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Ah yes, on my notes I have such gems as -Jacob steals Granax’s toiletries -Take a selfie w/ [BBEG] -Murder boogie -Plantaur And finally -Our party almost burns down an old guy’s house
I have -"the skeleton's like 'ajahdkshdlajshd' then backs into a wall ominously" -"the rest of the town's sorta just, like, blah, you know?" -one entry for an npc just says "Swordspunchguy" -another is just the npc's name and then "hmm...". I have no idea what it means -one of the pc's entries is just emojis?
I love taking notes in-character. I once played a person who was gradually becoming less sane, and while I wrote down my notes I made them more squiggly and wavy across the pages, finally writing in spirals and other shapes. Looked great, but was a bit hard to read afterwards, lol
That's always fun! My bard is keeping a journal where he writes each entry as a letter to a friend he misses. Included is song lyrics, doodles, and the occasional private entry pining for said friend. The rest of the party are a bunch of snoops, so if they ever sneak a peak at said journal in-character they're going to find a treasure trove of shenanigans and opinions!
@@pLanetstarBerry oooh I should definately do this for my bard! I'll be starting a little while in, but I think it's okay, I want to take notes seeing this
@@MothCreature13 If it make you feel better, I started pretty late, so I'm playing catch up as well! The way I'm going about it is that I'm taking current notes then filling up past notes as I remember them, corroborating with the DM and other players on what I've forgotten. Good luck on your notes!
One guy in our party had his entire backstory be people's thoughts on his insane character, as if they'd been interviewed about him. The logic was, nobody could've possibly understood his thoughts, so he couldn't write his own backstory. It's actually worked out fantastically, as when he became unable to make it to sessions anymore, he had the DM kill him and our party is investigating how he died
@@jongameaddict Holy shit, that sounds amazing! That has the energy of a found footage documentary crossed with that one scene in Mean Girls where everyone is talking about Regina George. I hope you find his killer one day!
"[...] and a player asks me to press pause for a second while they were noting down what I was saying, I would not be upset. I would just be glad they were taking notes." - YES. As a GM/DM of 30+ years, A THOUSAND TIMES YES. A player taking notes means they're taking an interest in the story I want to give them a part in and that's the best gift they can give me.
If I forget to note something down I can message my DM and ask anything if I notice it later on. Like I could remember from last session we met some one new but could not remember her name so I went to look and forgot to write it down. He gladly reminded me and even send a "recap" the day before for everyone
My DM gives a tiny amount of XP for session notes. It wasn't enough to encourage anyone. I did so anyways just for myself. After 15 sessions this accumulated, so now my character is at least 1 level higher, than anyone else's. I'm not alone taking notes anymore.
A fun thing for me is that I am the one writing session summaries for one of my groups, but my character is a disinterested 13-y.o. who hangs around in a corner being bored while the rest of the party is figuring stuff out. And while I parked my character there, I am taking notes for the summary I'm writing later 😅
You'd be surprised how little there is on this topic, there's loads of videos about how to take notes if you're the DM, but barely any on note-taking for players.
This! I struggle with my notes so much. I never know what to write down and what not to write down. I usually end up having very cluttered notes and it's all over the place. And sometimes I just forget stuff that has happened, which is a bit sad. :(
@@ThomazSDA For me, the secret is going over my notes right after the session. The quality of my in-session notes can be variable, but writing up the session after helps a lot. And I leave myself notes for next time of things I want to do or ask that I didn't get a chance to during the session or that I figured out during the write up.
I know a player who made a Campaign Wiki that anyone in the party can add and edit. Running sections for "current objectives" "npcs" and "locations". It's really solid.
When my first campaign ended after 2 years, I realized that I had no concept of how long our adventure had been in-game. We started our second campaign, and I made sure to ask our DM about the time structure. Now, every session, I track the date and time at the beginning of my notes section. I write what session it is, and track the in-game date and time at the beginning of the session, and at the end. Weirdly enough, I find it helps with roleplay.
That makes a lot of sense actually! I find that I come into a game weeks later and forget that we had a conversation with a guy 10min ago. its pretty immersion breaking when I realize my character essentially has short term memory loss lol
I write "conversation starters" in between sessions. My last session was so crazy that, for this upcoming session, I even made a *dialogue tree* for myself
i sometimes take notes on "what i'm doing next session" - recently, my first irl session in a while, i made a note after the session to LIGHT A TORCH NEXT TIME because i forgot i had ten... and we need fire to kill trolls. also useful for long-term plots like "how is my character going to react to this impending plot point" lol
I have an entire section dedicated to badass lines, comebacks, etc. As a cleric who worships the Goddess of Flame, Summer, and the sun, I've gotta be a badass.
I find my notetaking habits depend a lot on my character. The most detailed notes I take are when playing my university student wizard, who actually takes a lot of notes in character, is curious and likes to figure things out and gather knowledge. With my pirate sorcerer, my notes are much more concise and I basically just put down the most important points during a session. And with my scrappy forest child druid, I take like one note every three sessions, and it's mostly something like "gotta teach that one dude a lesson because he insulted my friend. get him alone, scare him a lot." So in campaigns where I want to take notes, I try to give my characters a reason why they would write down stuff. Characters keeping diaries works very well for me!
I end up taking notes in the games that I’m not running, and it’s usually a fairly consistent style (although not always coherent). The one time I didn’t take any notes was when I was playing an 8 INT barbarian assassin.
My werewolf bard noble was a pain in the butt for taking notes. Everything in flowery prose, in exquisite detail, because his journal was something he always intended to share as a memoir. I filled multiple hundred page A4 noteblocks with his journal. (It worked out to roughly a noteblock per adventure - those adventures covering multiple sessions.) Could I find anything in there if I went and dug it out now? Nope! It wasn't too bad when I was actively playing that campaign, because I had a vague recollection where it would be in the journal, but these days, while it's an excellent chronological accounting of events, it's dreadful in that it only has chronological sorting.
I have an equally terrible memory, forgetting conversations, names, sometimes what I had for breakfast. As a DM, I had to come up with a way to remember some of my players actions. Aside from my own note taking for story purposes. I start every session by having my players describe the last session for me. This does two things, helps me remember everything that went down ~and~ Gives me a meaningful understanding of what the players found memorable and fun, so that I can expand upon that. I'd recommend this style of recap for any DM. Also, I like to get the ball rolling by mentioning the main event that I can recall.
My group does the same, last one to come in does a recap of last session - it a) helps with people being on time, cause most don't like having to do the recap (pretty much every time before we implemented this I had to do the recap :' ) and b) especially those in the group that have bad note taking, get reminded of stuff they might already forgot. On the DM side I totally agree with your points - you get some hints and a better feel for what the players enjoyed, found especially interesting, or something they might've overlooked and you'd wan't to get emphasized more. Even if you ask your players for feedback this recapping can give you pointers the players might not even be aware off to give you when straight up asked.
Any game in which there are mechanics for luck, such as fate points, mulligans, etc., our group always gives an extra one out for whomever can do the best recap of the last session, as we alternate games each week, so each game has a two week (or more, depending on work/family conflicts) gap between games. Note taking helps with that a lot, and makes it where players want to pay attention.
My DM does this. He calls it "unreliable narrator" [he even specifically states that I can't read from my notes unless the group was waaaay off.] It helps people remember what they did, and figure out a game plan for what they'd like to focus on that particular session.
That last tip about 'making a system work for you'...it gives me an idea, honestly. Because I hate taking notes, but in the past when I was drawing stuff almost every session for stuff that happened in game, I remembered tons. Maybe I should start doodling what happens in my notebook as well as the little scraps of basics I write down?
yes, that would be epic :O We have a doodler as well as a notetaker in my group, and both are invaluable. Our doodler shares her drawings on our discord server after sessions, and it's a great way to look back at the important things.
Write notes around your doodles and doodle around your notes. I made doodles in my notes for a campaign a while back and it made looking up the things I wanted to find much easier
It certainly helped me in my GCSE History and English! My notes were insanely compact and long and there were doodles everwhere but I remembered a tonne for the mocks!
Brilliant! If I may suggest, you may want to take a look at mind-mapping. It involves doodling, but linking things together, usually around centres. I’ve been doing this for organizing things for years, and have essentially developed a shorthand of images, so instead of reading text I can look at the images and know what it means.
As someone who was terrible at taking notes & trying to listen to a teacher at the same time in school (thus requiring the need of a teacher-aide) this is a good, topical (& maybe even a slight "call out") video for me.
As a player, I've struggled to find a method that could help me to retain my notes. However, thanks to this video. I have a lot more insight and options I hadn't even considered! Thank you Ginny, very useful suggestions.
In my main campaign, I'm the notetaker for the party. I have just basically written out the basics of what we do in the session and sometimes some doodles separated by date. I underline NPCs and important names, but that's pretty much it. I feel like I could definitely up my game (as it were) on that front. I really like your idea of making a spreadsheet with the NPC, location, and description. I think I might implement that.
I made an public npc sheet for my last campaign as names are something I’m terrible at, started out as just me, but then I had to go mobile for work and it was easy for anything I missed for the rest of the party to add to either in full or something specific they wanted to remember it was really cool and really easy with google docs
I am our groups note taker in a shared google doc. I’m able to take comprehensive notes and participate. We have a doc of session notes tracked by date, (both real world and game dates), a world history timeline, loot doc for magic and important items, and a spreadsheet that tracks the group treasury and each party members gold. I love the idea of an NPC doc...that’s one thing we (players and DM) search for most frequently. Now to find the time to go through hundreds of pages of session notes to get all the NPCs!
I've begun, as our party's bard, recording a narrative recap of the previous week's session and putting it in our discord the day of the next session. It serves two purposes: A: it forces me to review my notes/become better about the actual notes I take B: it allows us to move quicker into the current session (although admittedly I do miss things that the other players think are relevant, and we'll discuss that) Plus, the other players and DM seem to find it entertaining, and it's a little bit of out of game roleplaying that I get to do.
I've found, recently, the joy of writing my DMs notes out with a fountain pen on nice paper. The visceral feeling of writing has really helped me to connect my words to my memory and I find that I have a much better internal search when I go flipping through my 11 pages of notes that I wrote for this part of the adventure 3 months ago. I got a few nice pens of different line widths and a few beautiful inks that I really like. It feels like an artistic endeavor in a new way as I'm creating the myriad horrors that my players must wade through.
I have this image of 5 bored players watching calligraphy as a spectator sport. ;) I love fountain pens, especially the sound of the nib on paper. However, as a left handed writer it can get very messy very quickly. Plus, my hand writing absolutely sucks.
Apparently writing things out by hand involves mentally processing it in a different way than typing, so it probably also helps you fully absorb the story you're creating so you'll remember it better later.
I am the constant notetaker of our group, and for me, if I write it down, I remember it better. Even then, I could really use some of these tips, especially for things like making sections or codes for NPCs/locations. Our DM will say something like "a stout halfling with purple hair rushes up to you and shouts 'so we meet again!'" and I will gasp, and the rest of the group looks at me like blank deer in headlights, then I'm scrolling back thru 2+ years of session notes trying to remember why I remember this person. I LOVE your spreadsheet for NPCs, so even if you don't remember a name, you can look up by location, race, class, etc. Thanks!
One thing I would suggest for those who struggle to pay attention and take notes simultaneously is to actually take the notes after session. This lets you spend as much time as you need on them while the information is still fresh and not have to divert your attention from what is going on in game to write effectively. This can also let you roleplay the notes, one idea I particularly love is having the notes be letters you are sending to a friend or family or love interest recounting what is going on.
In my view, people who take so many notes that they get distracted by the note taking, are writing too many notes. We don't need to remember every dice roll.
@@rogerwilco2 Or they have trouble writing and listening at the same time, especially if they want it to be legible. I often struggle with typing and listening at the same time, never mind forming letters by hand.
I'm definitely a "try to write everything down so I can reference it later" person. As someone who also cosplays as their characters, I find taking super detailed notes helps with that and knowing I have real events to reference when I'm doing things like making tiktoks or drawing any of my party's PCs. I like the idea of sticky tabs to mark important stuff. I might start using that!
"You will be thrilled to hear that this video is sponsored" I absolutely am, you're right. As for the video itself, my brain tells me I remember everything, but I always remember a critical flaw in that later. I have no real ability to pull up memories on demand, even if I remember the stuff. I really do need to take notes and so these kinds of tips will be useful if I ever learn to stop pretending I can trust my memory. >>
I have the exact same problem. Brain continuously demonstrates its ability to retain absolutely everything, but the recall function is even still something I haven't entirely mastered. My current note taking is a sort of play by play to try to engage the storyteller part of my brain. Just take the skeleton of the story down to remind me of the meat later. Definitely agree with the general sentiment that there's some good and useful content in this video. My only other strategy to improve my note taking is to learn shorthand, so additional ideas are very welcome
We have a "lore keeper" or two, depending. Cause when you're in RP, it's hard to take notes for yourself and concentrate at the same time. So, depending on who's RPing, one or the other does it. Cause some of us take horrible notes, others take really nice shorthand/detailed notes. Currently we have two, and it's worked out really well. I'm the DM....I'm terrible at remembering things, I usually use the recap as my notes, and it's STILL only partial, so everyone else fills in the rest. lol I personally like digital notes cause I can type faster than I write, and then I actually....read it. :P
A few years ago, I bought a decorated leather blank page book. One of those that you close with a piece of string. This was years before I ever even started playing DnD and I just stored it for "the right moment" Well, with the start of my 2nd campaign ever, that time has finally arrived. I've spent hours and hours measuring and writing down stuff in neat ways and printing and then inking over and prisicely cutting at least a hundred decorations and pasting a few in the book already. They are all themed around ravens, magical herbs, potions, gems and some magical creatures. And no, that's not because I'm playing a druid; I'm playing a sorcerer who has a strong connection to the Raven Queen and who is going to go into potion making later in the story (I made an entire guide to make that stuff more interesting and I'm gonna use it XD).
I learned that taking notes during session is a huge help in letting me actually pay attention. It also lets me use a bunch of colorful pens for different sections of the session. In the end I'm always very proud of my notes because they look nice and cover a lot of the session
My usual writing tool of choice is a 4 color pen/0.5mm lead pencil combination, so a choice of colors is always at my fingertips. (Happily, though, they do sell the black refills separately, since I go through 3 times as much black ink as any other color).
THANK YOU! My favorite take away is "take notes on what is important to your character". This is huge since I am not good at note taking, but this narrows things down.
My first character ever, I wrote down everything. I was new and thought *everything* would be important. It kinda worked with my character who was, I joked, a bookworm (Dragonborn Cleric, Sage background). I did notice things went slower with me constantly asking for repeats and spellings, but I'd be lying if I said our entire group (DM included) never used my notes for references. That said, I never really kept notes like that with other characters. I've gotten better at remembering, but I've also spent more time as a DM than a player since then. Now I wish any of my players kept notes.
Finally! A fellow ADHD'er who color codes their information! It's so easy to take color coding information for granted, but it's so useful & helps you find specific info that much quicker. My memory isn't the greatest either, so to find info quicker I've resorted to marking various sections of my sourcebooks (such as races, classes, spells, equipment, combat rules, even tables for XP gain and modifier bonuses) with colored sticky tabs, going so far as to use specific colors for class categories (green for healers, blue for pure casters, red for pure melee & yellow for those with a mix of melee/spells or melee/spell-like abilities). Highlighting information that's toughest for me find to find &/or toughest for me to remember with different colors makes that info POP from the page.
I had such a missed opportunity to write in character notes with my fish-out-of-water triton character from my party's previous campaign. He took so many notes since he was fascinated by the surface world but I as the player took very few notes.
Another useful but also fun tool is the session recap. At the beginning of a session, players and the DM can spend 5 minutes talking over the details of the last session. That way it's fresh in everyone's minds, and those who are better at note taking can catch up those who are not as good. Plus repetition helps things stick. Also, it's fun and gets everyone excited!
In my last campaign I was the only person who made notes (and also had bag of holding, huh) and I had very messy session notes about different personalities and locations, so on one of the last (and the most mind-blowing sessions) during coffee break I just sat down and drew a family trees for NPCs with some notes for each person, specific location maps, connections between who did some sort of things before or during campaign. It helped me to realise things we were missing during our investigation in our town. And it literally saved our lives. ✨Power of notes✨
The way you keep track of NPCs in spreadsheets is brilliant! You are a genius (or Ginny-us it is ;) ). I am a fan of note-taking and I am the one responsible for notes for my whole party. But it never crossed my mind how effective spreadsheets can be for the info about NPCs! Thank you for the idea!
I had a Blackshield Space Marine who kept an in-game journal so that he could, when he died, give his true history and confession to his battlebrothers. He used a vox-recorder so I took notes in character in real time.
For items used by players and also for some skills I recommend using notecards for taking notes. When I was a DM I prepared notecards for each special item I gave to my players which included a description of the item and of the rolls and the rules involved in using it. I made it a thing that having the possesion of that notecard would represent having the item, so players could physically pass along the notecard, if they wanted to hand over a magical item in game and that way whoever was using an item had the neccesary info at hand. Some goes for spells or skills that might involve complicated rulings (like the commands Ginni was talking about) write the commands on a notecard and you have them at hand when you want to use them without having to search through books or papers.
I use hand written notes during the game as I find them more flexible for adding notes and annotating during the game. But after that, I use Evernote to break down my notes into quest information, NPCs, locations, character backstory etc... That both makes it easy to work and reinforces it into my head when I'm reviewing it.
I've always been the designated note taker of my campaigns when it comes to player-written notes, so it's nice to get a little insight on how to better organize my own notes. Also validates the whole "using a different note-taking technique from campaign to campaign," as I handwrite my notes on my tablet for one campaign where I *really* need to focus and type notes for my other campaigns (handwritten notes are more likely to stick in your head than typed notes, or so I've heard).
I’ve been using Notion for my D&D notes and it’s been life changing. With Notion, I can relate different Databases so I can cross reference towns with NPCs, quest hooks with loot, etc. I also carry the Bag of Holding for our party, so I kept a log of which items were who’s (before D&DBeyond added equipment containers!). I’m normally a DM, and the suggestion of recording a session to take notes on later seems perfect for those moments when you create a character or lore nugget out of thin air and need to keep track of it.
Do you find Notion's sharing limits work for your group? I remembered them being too limiting, but when I look now I see you can share with 5 people for free, which would be enough for me. As a DM, can you hide things from the Players? Or does Notion mostly just work for PC knowledge?
@@khayyin359 I’m currently using Notion for my notes as a player, so I don’t do too much sharing within my Notion workspace. For a DM you’ll want to use their “Guest” sharing, which only allows view access to certain pages. My DM notes are in the same workspace, so I would only share a certain subset of pages to my players. Depending on how you organize your notes, Notion could be really advantageous.
The moment she said"I have a terrible memory." I felt understood and connected to this video 🥲 I have a terrible memory and so, recently I have been learning to take notes on important things and seeing this video makes me realize how good and helpful note-taking can really be! Thanks for these awesome and helpful videos Ginny!
I actually started creating bullet journals with DnD in mind. They've definitely helped me keep my sessions straight and remember what is to come next. Even more fun, I've started to make them for other people!
Oh my god, your spreadsheet for NPCs gave me the best chills. I can't believe I didn't think to do that! I always love watching your videos because if I'm not learning something new I'm having fun!
Ooh! Perfect! I don't know how to effectively take notes in but I'm the only one who takes notes. This could be helpful for life in general too! I need to get better at note taking.
When I first played, I took notes on EVERYTHING. When the party had a moment to get to know each other, where we went around the circle talking about ourselves, I was half in the moment and half writing in my journal.
note taking for me has always been "best intentions, worst follow through" but this does have some ideas... and making use of habits I already have is a particularly nice one. Thanks for the video.
Never thought I would hear Marie Kondo referenced in a D&D video but that just makes me love this video even more. Not to mention having this come up was perfect timing because in my last session I petered out taking notes after a big battle ended and couldn't remember the important stuff that happened afterwards, so clearly I need a new system LOL.
It's always been difficult for me to take notes due to my organization skills being lackluster. Even then, I'm really proud of my "journal" I had when my character turned evil in my Curse of Straud campaign. It only had 2 entries, but it was really cool to slowly delve into my character's insanity as the tomb's curse slowly inhabited my character. It was really cool to reveal it when my character turned into a vampire lord and died against the party. I feel like I want to make a journal more of a thing so that it makes an impact during my character's final moments.
I had most of this figured out but couldn't figure out how to sort the information and your idea to highlight different things like locations, npcs, etc. with different color highlighters is just the ticket; thanks!
I'm late to the party on this one, but I found that texting with your DM about the game can be a HUGE benefit when it comes to note taking, because instead of just having your notes, the DM's thoughts and phrases become part of those notes. This is actually why I love using Discord to play D&D and Pathfinder
As a DM who struggles to take notes, I highly recommend that players try at least some of these tactics. Then at the end of the session, give the DM your notes to 'make sure you have them next time'...
You just changed my life, I was like "yes, recording us would help alot but sitting trough it fully would probably not work either. But time stamps! Frigin time stamps! My life has been saved thank you
"But my character has a bad memory and isn't very smart" - oh, hi, yes, that's me. I still take notes because I know I'm dumb with a bad memory, ffs. Also "My character has a bad memory/wouldn't take notes" - okay that's cool but if there's anyone else in the party who is, there's no reason why your character can't or shouldn't be like "hey I'll hunt for you if you share your notes with me" during downtime (and you and another player share a google doc or something). Like, yes, sometimes it's fun to use my own terrible memory to help with RPing a character with memory issues, but "I don't take notes because..." is just lazy.
Also, even if your character had a bad memory, sometimes one hour of game time might take you three sessions to play. Even the dumbest character doesn't forget what happened 10 minutes ago, but you might if you haven't taken notes and it was actually four weeks ago.
@@andrecanis4894 I mean I will legit forget something from 10 minutes ago regularly lol but that's because I have brain damage not because I'm dumb. I do give that mechanic to my characters sometimes but again, for a character (or, yk, a me) to have that sort of memory issues and still function, we need to learn to take effing notes. But yes the difference in time is definitely a factor, especially if your sessions are spread out. I have one D&D group that can only meet once every 5 weeks and one of the members is a 13 year old with ADHD so our monthly sessions might only cover a few minutes lmao.
I am the note-taker of the group and usually summarize my written notes on a google doc later on. Little did I know, I had about 90+ sessions written, all dictating our memories and adventures together we can look back on fondly. Someday id love to print a small book of these sessions for the players and DM to look back on our game!
My group had a session one yesterday and while we're all relatively new players, I've been watching live play shows and d&d TH-cam videos for a couple years now so I'ma bit more familiar with the game compared to my compatriots. I decided to bring a bunch of tiny notebooks I got in bulk from Office Depot along with extra pens (red, blue, and black) so that if anything happened to our internet people would still be able to take notes and color code if they liked. I also brought my bulk collection of dice I got from Amazon in case people wanted to roll dice irl instead of online, and it was a big help. I myself used a 6 color pen since I like being able to color code things instantly instead of having to search for a different pen each time I need to categorize something, since being dyslexic means I have trouble keeping up with things if there isn't adequate structure. My DM said I was a good player which made me happy ("I got a good grade in D&D, which is something both normal to want and possible to achieve" ^.^).
I use alot of scrap paper, bullet points, and negative space divisions. Then, when i feel like it, i organize it all in a review of what my character knows and doesn't know
My group runs 5 different campaigns with different player combinations in the same "universe." It has been EXTREMELY helpful to all use the same World Anvil to organize notes. Adding info about the characters automatically sorts them into where they need to go, and you start to see connections and impacts from the other campaigns. It's really cool! Worth the $5 a month for sure.
My Evernote is loaded with random D&D ideas. It's pretty disorganized but it's easy to access on my phone if I think of something and just write out some ideas before they're gone.
Holy moly, lots of new ideas that I never even thought of. COLOR CODING?! Game. Changer. I, my dm, and my table, thank you for this. As the table note taker whenever someone asks for something from a few sessions ago it does take some time to find these things. Yes! So much yes! Thanks again!
Love the spreadsheet idea! I added a couple extra columns for Voice and Disposition (Helpful, Friendly, Indifferent, Unfriendly, Hostile), and applied conditional formatting to color-code the rows (e.g. friendly = green, hostile = red).
First time my hubby (boyfriend at the time) played D&D I was DMing. Forgot to tell him to take notes, but he just did it. His notes were written exactly as his character would have interpreted them. It was greatly!
I *love* that you brought Rider's BuJo method up, as that's been how I managed to take such good notes that I am now the designated "Dm steals my notes" person lol! I bascially go the "complex" route as you mentioned around 9:20 or so by literally RapidLogging following the BuJo method as my character in session. It's what I do in my day to day life anyway so it's super natural for me, and it makes note taking mega quickly. And just like irl, if I feel like I have to elaborate a - or a ○ I just turn it into a + or put a little + in front of the circle and do so (right) after the session on a new blank page. Mega game changer for me!
Our extremely lovely GM writes out a little one or two paragraph ‘session recap’ at the end of each session, and it’s been a massive help with the notes. Since it’s online we can just access that and use is as basic notes, with individual players just adding anything extra they want to remember. I’d highly recommend it- it doesn’t have to be the GM that does it, a player could easily take responsibility for it. We also have different more specialised notes like you suggested, with each of us taking responsibility for a different one. So one person keeps track of NPC’s, one lore, and me keeping track of loot and treasure.
My group plays virtually, and we have our own discord server for games. We take notes on NPCs, quests, locations, etc. in different channels. This is very easily searchable, collaborative, and editable, and I can imagine this being helpful even for groups that meet in-person!
Ginni D, awesome video and thank you. Our group finds that the "my character is too dumb to remember so I don't need to" is also a cop out as well as a sign of who is being a good Player. We are each responsible for note taking, some are better than others but it's amazing when others start. Kind of like real life where others on a team pull their own weight. Also, some in our group get new journals for each campaign we are in. On another note, we have also found Kanka online a way for us all to contribute to the world building, by inputting our characters and backgrounds as well as the NPCs, organizations, monsters, locations, and images, location descriptions, etc, etc, etc. A good hub of info that all can reference and have up. Thanks again!
Those are great tips! I constantly take notes during the session because when I don't, I'll forget everything instantly after the session ends (this is no overstatement, sadly, my memory is REALLY terrible :( ). Taking notes _after_ the session is no option for me ... But recently, I started sharing my notes for everyone in a little extra channel in our Discord and it works great! It spares us a few minute of the beginning of the sessions because people can read it beforehand and when we want to start, the other players can just add details I overlooked (they are usually only writing details down). We only play 2-2.5 hours during weekdays after work, so this really saves us time :)
Bless this video, I needed this. The tip about writing down timestamps if you're recording the session is GOLD bc my sessions are long and I know I wouldn't listen through it all. Seriously, this is really great stuff
As a DM, I also use Google Drive and spreadsheets to make sure I keep track of everything. I have a sheet for the PCs so I have their most important bits ready (like a list of their passives), some background notes, and any personal quests or stuff. Then I also have tabs for recurring NPCs, one for taverns and stores, and one for current and future quests/plot mechanizations. I'm rarely a player, but I tend to get a little deep in the woods with notes when I am one.
Ginny, you are a fountain of information for us new players, I can’t thank you enough for all the info, ie-where to buy things, costs, your enthusiasm, your love of the game. You make it a lot easier for the people not in the know 😊😊
I love taking in character notes. Sometimes I have shared bits with the group (Ooglat Hammerthorn's Thoughts) when there was something we did in gameplay that my character didn't know how to dissect. In one session a character killed a non confrontational, though arrogant, NPC who was a priest. They had their reasons, as I'd find out the next session, but in that moment it really jarred my character and she became very quiet. I wrote half page about what I was trying to process. It was great. I'm currently going beyond notes and writing a journal that takes place about 6 months prior to our group meeting up. Quite enjoyable.
Excellent video! As a DM, I use a spiral notebook for sessions. That way I have plenty of room and can easily skip to the next page if I need to track initiative and other combat logs. It's the fastest thing for me. Then I transfer everything to Google docs later, where all of my world building, and permanent, notes live. As a player I use a journal book. I simply write the date of the session and write things down as needed. Apparently I use bullet journaling, because I make symbols, underline, bold and circle things based on importance and what it is.
I want to be a good note taker but I have struggled with it. This video is hands down the best video I've seen in helping with my note taking. Thank you so much for this video!
I love using GoodNotes for my session notes. I add digital stickers and can insert maps and pictures of whatever stuff the DM throws at us. My notes are informational and pretty 😁
I have a good memory but that almost makes it more painful when something slips through and I forget an important detail. My friend at the table takes insanely detailed notes, so if I notice something relevant based on my memory I'll be like "wait, what was the name of that goblin back at the first town we stopped at early on" and he will go search up that session and read off the relevant bits. Its a really nice synergy and I appreciate his notes immensely. We started keeping a shared google doc with these notes in them, and my other friend made an index. These things make my database loving brain very happy.
As the only person taking notes in our current game, I was getting frustrated taking detailed notes for everyone’s parts but no one was doing it for me. The recorder note is a great idea!
I have a main Google Doc for each campaign's notes, shared with the entire group so anyone can read & contribute. It's mainly OOC bullet points, with a few detailed bits or quotes where appropriate, and things like NPC names in bold. Having it all in one Doc means I can CTRL-F to check our entire history without leaving the document. It's saved our butts several times.
I'm a first-time DM. We barely finished session 2 yesterday. Everything is, so far, fresh in my mind because I'm running a module. I'll try the digital notes and see how it goes.
I have these little three by five dot notebooks that I use during sessions that fit in my pencil case. When I complete each book, I use that as an opportunity to reflect on my character's growth. I write how my character motivations and their thoughts of their fellow party members have changed since the last book. I also try to update a timeline of key events and lore.
Writing notes as a journal entry is my favorite way to take notes. Not only is it more fun than simply a dry retelling of events, but it allows me to flex my creative writing skills to make the "recap" more interesting. For example, recently in a dnd session, my character ended up taking some...drastic measures after living a crapload of trauma all at once. When I wrote the journal entry afterwards, I really delved into what she was thinking and why she chose to attempt what she did, and I later received remarks from other members in the group about how invested they were in the recap. Obviously it's not for everyone, but it's very enjoyable for me! (Not to mention, note-taking in this way is very on theme for my character since memory is a huge thing to her, and instead of risking her forgetting everything again she would want to take detailed notes so that she wouldn't have to go through so much to remember again.)
I just stumbled over this video and love it! I usually take Notes from the perspective of my characters, so like a real journal for Session notes and every Session gets a Headline. Besides that I keep a section for every PC and NPC and for my Lore heavy campaigns I also have a section for every important lore. I also highlight everything I think it's important and make little sketches that are just fun.
We had a kid play way back when we used to get together IRL and play pencil & paper that took THE BEST notes!! This kid sometimes took too much information down he'd write down the name of EVERY shop keeper and NPC we ran into and had ANY type of interaction with!! he only played for a handful of sessions because I believe he moved to another State and this was before you could play online.....miss that guy we would read over his notes months later into the campaign and it was SUPER helpful to the final ending as something he had wrote down ended up being relevant!! Years later our DM keeps EVERYTHING from all of our sessions and he'd read snippets of the notes..it was like going back in time and reliving those sessions...GREAT TIMES!!!
I usually take notes during session per hand but I like them searchable and I do after session journal entries digitally. For this usecase I found rocketbook really helpful which lets you take notes manually and you can scan and even process them via OCR if wanted and upload them to your favorite cloud storage or e-mail. My in session note taking and also a bit of session prep as a player consists of the following sections: - big general section for what is going on during the session - tracker for life points, magic castin, etc - inventory changes (I dont' really like shuffeling thorugh pages during session, so I try to collect everything in one place to update my sheets after session) - more general section for things I need to go over after a session (I often get ideas during sessions what I would like to do or talk about when the time is right for it, which usually is not in the same session. This way I don't forget about them) - to-do list for the current session i prepared before (I often forget about things I wanted to do so this keeps those thoughts present. If something didn't fit it maybe it will next session or just get deleted when things developed differently)
Part of my 1st character's thing was, keeping a detailed journal of events throughout the campaign and before session 1, so he could keep his mind focused. I don't do that anymore, but I still take notes as bullet points, almost. And share them with my party. Whenever they compliment them, I week internally, of joy.
I have been rewriting my notes into an in-character journal entry in a blank paper book. I could be writing this entry based on my notes a short time after playing, but I could also write the journal entry a day before playing when I can compare my notes with the summary of last session. In the campaign I'm playing we as players take turns on writing a summary for each other. This summary helps us and the DM to start the next session. I like my choice of making a journal entry because it helps me roleplaying my very first character. And the refelctive nature of a journal entry helps me setting goals for the next session as well as reflecting about what NPC's said and how the heck that fits with what is happening in the game.
I’ve only been playing dnd for a year and a half, and one thing I have been kind of struggling with is notes. I was completely fine when I first started because games were in person. But my DM was only visiting near where I lived, so when he left we had to switch to online, which then, my sister took on the roll of note taker. For another campaign that I’m in has been online ever since I joined and I made myself get back into the habit of taking notes. However, I’ve gotten into a bad habit where I update my notes BEFORE then next session starts. So this video is just what I needed. Thank you! You are a saint Ginny Di!!😁
I don't know if I should love you or be afraid of you... Your takes on advice and extension of other professionals and applying them to DnD make me want to rewrite and reorganize two of my games. Then I think about the daunting amount of work and start to cry inside... but it'll be totally worth it... I guess I LOVE ya! THANKS GINNY!
Oh my god, the spreadsheet idea is MINDBLOWING for me. I always try my best to take notes but sometimes I struggle with organizing them when they're digital. But making a spreadsheet for NPCs, locations, etc is such a great idea. It's organized and easy to do. I am definitely gonna use that in the future once I start my new campaign with my group. Since we're doing sci-fi, there is gonna be a lot of planets, NPCs, and interesting things that I will want to make note of. Thanks for the tips!
In my brother's campaign, I take notes in a dry-erase notebook, mostly names and reminders of what they do or why I needed their name. - In my friend's campaign, I keep notes on a calendar in Word, using the table function. I also keep lists of who/where/what that will be important for the long term in a normal Word document. I also ALSO have paper notes for anything that needs a drawing or doodle.
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Ginny, what was that book you referenced at the end?
@@joshuadixon6026 don't make me smite you with the oath of throwing it back! Lol
You mean Marie Kondo's "The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up"?
there's nothing like looking back on my notes and seeing "some gods lay eggs" written there.
Ah yes, on my notes I have such gems as
-Jacob steals Granax’s toiletries
-Take a selfie w/ [BBEG]
-Murder boogie
-Plantaur
And finally
-Our party almost burns down an old guy’s house
@@bulbasaur001 my favourite note I've taken is "I now have a chest eye".
lmao same! fav gem is "never say no to a courtesan in this town they'll steal your money"
I have
-"the skeleton's like 'ajahdkshdlajshd' then backs into a wall ominously"
-"the rest of the town's sorta just, like, blah, you know?"
-one entry for an npc just says "Swordspunchguy"
-another is just the npc's name and then "hmm...". I have no idea what it means
-one of the pc's entries is just emojis?
"Here, hold this" *hands random townsperson a severed arm* (We have a "quotes" channel in my campaign's discord for these gems, it's great.)
I love taking notes in-character. I once played a person who was gradually becoming less sane, and while I wrote down my notes I made them more squiggly and wavy across the pages, finally writing in spirals and other shapes. Looked great, but was a bit hard to read afterwards, lol
That's always fun! My bard is keeping a journal where he writes each entry as a letter to a friend he misses. Included is song lyrics, doodles, and the occasional private entry pining for said friend. The rest of the party are a bunch of snoops, so if they ever sneak a peak at said journal in-character they're going to find a treasure trove of shenanigans and opinions!
@@pLanetstarBerry oooh I should definately do this for my bard! I'll be starting a little while in, but I think it's okay, I want to take notes seeing this
@@MothCreature13 If it make you feel better, I started pretty late, so I'm playing catch up as well! The way I'm going about it is that I'm taking current notes then filling up past notes as I remember them, corroborating with the DM and other players on what I've forgotten. Good luck on your notes!
One guy in our party had his entire backstory be people's thoughts on his insane character, as if they'd been interviewed about him. The logic was, nobody could've possibly understood his thoughts, so he couldn't write his own backstory. It's actually worked out fantastically, as when he became unable to make it to sessions anymore, he had the DM kill him and our party is investigating how he died
@@jongameaddict Holy shit, that sounds amazing! That has the energy of a found footage documentary crossed with that one scene in Mean Girls where everyone is talking about Regina George. I hope you find his killer one day!
I really like the sensation of frantically handwriting notes as my DM speaks. It makes me feel like a 1920s journalist picking up a big scoop.
Now imagine Call of Cuthulu's 1920s setting, which is all about mystery solving and putting puzzle peaces together... Honestly, I feel at home xd
Reminds me of takes notes in class
@@Kendrone reminds me of my awkward shorthand scribble that I go back and type up!
"[...] and a player asks me to press pause for a second while they were noting down what I was saying, I would not be upset. I would just be glad they were taking notes." - YES. As a GM/DM of 30+ years, A THOUSAND TIMES YES. A player taking notes means they're taking an interest in the story I want to give them a part in and that's the best gift they can give me.
Absolutely. The note-taker in the game I DM does this without hesitation. Usually when I’m listing out names or sharing lore.
If I forget to note something down I can message my DM and ask anything if I notice it later on. Like I could remember from last session we met some one new but could not remember her name so I went to look and forgot to write it down. He gladly reminded me and even send a "recap" the day before for everyone
My DM gives a tiny amount of XP for session notes. It wasn't enough to encourage anyone. I did so anyways just for myself. After 15 sessions this accumulated, so now my character is at least 1 level higher, than anyone else's. I'm not alone taking notes anymore.
As a new DM I also agree!
A fun thing for me is that I am the one writing session summaries for one of my groups, but my character is a disinterested 13-y.o. who hangs around in a corner being bored while the rest of the party is figuring stuff out. And while I parked my character there, I am taking notes for the summary I'm writing later 😅
You'd be surprised how little there is on this topic, there's loads of videos about how to take notes if you're the DM, but barely any on note-taking for players.
Do you have any recommendations for good DM note taking videos? :)
Perhaps because so few players actually take notes?
This! I struggle with my notes so much. I never know what to write down and what not to write down. I usually end up having very cluttered notes and it's all over the place. And sometimes I just forget stuff that has happened, which is a bit sad. :(
I take notes for quest things and info I get that non of the other players would have.
I’m going to do it for stuff like planning
@@ThomazSDA For me, the secret is going over my notes right after the session. The quality of my in-session notes can be variable, but writing up the session after helps a lot. And I leave myself notes for next time of things I want to do or ask that I didn't get a chance to during the session or that I figured out during the write up.
I know a player who made a Campaign Wiki that anyone in the party can add and edit. Running sections for "current objectives" "npcs" and "locations". It's really solid.
When my first campaign ended after 2 years, I realized that I had no concept of how long our adventure had been in-game. We started our second campaign, and I made sure to ask our DM about the time structure. Now, every session, I track the date and time at the beginning of my notes section. I write what session it is, and track the in-game date and time at the beginning of the session, and at the end. Weirdly enough, I find it helps with roleplay.
That makes a lot of sense actually! I find that I come into a game weeks later and forget that we had a conversation with a guy 10min ago. its pretty immersion breaking when I realize my character essentially has short term memory loss lol
I write "conversation starters" in between sessions. My last session was so crazy that, for this upcoming session, I even made a *dialogue tree* for myself
I probably need one-
i sometimes take notes on "what i'm doing next session" - recently, my first irl session in a while, i made a note after the session to LIGHT A TORCH NEXT TIME because i forgot i had ten... and we need fire to kill trolls.
also useful for long-term plots like "how is my character going to react to this impending plot point" lol
I really like to write out fictional discussions that may come up and get a little too into it 😅
Let's gooo!! Another internet stranger who prepares to much for conversations, high five!🤚
I have an entire section dedicated to badass lines, comebacks, etc. As a cleric who worships the Goddess of Flame, Summer, and the sun, I've gotta be a badass.
I find my notetaking habits depend a lot on my character. The most detailed notes I take are when playing my university student wizard, who actually takes a lot of notes in character, is curious and likes to figure things out and gather knowledge. With my pirate sorcerer, my notes are much more concise and I basically just put down the most important points during a session. And with my scrappy forest child druid, I take like one note every three sessions, and it's mostly something like "gotta teach that one dude a lesson because he insulted my friend. get him alone, scare him a lot." So in campaigns where I want to take notes, I try to give my characters a reason why they would write down stuff. Characters keeping diaries works very well for me!
I end up taking notes in the games that I’m not running, and it’s usually a fairly consistent style (although not always coherent). The one time I didn’t take any notes was when I was playing an 8 INT barbarian assassin.
mine too. I love when my notes reflect the characters and it actually helps me remember things, even when the notes are spotty.
My werewolf bard noble was a pain in the butt for taking notes. Everything in flowery prose, in exquisite detail, because his journal was something he always intended to share as a memoir. I filled multiple hundred page A4 noteblocks with his journal. (It worked out to roughly a noteblock per adventure - those adventures covering multiple sessions.) Could I find anything in there if I went and dug it out now? Nope! It wasn't too bad when I was actively playing that campaign, because I had a vague recollection where it would be in the journal, but these days, while it's an excellent chronological accounting of events, it's dreadful in that it only has chronological sorting.
I have an equally terrible memory, forgetting conversations, names, sometimes what I had for breakfast. As a DM, I had to come up with a way to remember some of my players actions. Aside from my own note taking for story purposes.
I start every session by having my players describe the last session for me. This does two things, helps me remember everything that went down
~and~
Gives me a meaningful understanding of what the players found memorable and fun, so that I can expand upon that.
I'd recommend this style of recap for any DM. Also, I like to get the ball rolling by mentioning the main event that I can recall.
My group does the same, last one to come in does a recap of last session - it a) helps with people being on time, cause most don't like having to do the recap (pretty much every time before we implemented this I had to do the recap :' ) and b) especially those in the group that have bad note taking, get reminded of stuff they might already forgot. On the DM side I totally agree with your points - you get some hints and a better feel for what the players enjoyed, found especially interesting, or something they might've overlooked and you'd wan't to get emphasized more. Even if you ask your players for feedback this recapping can give you pointers the players might not even be aware off to give you when straight up asked.
My dm gives out inspiration when somebody gives a good recap of the previous session, in character.
@@nerissa1906 Oh, good idea! Any excuse to get my players in character, and seems like a good roleplay warm up too.
Any game in which there are mechanics for luck, such as fate points, mulligans, etc., our group always gives an extra one out for whomever can do the best recap of the last session, as we alternate games each week, so each game has a two week (or more, depending on work/family conflicts) gap between games. Note taking helps with that a lot, and makes it where players want to pay attention.
My DM does this. He calls it "unreliable narrator" [he even specifically states that I can't read from my notes unless the group was waaaay off.] It helps people remember what they did, and figure out a game plan for what they'd like to focus on that particular session.
That last tip about 'making a system work for you'...it gives me an idea, honestly. Because I hate taking notes, but in the past when I was drawing stuff almost every session for stuff that happened in game, I remembered tons. Maybe I should start doodling what happens in my notebook as well as the little scraps of basics I write down?
yes, that would be epic :O We have a doodler as well as a notetaker in my group, and both are invaluable. Our doodler shares her drawings on our discord server after sessions, and it's a great way to look back at the important things.
Write notes around your doodles and doodle around your notes. I made doodles in my notes for a campaign a while back and it made looking up the things I wanted to find much easier
It certainly helped me in my GCSE History and English! My notes were insanely compact and long and there were doodles everwhere but I remembered a tonne for the mocks!
Brilliant! If I may suggest, you may want to take a look at mind-mapping. It involves doodling, but linking things together, usually around centres. I’ve been doing this for organizing things for years, and have essentially developed a shorthand of images, so instead of reading text I can look at the images and know what it means.
As someone who was terrible at taking notes & trying to listen to a teacher at the same time in school (thus requiring the need of a teacher-aide) this is a good, topical (& maybe even a slight "call out") video for me.
As a player, I've struggled to find a method that could help me to retain my notes. However, thanks to this video. I have a lot more insight and options I hadn't even considered! Thank you Ginny, very useful suggestions.
In my main campaign, I'm the notetaker for the party. I have just basically written out the basics of what we do in the session and sometimes some doodles separated by date. I underline NPCs and important names, but that's pretty much it. I feel like I could definitely up my game (as it were) on that front. I really like your idea of making a spreadsheet with the NPC, location, and description. I think I might implement that.
I made an public npc sheet for my last campaign as names are something I’m terrible at, started out as just me, but then I had to go mobile for work and it was easy for anything I missed for the rest of the party to add to either in full or something specific they wanted to remember it was really cool and really easy with google docs
I am our groups note taker in a shared google doc. I’m able to take comprehensive notes and participate. We have a doc of session notes tracked by date, (both real world and game dates), a world history timeline, loot doc for magic and important items, and a spreadsheet that tracks the group treasury and each party members gold.
I love the idea of an NPC doc...that’s one thing we (players and DM) search for most frequently. Now to find the time to go through hundreds of pages of session notes to get all the NPCs!
I've begun, as our party's bard, recording a narrative recap of the previous week's session and putting it in our discord the day of the next session. It serves two purposes:
A: it forces me to review my notes/become better about the actual notes I take
B: it allows us to move quicker into the current session (although admittedly I do miss things that the other players think are relevant, and we'll discuss that)
Plus, the other players and DM seem to find it entertaining, and it's a little bit of out of game roleplaying that I get to do.
I've found, recently, the joy of writing my DMs notes out with a fountain pen on nice paper. The visceral feeling of writing has really helped me to connect my words to my memory and I find that I have a much better internal search when I go flipping through my 11 pages of notes that I wrote for this part of the adventure 3 months ago. I got a few nice pens of different line widths and a few beautiful inks that I really like. It feels like an artistic endeavor in a new way as I'm creating the myriad horrors that my players must wade through.
I like how you frame it as an artistic endeavor. Similar approaches have worked for me in the past
I feel you.
I have this image of 5 bored players watching calligraphy as a spectator sport. ;)
I love fountain pens, especially the sound of the nib on paper. However, as a left handed writer it can get very messy very quickly. Plus, my hand writing absolutely sucks.
Apparently writing things out by hand involves mentally processing it in a different way than typing, so it probably also helps you fully absorb the story you're creating so you'll remember it better later.
I've recently started taking notes w fountain pen too, and gasp! I love it! Yessss
I am the constant notetaker of our group, and for me, if I write it down, I remember it better. Even then, I could really use some of these tips, especially for things like making sections or codes for NPCs/locations. Our DM will say something like "a stout halfling with purple hair rushes up to you and shouts 'so we meet again!'" and I will gasp, and the rest of the group looks at me like blank deer in headlights, then I'm scrolling back thru 2+ years of session notes trying to remember why I remember this person. I LOVE your spreadsheet for NPCs, so even if you don't remember a name, you can look up by location, race, class, etc. Thanks!
One thing I would suggest for those who struggle to pay attention and take notes simultaneously is to actually take the notes after session. This lets you spend as much time as you need on them while the information is still fresh and not have to divert your attention from what is going on in game to write effectively. This can also let you roleplay the notes, one idea I particularly love is having the notes be letters you are sending to a friend or family or love interest recounting what is going on.
In my view, people who take so many notes that they get distracted by the note taking, are writing too many notes.
We don't need to remember every dice roll.
Recall also helps cement things in your memory
@@rogerwilco2
Or they have trouble writing and listening at the same time, especially if they want it to be legible. I often struggle with typing and listening at the same time, never mind forming letters by hand.
I'm definitely a "try to write everything down so I can reference it later" person. As someone who also cosplays as their characters, I find taking super detailed notes helps with that and knowing I have real events to reference when I'm doing things like making tiktoks or drawing any of my party's PCs. I like the idea of sticky tabs to mark important stuff. I might start using that!
"You will be thrilled to hear that this video is sponsored" I absolutely am, you're right.
As for the video itself, my brain tells me I remember everything, but I always remember a critical flaw in that later. I have no real ability to pull up memories on demand, even if I remember the stuff. I really do need to take notes and so these kinds of tips will be useful if I ever learn to stop pretending I can trust my memory. >>
I have the exact same problem. Brain continuously demonstrates its ability to retain absolutely everything, but the recall function is even still something I haven't entirely mastered. My current note taking is a sort of play by play to try to engage the storyteller part of my brain. Just take the skeleton of the story down to remind me of the meat later. Definitely agree with the general sentiment that there's some good and useful content in this video. My only other strategy to improve my note taking is to learn shorthand, so additional ideas are very welcome
We have a "lore keeper" or two, depending. Cause when you're in RP, it's hard to take notes for yourself and concentrate at the same time. So, depending on who's RPing, one or the other does it. Cause some of us take horrible notes, others take really nice shorthand/detailed notes. Currently we have two, and it's worked out really well. I'm the DM....I'm terrible at remembering things, I usually use the recap as my notes, and it's STILL only partial, so everyone else fills in the rest. lol I personally like digital notes cause I can type faster than I write, and then I actually....read it. :P
A few years ago, I bought a decorated leather blank page book. One of those that you close with a piece of string. This was years before I ever even started playing DnD and I just stored it for "the right moment"
Well, with the start of my 2nd campaign ever, that time has finally arrived. I've spent hours and hours measuring and writing down stuff in neat ways and printing and then inking over and prisicely cutting at least a hundred decorations and pasting a few in the book already. They are all themed around ravens, magical herbs, potions, gems and some magical creatures. And no, that's not because I'm playing a druid; I'm playing a sorcerer who has a strong connection to the Raven Queen and who is going to go into potion making later in the story (I made an entire guide to make that stuff more interesting and I'm gonna use it XD).
I learned that taking notes during session is a huge help in letting me actually pay attention. It also lets me use a bunch of colorful pens for different sections of the session. In the end I'm always very proud of my notes because they look nice and cover a lot of the session
My usual writing tool of choice is a 4 color pen/0.5mm lead pencil combination, so a choice of colors is always at my fingertips. (Happily, though, they do sell the black refills separately, since I go through 3 times as much black ink as any other color).
THANK YOU! My favorite take away is "take notes on what is important to your character". This is huge since I am not good at note taking, but this narrows things down.
My first character ever, I wrote down everything. I was new and thought *everything* would be important. It kinda worked with my character who was, I joked, a bookworm (Dragonborn Cleric, Sage background). I did notice things went slower with me constantly asking for repeats and spellings, but I'd be lying if I said our entire group (DM included) never used my notes for references. That said, I never really kept notes like that with other characters.
I've gotten better at remembering, but I've also spent more time as a DM than a player since then. Now I wish any of my players kept notes.
Finally! A fellow ADHD'er who color codes their information! It's so easy to take color coding information for granted, but it's so useful & helps you find specific info that much quicker.
My memory isn't the greatest either, so to find info quicker I've resorted to marking various sections of my sourcebooks (such as races, classes, spells, equipment, combat rules, even tables for XP gain and modifier bonuses) with colored sticky tabs, going so far as to use specific colors for class categories (green for healers, blue for pure casters, red for pure melee & yellow for those with a mix of melee/spells or melee/spell-like abilities).
Highlighting information that's toughest for me find to find &/or toughest for me to remember with different colors makes that info POP from the page.
I had such a missed opportunity to write in character notes with my fish-out-of-water triton character from my party's previous campaign. He took so many notes since he was fascinated by the surface world but I as the player took very few notes.
Another useful but also fun tool is the session recap. At the beginning of a session, players and the DM can spend 5 minutes talking over the details of the last session. That way it's fresh in everyone's minds, and those who are better at note taking can catch up those who are not as good. Plus repetition helps things stick. Also, it's fun and gets everyone excited!
In my last campaign I was the only person who made notes (and also had bag of holding, huh) and I had very messy session notes about different personalities and locations, so on one of the last (and the most mind-blowing sessions) during coffee break I just sat down and drew a family trees for NPCs with some notes for each person, specific location maps, connections between who did some sort of things before or during campaign. It helped me to realise things we were missing during our investigation in our town.
And it literally saved our lives.
✨Power of notes✨
The way you keep track of NPCs in spreadsheets is brilliant! You are a genius (or Ginny-us it is ;) ). I am a fan of note-taking and I am the one responsible for notes for my whole party. But it never crossed my mind how effective spreadsheets can be for the info about NPCs! Thank you for the idea!
I had a Blackshield Space Marine who kept an in-game journal so that he could, when he died, give his true history and confession to his battlebrothers.
He used a vox-recorder so I took notes in character in real time.
For items used by players and also for some skills I recommend using notecards for taking notes. When I was a DM I prepared notecards for each special item I gave to my players which included a description of the item and of the rolls and the rules involved in using it. I made it a thing that having the possesion of that notecard would represent having the item, so players could physically pass along the notecard, if they wanted to hand over a magical item in game and that way whoever was using an item had the neccesary info at hand. Some goes for spells or skills that might involve complicated rulings (like the commands Ginni was talking about) write the commands on a notecard and you have them at hand when you want to use them without having to search through books or papers.
I use hand written notes during the game as I find them more flexible for adding notes and annotating during the game. But after that, I use Evernote to break down my notes into quest information, NPCs, locations, character backstory etc... That both makes it easy to work and reinforces it into my head when I'm reviewing it.
Reading my rpg session notes it's like reading those "genius" ideas you write when you're super high.
My whole DND group is chaos, debating over things we totally could have taken a note of just works for us 😂
I've always been the designated note taker of my campaigns when it comes to player-written notes, so it's nice to get a little insight on how to better organize my own notes. Also validates the whole "using a different note-taking technique from campaign to campaign," as I handwrite my notes on my tablet for one campaign where I *really* need to focus and type notes for my other campaigns (handwritten notes are more likely to stick in your head than typed notes, or so I've heard).
I’ve been using Notion for my D&D notes and it’s been life changing. With Notion, I can relate different Databases so I can cross reference towns with NPCs, quest hooks with loot, etc. I also carry the Bag of Holding for our party, so I kept a log of which items were who’s (before D&DBeyond added equipment containers!).
I’m normally a DM, and the suggestion of recording a session to take notes on later seems perfect for those moments when you create a character or lore nugget out of thin air and need to keep track of it.
Do you find Notion's sharing limits work for your group? I remembered them being too limiting, but when I look now I see you can share with 5 people for free, which would be enough for me.
As a DM, can you hide things from the Players? Or does Notion mostly just work for PC knowledge?
I'm seriously considering switching to Notion, I just want to be sure what limitations I'll have before I do.
@@khayyin359 I’m currently using Notion for my notes as a player, so I don’t do too much sharing within my Notion workspace. For a DM you’ll want to use their “Guest” sharing, which only allows view access to certain pages. My DM notes are in the same workspace, so I would only share a certain subset of pages to my players. Depending on how you organize your notes, Notion could be really advantageous.
We have a party member who made a wiki. It’s very convenient for remembering Npc’s and events
The moment she said"I have a terrible memory." I felt understood and connected to this video 🥲 I have a terrible memory and so, recently I have been learning to take notes on important things and seeing this video makes me realize how good and helpful note-taking can really be! Thanks for these awesome and helpful videos Ginny!
I actually started creating bullet journals with DnD in mind. They've definitely helped me keep my sessions straight and remember what is to come next. Even more fun, I've started to make them for other people!
Oh my god, your spreadsheet for NPCs gave me the best chills. I can't believe I didn't think to do that! I always love watching your videos because if I'm not learning something new I'm having fun!
Ooh! Perfect! I don't know how to effectively take notes in but I'm the only one who takes notes. This could be helpful for life in general too! I need to get better at note taking.
When I first played, I took notes on EVERYTHING. When the party had a moment to get to know each other, where we went around the circle talking about ourselves, I was half in the moment and half writing in my journal.
note taking for me has always been "best intentions, worst follow through" but this does have some ideas... and making use of habits I already have is a particularly nice one. Thanks for the video.
Never thought I would hear Marie Kondo referenced in a D&D video but that just makes me love this video even more. Not to mention having this come up was perfect timing because in my last session I petered out taking notes after a big battle ended and couldn't remember the important stuff that happened afterwards, so clearly I need a new system LOL.
It's always been difficult for me to take notes due to my organization skills being lackluster. Even then, I'm really proud of my "journal" I had when my character turned evil in my Curse of Straud campaign. It only had 2 entries, but it was really cool to slowly delve into my character's insanity as the tomb's curse slowly inhabited my character. It was really cool to reveal it when my character turned into a vampire lord and died against the party. I feel like I want to make a journal more of a thing so that it makes an impact during my character's final moments.
I had most of this figured out but couldn't figure out how to sort the information and your idea to highlight different things like locations, npcs, etc. with different color highlighters is just the ticket; thanks!
I'm late to the party on this one, but I found that texting with your DM about the game can be a HUGE benefit when it comes to note taking, because instead of just having your notes, the DM's thoughts and phrases become part of those notes. This is actually why I love using Discord to play D&D and Pathfinder
As a DM who struggles to take notes, I highly recommend that players try at least some of these tactics.
Then at the end of the session, give the DM your notes to 'make sure you have them next time'...
You just changed my life, I was like "yes, recording us would help alot but sitting trough it fully would probably not work either. But time stamps! Frigin time stamps! My life has been saved thank you
"But my character has a bad memory and isn't very smart" - oh, hi, yes, that's me. I still take notes because I know I'm dumb with a bad memory, ffs.
Also "My character has a bad memory/wouldn't take notes" - okay that's cool but if there's anyone else in the party who is, there's no reason why your character can't or shouldn't be like "hey I'll hunt for you if you share your notes with me" during downtime (and you and another player share a google doc or something). Like, yes, sometimes it's fun to use my own terrible memory to help with RPing a character with memory issues, but "I don't take notes because..." is just lazy.
Also, even if your character had a bad memory, sometimes one hour of game time might take you three sessions to play. Even the dumbest character doesn't forget what happened 10 minutes ago, but you might if you haven't taken notes and it was actually four weeks ago.
@@andrecanis4894 I mean I will legit forget something from 10 minutes ago regularly lol but that's because I have brain damage not because I'm dumb. I do give that mechanic to my characters sometimes but again, for a character (or, yk, a me) to have that sort of memory issues and still function, we need to learn to take effing notes.
But yes the difference in time is definitely a factor, especially if your sessions are spread out. I have one D&D group that can only meet once every 5 weeks and one of the members is a 13 year old with ADHD so our monthly sessions might only cover a few minutes lmao.
I am the note-taker of the group and usually summarize my written notes on a google doc later on. Little did I know, I had about 90+ sessions written, all dictating our memories and adventures together we can look back on fondly. Someday id love to print a small book of these sessions for the players and DM to look back on our game!
Aaaah, another great informing video with yet another hilarious ad, how I've fallen in love with your content!
My group had a session one yesterday and while we're all relatively new players, I've been watching live play shows and d&d TH-cam videos for a couple years now so I'ma bit more familiar with the game compared to my compatriots. I decided to bring a bunch of tiny notebooks I got in bulk from Office Depot along with extra pens (red, blue, and black) so that if anything happened to our internet people would still be able to take notes and color code if they liked. I also brought my bulk collection of dice I got from Amazon in case people wanted to roll dice irl instead of online, and it was a big help. I myself used a 6 color pen since I like being able to color code things instantly instead of having to search for a different pen each time I need to categorize something, since being dyslexic means I have trouble keeping up with things if there isn't adequate structure. My DM said I was a good player which made me happy ("I got a good grade in D&D, which is something both normal to want and possible to achieve" ^.^).
I use alot of scrap paper, bullet points, and negative space divisions.
Then, when i feel like it, i organize it all in a review of what my character knows and doesn't know
My group runs 5 different campaigns with different player combinations in the same "universe." It has been EXTREMELY helpful to all use the same World Anvil to organize notes. Adding info about the characters automatically sorts them into where they need to go, and you start to see connections and impacts from the other campaigns. It's really cool! Worth the $5 a month for sure.
My Evernote is loaded with random D&D ideas. It's pretty disorganized but it's easy to access on my phone if I think of something and just write out some ideas before they're gone.
Holy moly, lots of new ideas that I never even thought of. COLOR CODING?! Game. Changer. I, my dm, and my table, thank you for this. As the table note taker whenever someone asks for something from a few sessions ago it does take some time to find these things. Yes! So much yes! Thanks again!
Symbols- I've done this in my history and literature classes in college. Usually initials, but same idea.
This is a gold mine for all kinds of organization, not just dnd notes.
Reviewing your notes into a shorter synopsis is very handy to quickly read over at the start of the next session to get back into the flow.
Love the spreadsheet idea! I added a couple extra columns for Voice and Disposition (Helpful, Friendly, Indifferent, Unfriendly, Hostile), and applied conditional formatting to color-code the rows (e.g. friendly = green, hostile = red).
"Slapping Me In the Face for Fifteen Minutes"
No jokes though this is the vid I needed to turn my life around
First time my hubby (boyfriend at the time) played D&D I was DMing. Forgot to tell him to take notes, but he just did it. His notes were written exactly as his character would have interpreted them. It was greatly!
Me at school taking notes, "..."
Me in D&D taking notes, ""
I *love* that you brought Rider's BuJo method up, as that's been how I managed to take such good notes that I am now the designated "Dm steals my notes" person lol!
I bascially go the "complex" route as you mentioned around 9:20 or so by literally RapidLogging following the BuJo method as my character in session.
It's what I do in my day to day life anyway so it's super natural for me, and it makes note taking mega quickly.
And just like irl, if I feel like I have to elaborate a - or a ○ I just turn it into a + or put a little + in front of the circle and do so (right) after the session on a new blank page.
Mega game changer for me!
Marie Kondo is my goddess, my queen!! I love how you applied her philosophy to note taking and gaming!
Our extremely lovely GM writes out a little one or two paragraph ‘session recap’ at the end of each session, and it’s been a massive help with the notes. Since it’s online we can just access that and use is as basic notes, with individual players just adding anything extra they want to remember. I’d highly recommend it- it doesn’t have to be the GM that does it, a player could easily take responsibility for it. We also have different more specialised notes like you suggested, with each of us taking responsibility for a different one. So one person keeps track of NPC’s, one lore, and me keeping track of loot and treasure.
My group plays virtually, and we have our own discord server for games. We take notes on NPCs, quests, locations, etc. in different channels. This is very easily searchable, collaborative, and editable, and I can imagine this being helpful even for groups that meet in-person!
What is the square root of pizza?
No idea, but its area is Pie times R squared.
Ginni D, awesome video and thank you.
Our group finds that the "my character is too dumb to remember so I don't need to" is also a cop out as well as a sign of who is being a good Player. We are each responsible for note taking, some are better than others but it's amazing when others start. Kind of like real life where others on a team pull their own weight.
Also, some in our group get new journals for each campaign we are in.
On another note, we have also found Kanka online a way for us all to contribute to the world building, by inputting our characters and backgrounds as well as the NPCs, organizations, monsters, locations, and images, location descriptions, etc, etc, etc. A good hub of info that all can reference and have up.
Thanks again!
Those are great tips! I constantly take notes during the session because when I don't, I'll forget everything instantly after the session ends (this is no overstatement, sadly, my memory is REALLY terrible :( ). Taking notes _after_ the session is no option for me ... But recently, I started sharing my notes for everyone in a little extra channel in our Discord and it works great! It spares us a few minute of the beginning of the sessions because people can read it beforehand and when we want to start, the other players can just add details I overlooked (they are usually only writing details down). We only play 2-2.5 hours during weekdays after work, so this really saves us time :)
I absolutely love how tips with a game I've never played in my life also make sense for writing
Bless this video, I needed this. The tip about writing down timestamps if you're recording the session is GOLD bc my sessions are long and I know I wouldn't listen through it all. Seriously, this is really great stuff
As a DM, I also use Google Drive and spreadsheets to make sure I keep track of everything. I have a sheet for the PCs so I have their most important bits ready (like a list of their passives), some background notes, and any personal quests or stuff. Then I also have tabs for recurring NPCs, one for taverns and stores, and one for current and future quests/plot mechanizations. I'm rarely a player, but I tend to get a little deep in the woods with notes when I am one.
Ginny, you are a fountain of information for us new players, I can’t thank you enough for all the info, ie-where to buy things, costs, your enthusiasm, your love of the game. You make it a lot easier for the people not in the know 😊😊
I love taking in character notes. Sometimes I have shared bits with the group (Ooglat Hammerthorn's Thoughts) when there was something we did in gameplay that my character didn't know how to dissect. In one session a character killed a non confrontational, though arrogant, NPC who was a priest. They had their reasons, as I'd find out the next session, but in that moment it really jarred my character and she became very quiet. I wrote half page about what I was trying to process. It was great.
I'm currently going beyond notes and writing a journal that takes place about 6 months prior to our group meeting up. Quite enjoyable.
way to go ginny for making a youtube sponsorship ad that i am actually happy to watch
Excellent video!
As a DM, I use a spiral notebook for sessions. That way I have plenty of room and can easily skip to the next page if I need to track initiative and other combat logs. It's the fastest thing for me. Then I transfer everything to Google docs later, where all of my world building, and permanent, notes live.
As a player I use a journal book. I simply write the date of the session and write things down as needed. Apparently I use bullet journaling, because I make symbols, underline, bold and circle things based on importance and what it is.
I want to be a good note taker but I have struggled with it. This video is hands down the best video I've seen in helping with my note taking.
Thank you so much for this video!
I love using GoodNotes for my session notes. I add digital stickers and can insert maps and pictures of whatever stuff the DM throws at us. My notes are informational and pretty 😁
This is the only youtuber who's adverts I actually watch... just as entertaining as the actual video!
I honestly don't take notes too often, but when i do I love doing it in character. I don't know what it is but it enhances the whole game for me.
I take extensive notes, both digitally and on paper. Your video gave me even more ideas for how to manage my note taking. Thank you!
I have a good memory but that almost makes it more painful when something slips through and I forget an important detail. My friend at the table takes insanely detailed notes, so if I notice something relevant based on my memory I'll be like "wait, what was the name of that goblin back at the first town we stopped at early on" and he will go search up that session and read off the relevant bits. Its a really nice synergy and I appreciate his notes immensely. We started keeping a shared google doc with these notes in them, and my other friend made an index. These things make my database loving brain very happy.
As the only person taking notes in our current game, I was getting frustrated taking detailed notes for everyone’s parts but no one was doing it for me. The recorder note is a great idea!
I have a main Google Doc for each campaign's notes, shared with the entire group so anyone can read & contribute. It's mainly OOC bullet points, with a few detailed bits or quotes where appropriate, and things like NPC names in bold. Having it all in one Doc means I can CTRL-F to check our entire history without leaving the document. It's saved our butts several times.
I'm a first-time DM. We barely finished session 2 yesterday. Everything is, so far, fresh in my mind because I'm running a module. I'll try the digital notes and see how it goes.
I have these little three by five dot notebooks that I use during sessions that fit in my pencil case. When I complete each book, I use that as an opportunity to reflect on my character's growth. I write how my character motivations and their thoughts of their fellow party members have changed since the last book. I also try to update a timeline of key events and lore.
Writing notes as a journal entry is my favorite way to take notes. Not only is it more fun than simply a dry retelling of events, but it allows me to flex my creative writing skills to make the "recap" more interesting.
For example, recently in a dnd session, my character ended up taking some...drastic measures after living a crapload of trauma all at once. When I wrote the journal entry afterwards, I really delved into what she was thinking and why she chose to attempt what she did, and I later received remarks from other members in the group about how invested they were in the recap. Obviously it's not for everyone, but it's very enjoyable for me! (Not to mention, note-taking in this way is very on theme for my character since memory is a huge thing to her, and instead of risking her forgetting everything again she would want to take detailed notes so that she wouldn't have to go through so much to remember again.)
I just stumbled over this video and love it! I usually take Notes from the perspective of my characters, so like a real journal for Session notes and every Session gets a Headline.
Besides that I keep a section for every PC and NPC and for my Lore heavy campaigns I also have a section for every important lore. I also highlight everything I think it's important and make little sketches that are just fun.
We had a kid play way back when we used to get together IRL and play pencil & paper that took THE BEST notes!! This kid sometimes took too much information down he'd write down the name of EVERY shop keeper and NPC we ran into and had ANY type of interaction with!! he only played for a handful of sessions because I believe he moved to another State and this was before you could play online.....miss that guy we would read over his notes months later into the campaign and it was SUPER helpful to the final ending as something he had wrote down ended up being relevant!! Years later our DM keeps EVERYTHING from all of our sessions and he'd read snippets of the notes..it was like going back in time and reliving those sessions...GREAT TIMES!!!
I usually take notes during session per hand but I like them searchable and I do after session journal entries digitally. For this usecase I found rocketbook really helpful which lets you take notes manually and you can scan and even process them via OCR if wanted and upload them to your favorite cloud storage or e-mail.
My in session note taking and also a bit of session prep as a player consists of the following sections:
- big general section for what is going on during the session
- tracker for life points, magic castin, etc
- inventory changes (I dont' really like shuffeling thorugh pages during session, so I try to collect everything in one place to update my sheets after session)
- more general section for things I need to go over after a session (I often get ideas during sessions what I would like to do or talk about when the time is right for it, which usually is not in the same session. This way I don't forget about them)
- to-do list for the current session i prepared before (I often forget about things I wanted to do so this keeps those thoughts present. If something didn't fit it maybe it will next session or just get deleted when things developed differently)
Part of my 1st character's thing was, keeping a detailed journal of events throughout the campaign and before session 1, so he could keep his mind focused.
I don't do that anymore, but I still take notes as bullet points, almost. And share them with my party. Whenever they compliment them, I week internally, of joy.
I have been rewriting my notes into an in-character journal entry in a blank paper book. I could be writing this entry based on my notes a short time after playing, but I could also write the journal entry a day before playing when I can compare my notes with the summary of last session. In the campaign I'm playing we as players take turns on writing a summary for each other. This summary helps us and the DM to start the next session.
I like my choice of making a journal entry because it helps me roleplaying my very first character. And the refelctive nature of a journal entry helps me setting goals for the next session as well as reflecting about what NPC's said and how the heck that fits with what is happening in the game.
I’ve only been playing dnd for a year and a half, and one thing I have been kind of struggling with is notes. I was completely fine when I first started because games were in person. But my DM was only visiting near where I lived, so when he left we had to switch to online, which then, my sister took on the roll of note taker. For another campaign that I’m in has been online ever since I joined and I made myself get back into the habit of taking notes. However, I’ve gotten into a bad habit where I update my notes BEFORE then next session starts. So this video is just what I needed. Thank you! You are a saint Ginny Di!!😁
I don't know if I should love you or be afraid of you... Your takes on advice and extension of other professionals and applying them to DnD make me want to rewrite and reorganize two of my games. Then I think about the daunting amount of work and start to cry inside... but it'll be totally worth it...
I guess I LOVE ya! THANKS GINNY!
Oh my god, the spreadsheet idea is MINDBLOWING for me. I always try my best to take notes but sometimes I struggle with organizing them when they're digital. But making a spreadsheet for NPCs, locations, etc is such a great idea. It's organized and easy to do. I am definitely gonna use that in the future once I start my new campaign with my group. Since we're doing sci-fi, there is gonna be a lot of planets, NPCs, and interesting things that I will want to make note of. Thanks for the tips!
In my brother's campaign, I take notes in a dry-erase notebook, mostly names and reminders of what they do or why I needed their name.
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In my friend's campaign, I keep notes on a calendar in Word, using the table function.
I also keep lists of who/where/what that will be important for the long term in a normal Word document.
I also ALSO have paper notes for anything that needs a drawing or doodle.