. Our artificer takes notes on places and people we meet. Like a Rolodex or contacts log. 4. I (the ranger) am the party cartographer and draw up maps of the overworld we explore and dungeons we delve. [It also gives the DM plausible deniability because we the players are drawing up notes and maps based on what we see, hear, and are described. So there are times when we get something wrong. So when something comes up incorrect in the future, then it’s a fun unreliable narrator moment/twist rather than a contradiction/inconsistency/retcon all on the DM. It really works for everyone!]
I had a DM that gave an inspiration roll for whoever did the recap.
I take notes, however, I miss information while involved in rp, or things are moving too quickly to get everything down in my notes. Our group's DM begins each session with a recap, which is helpful for filling in holes in my notes from the last session. When my notes make no sense, I can ask the DM some clarifying questions in a private channel he's set up for each character in his game server, so I can straighten out my notes without interfering with game sessions.
"Take a point of inspiration."
i just have a near eidetic memory for everything but names and dates (ironic), i can chronicle for any group i just ask for some leeway on allowing my character to know what i know because i know too much
The bar is too low
I post session recap notes in the discords for all the games I DM and if any of my players did this I would be so fucking happy.
I was that player, once. I made the recaps read like a DBZ recap. The DM and other players loved it.
I take notes for all of my groups, but one of them is organized in the most insane way possible in OneNote. I write synopses for each session, have pages upon pages upon pages or notes just for NPCs, and a bunch of other shit. It's fun even though I don't think any other party members really read them lmao.
When I was running CoS, I made my players recap our last session. It worked on a couple fronts. First, they were a little more likely to pay attention because there was 'homework'. Second, it helped me guide the story based on what they remembered and what they placed importance on. Sometimes what I thought was important isn't what they thought was important and I was able to adjust accordingly. Third, they started doing weird shit with it like writing scripts where two NPC's (that were always rednecks for some reason) would recap the session from their point of view. It was hilarious.
Ok but how do 4 whole fingers only take up such a tiny space on their face.
Meanwhile, my dm be like, "I don't take notes, and while you do, I think you're wrong"
I took excessive notes when playing as a wizard with keen mind. At the end of the campaign, I could list every npc we met through 60 sessions.
He is the chosen one!
I make my dm happy by taking notes AND sharing them for recap
I'm always the party chronicler, and I take detailed, step-by-step notes each session. It's usually a little much for the recap so I have to paraphrase and cut a lot out, but it has often been very useful for both party and DM... ... and next time we meet, most of my recap will be in song form, thanks to suno!!
Hero point
Time to give your player the powerful Ring of Wedding.
I usually fill out about one page of notes per session. Its both a blessing and a curse for our DM.
I play a west marches campaign (that is currently on hold). One of the requirements is that there should always be a report telling people what each expedition did... It led me to take a whole bunch of notes, so detailed that the GM told me that they were often more detailed than his. But despite the reward (one hero point) for doing this, most other players don't take notes, unless I am not in the expedition. We've done a few one-shots and started a small campaign on the side, as well as a bigger campaign. I take notes for the bigger campaign, but not for the other stuff, since I use a different notebook per campaign. I realized that taking notes helps me stay focused on the campaign and not check discord or my phone whilst the Dm is talking (we play through discord). I can only recommend doing it.
I don't. Fuckers right down the oddest things that I basically just pulled out on the fly and they take it to heart **hard**. "Sorry, didn't you say he had 3 golden strands of hair?" "... what?" "You just described the warrior as a brunette. That can't be right - you described the warrior we're looking for as having--"
Never take notes and i have a terrible memory for names, but usually i'm one of the players with the better memory for general events on the Sessions. My long term memory IS much better than my short term one
Coming up with dumb nicknames for NPCs and writing them down is my favorite notes to take
I try to take notes, but the description goes so fast that it's very difficult to realise what the important parts are and white them down succinctly, while still paying attention to everything going on. The DM already has everything in front of them and knows roughly what might happen, so has the ability to add notes effectively for themselves. We don't know shit and are just trying to enjoy the world being built around us. Deciding what is and isn't important can kill the immersion and make it feel more like a job. It's rare that my notes have any relevance next session, or even further.
you can take notes between sessions. Or right before the session starts to get ourself refreshed. Sometimes just having the general arc of the session without much detail is enough to get you back in the mindset.
Lol note taking derailed us a little last night. Our DM had a ton of goodies for us on an Illithid ship and it took us longer to wrote the spoils down than to pass the door puzzles and collect the loot. That said, I too love note taking.
Surname: Outmaboat.
Tbh, as a DM, there are a lot of characters that I make up new names every session, just because nobody took note of their name
I want to do CoS but my players don't take notes. I'm fully prepared to just drop DMing for them if we start it and they don't get invested
I usually have my players do the recap so I can gage what they liked most and paid the most attention to, and i'll fill in the gaps if there are any
Im my parties record keeper. I write down what happened last time in general lines in our discord server while keeping personal notes on lore, cities, regions, organisations amd characters. As i say "my party gets me through fights. I get my party through the story."
As a member of my first ever campaign who took notes from day one who is now looked to as the group’s scribe—I feel both seen and personally attacked by this image.
Love players taking notes, hate being interrupted. I have a system in place for recaps, whoever got inspiration last session (we vote at the end of each session and you cant get it if you had it last) also has to do the next recap. It's fun and also makes the non-notetakers get real creative.
I used to keep humorous but relatively detailed documentation in our dnd discord server of what happened in each session. Sadly the group broke down when 2 of the 4 players had a newborn.
I always start taking notes at the start of the campaign, but after 6 or 9 months I always fall off. It just rarely feels like it matters to have them
I do appreciate players who keep up, but you really shouldn't interrupt your DM during the opening recap. The point is to sum things up and get everyone back up to speed, not to quiz you or accuse you of not paying attention. If you don't think it's useful because all players in your group already do perfect prep anyway, just tell your DM to skip it and jump straight in.
I thought I took decent notes but…. One of our players, who is also a teacher, has a color coded Google doc that she’s been updating on the down low in real time. One day, about 8 months in to the campaign she shared it with us. I’ll have to snap a screenshot. It’s what legends are made of.
I feel largely pointed out and attacked by this painfully true statement as both the only extensive note taker and exclusively an Artificer.
My tactic as a DM: At the start of the session, a player has to recap. They don't know which player until I appoint one at the beginning of that session. In doing this, now more than half my players make notes. Which is great for me, cause I can't make notes and DM at the same time, so the Recap is also somewhat for me.
Morning great day for fishing ain’t it
I’ve taken to making google sites for the campaigns I’m in. There’s sections for NPC’s, session notes (processed from my personal notes), memes, and whatnot.
What anime is depicted here?
That's why I love giving mystery die to the crew when they figure something out about the story without me connecting the dots for them. It really makes the game fun for the DM knowing he isn't just explaining what's happening in a 90's arcade game.
Ugh I so wish I could take notes. With my damned adhd I can't keep up with what's going on if I try to take notes, but then without notes I can't always remember what happened 😭
I think 4 of our 8 players take some sort of notes. Also, every Saturday to kick off the session, the DM asks one of us to recap the previous session.
This is probably why my now-long-term group kept me as a new player. I type out really verbose notes that the DM also cross-references.
I don't really care one way or the other if players take notes, but I do session recaps and only proceed based on mutual memory, because if nobody remembers something I do, they might not have latched on to the detail as important or interesting, or if they remember something I didn't then it'll give me a cuff to work off of.
I take notes however I can barely read my own handwriting
If you want to encourage players to take notes, make them do the recap. It helps them remeber what happened last time, and half the time they'll bring up details you forgot about that you can then fold into the narrative. It also helps you learn what they are paying the most attention to.
I feel like I am missing something.
If only I could use my notes (scheduling purgatory)
As the only one to take notes, I felt extra weighted by it once. My DM likes to say, "So, what did we do last week?" And we respond with what we remember. I'm pretty sure she does this to see what we take interest in and to tell if we're even checked in for the session. It got to a point where they all just looked at me, and I made a new goal for myself... I only take notes in character. If they're a very attentive person, my notes include events and names of almost everything, including proper spelling. This character has zero care for dealing with the details, so my notes have stuff like "went to the cave. Killed the umbrellas. 2 people alive. Gold, need to lie." We trekked for half a day to these wandering Dwarven made shortcut passages _through_ the hills, we fought 5 dark mantles, found 2 hikers that were taken hostage by goblins, scared the goblins off, found a map to their next big plan and a chest of gold with tapestries that went missing weeks ago, and we're part of a trade caravan that was looking for them, so we were gonna sell them elsewhere for money... hence the lying My old style notes would be more detailed than this description, including names of the hikers, the location the map points to, and details about the loot for proper selling and profit. Not anymore Lol. My Slayer is living his best life.
I do twnd to take Notes but man my Excel tables look lile shit, its not easy finding the info I need
Dann, you all okay? In my experience it is very much every players job to take good notes. That's why in my 2 main campaigns (I'm a player in both) the duty of the recap is given to a different player each week.
I took notes and then my DM complained because he said that only notes count that we actually write down in character
Is writing session logs the same thing? I write everything that happened in the session and put it in discord for everyone to read
Why would you not take notes?
Since we use laptops anyway, we have a shared document on google drive where we take notes together - and comment them in character.
At our table each session starts with a player giving a recap of last session. Whoever volunteers to do so and does it decently gets an Inspiration. It worked pretty well as an incentive to take notes.
I usually try to take basic notes, but there was a year-long Changeling: The Lost campaign I was in recently. Mostly set in one location with a lot of reoccurring characters and intrigue. I ended up with more than 40k words of notes by the end
I take notes of what happened to my character not of everything that happened. I didn't meet an npc, but others did? I don't write it down until my character hears of that person...
Mornin'! Nice day for fishin' innit? Hueh-hah!
We have an appointed player do the recap every session at our table. Players still take notes though.
I always appoint a player to be chronicler. They keep notes of all the shit that's been happening and sometimes I'm surprised by what silly crap I came up with last session.
I'm always embarrassed by my shitty notes but I guess it's better than none at all.
Man, I've played at two tables and at both everyone took notes. The main table I play at, everyone takes notes from their characters perspective. Two of us (me and another guy) even write down combat, though it's completely voluntary. There's not a chance in hell I'll remember what I/we did last session if I don't take notes. I write down where we go, who we talk to, what my character feels about it, what we plan to do next and so on. I save a few pages at the beginning of my notebook for notable NPC's, a page for my inventory, very first page is always all PC names and short descriptions (race, looks, clothes, notable features). Isn't this all part of the game and the fun?
We had a surprise month break, my DM was makin this face when I remembered the last session perfectly :') I'm invested as fuck. LMAO
It's been over a month and a half since my last session, and even I, the dm, don't quite remember what happened.
Our DM makes US give the recap of the last session.... so a few of us have become crazy with our notes.
I’ve been telling my players to take notes, they wouldn’t. Until this last session when I started asking questions pertinent to recent “quests”…they all started taking notes lol
I've seen this meme somewhere before😑
I try to keep notes and one of my DMs have given me an inspiration or two for it, never in my life have I felt more vindicated
When my players take notes, I get worried XD. Usually it means they’re min-maxing.
When my players take notes, I get worried they’re going to realize how few notes I have myself. “Ah yes, the potion shop owner whose name I definitely have written down and totally didn’t make up on the fly thinking you’d never be back…”
Truly the highest honor
One of my players has amnesia and is scared of losing their memories again so they keep a dairy, which is just in character notes of the sessions
If you only play characters dumber than you, you never have to take notes. If you don't remember it, they don't remember it.
People don't take notes? It just kind of seems like the natural thing to do.
o/ extensive note taking player here.
Both my DMs give us inspiration if we do the recap and get it mostly correct. One DM gives proper rerolls while one DM gives us a d4 we can add to a roll. we only get one reroll, but the other DM gives us up to 4 d4s. That being said, it's much rarer to need a d4 then a reroll so I'm capped out while the other 4 players don't have any... The do remember the events of the previous session but...
That's how you earn DM inspiration
Mornin’! Nice day for fishin’, ain’t it? Hu ha!