Game Master Notes Solved! How To Take Better Notes as a GM
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 26 มิ.ย. 2024
- We all have that one note book. The note book with every bit of detail about our RPG sessions, the one that we have to incessantly page through to find the name of the NPC that you introduced 5 sessions ago and where that small but critical detail of your world lies, in amongst every other thought you had about your adventures. It can get chaotic! But what if there is a way to take better notes and make your life easier? In this video, I talk about note taking, what notes you should be taking and the steps to take, to make that process so much easier.
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*Thanks for watching!* Let us know in the comments below your thoughts on this approach to taking notes as a GM in your roleplaying games!
“Do your notes look like this?”
How did this man manage to get his hands on my math homework
Man my notes and homework look like a chiken stoped into ink then desided to dance on paper
@@snakeinabox7220 if *you* can understand your notes, they're doing a good job 🤙
@@davethescrub858 I don't....
I have had a huge success making audio recordings of my game sessions. So I can use the time playing and take notes later.
I've come to the same conclusion - my memory is never as accurate as a recording!
and it will allow me to make cool highlights for my players and upload our games for later access :)
Great tool to sculpt your campaign to suit your players desires.
I'm ALSO taking notes, but it helps me immensely.
What do you use to record ?
@@Kevlar-78 I have a zoom recorder it can work as a dictaphone. And then it have a jack port for online play, then I have a separate account on discord and a secondary computer for recording.
Most phones also have some kind of recording capability. But I haven't tried that.
Protip with notes, you can write your neat notes from the front of the notebook. All your jot notes and scratch paper can be taken from the back of the notebook.
2:56 What kind of notes should we be taking?
3:11 Section - managable size
3:34 Section 1: NPCs
5:57 Section 2: Plot Hooks
8:20 Section 3: Lore
12:45 Section 4: Magic Items/Treasure
14:13 Section 5: Notes on the PCs
18:10 Sponsor: Rocketbooks
Thank you so much! This is what I was looking for!
Thanks!
Good to see
Thank you.
The opening is so true of DMs flustered by focusing on prose without simultaneous note taking (me included)
Definitely a good idea to have a separate note book for jotting hit points/damage from fights as it is only temporary and clutters up any other notes.
I actually use a really small dry erase board for temporary notes
@@sarahodell6384 great idea!
I have A5 removable sheets that I track initiative and hp on per encounter. It works great! (Initiative is jotted down 25-0 in a column on the left, and I just jot down PC's and monsters next to that column. The quickest/easiest ways to track initiative that I have found)
@Avery Chance New DM and this was the first thing I thought of. Pretty basic really.
I outline note blocks from a fight and add a fight name and quick description, helps me find a note if I know roughly when in the adventure it happened. Works for me because my players tend to remember things as "That guy we met after the big Treant fight that nearly killed the rogue with a crit". :P
I think I like your approach towards world building in a way, but I still really like spending my free time thinking up weird and wonderful stuff for my world - not necessarily to make it feel more realistic, but rather because I enjoy doing it.
More power to you! That stuff can be super fun! A lot of this kind of advice is for when people get overwhelmed feeling like they NEED all those details. Which I did to start. Not so now.
I commonly reorganize my notes, for games and classes. I never know the best organization when I start, and it gives me a chance to go back over the information after so much time.
Guy: Let's jump straight into it!
*YT cuts to commercial*
Your video popped up quite literally as I began an attempt at organizing my notes!
A small thing that might make your notes easier to read is to use different colour pens. For example; Green pen is for NPC related stuff, Red pen is for PC notes, random filler is in Black and all other useful notes are in Blue.
If you want you can have a 2nd note book where you copy the useful stuff (everything not written in black) after the session and maybe re-write some stuff to make it clearer or make sure that you'll still understand it 20 sessions later.
I do this except in google docs. After something happens in game, I’ll change the text purple and then add any other notes that actually occurred in purple. Green for shit that happened but the PCs don’t know about. Etc.
For NPCs I also try to come up with one distinguishing physical feature. Gideon Defoe's Pirates books are a great model for this. It's the pirate with a scarf, the Bugbear in a wedding dress, or the shopkeeper who is a mimic. One very obvious physical feature is about all the players will remember on first encounter. So accent and attitude to remind you, physical attribute to remind them.
I have one of the players take notes and I give them inspiration for that. I have other jobs like map maker, treasurer, and quartermaster. This lets them get more into the game and I give them some reward. This also lets me see what they are getting from the game so I know what I need to explain better.
@@craftyhr For me, Quartermaster keeps track of all the little bits and bobs in EVERYONE'S inventory. Not things like bed rolls and rations (unless they want to) but the cool things they find along the way - magic items, misc oddities, etc. People end up forgetting about it unless one person is keeping track of them. Usually someone at the table is kind of doing this anyway, so why not make it a job and reward them for it.
I'm terrible at remembering to take notes, I rely on the fact that I uncannily can remember random details months/years later. I should try this method to improve my note taking.
Currently when I do remember to take notes I take them on the session preparation I've done on World anvil or whatever. Usually after the fact while I'm doing a session recap
I used to use the same Rocketbook for both college and D&D and it was fantastic! Can confirm, great product!
I have the same issue. My notes usually are about 3 words long
The main thing I would add to this is a campaign calendar. Even if a DM doesn't have an actual calendar for their campaign world, keeping track of what happened when (quick but concise notes, as you mentioned), the current season, and how much time has passed since the start of the campaign or from one event to the next can be important and something that should be easy to reference.
I don't take notes but this seems useful. My style of GM is rather free style but works twords goals I set for the session. My memory is medically terrible but when I have players that are involved with the game and contributing in conversations and actions I can usually recall the details.
The intro reminded me of myself... painfully
You are NOT alone!!!
Thats why every new area, town or whatever is created with a few key NPCs just name, race, gender job and only minor details. The rest is improvised 🤷♂️
"Do your notes look like this?"
"That would imply I take notes."
I like to use Google Docs for players' notes and then OneNote for my GM notes. The Google Doc can be updated by everyone, which eliminates some of the effort by me (at least during the game) and OneNote really helps me keep things organized. I've been an IT professional for about 40 years, so my typing speed is quite reasonable and I'm a project manager, which has allowed me to learn how to organize very quickly. We also pretty much only play online now-a-days, so I'm already on the computer. I do keep a sticky-note pad next to me, in case I want to grab a pen and jot something down to deal with after the game, or if it's something temporary, like how many times the PCs have passed a doorway or something, but for anything that I want to keep track of longer than just 1 encounter, it's much easier for me to do it digitally.
I like to use One Note! It’s a Little bit more organized for me, especially with its color coding tabbing!
Damn it all sounds so great, but let's be honest sometimes we are just too lazy, so there will be for sure that one day when we only write name in notes and suffer consequences later.
You're looking great, Guy
yup - my glacial typing skills mean note taking is the way to go - arrows - can never have enough arrows - love the rocket book idea
Very useful video. What I do for NPC is "Name, hook, senses (smell, look etc) and actor/role" - to evoke the feeling of a character from a movie and to keep it :) For example: Uru/ astrologist/ pity, old, brittle/ Odenkirk in BCS.
I myself like the freedom of using plain sheets of paper for notes. I have a separate notebook for long-term notes, such as NPC names and character motivations. My session notes are usually full of drawings of maps I made up on the spot, as well as names and adventure ideas I improvised
I discovered your channel after searching for actual plays of Ghosts of Saltmarsh. I was really impressed with your behind the scenes talks before each game, so I thought I would look up your channel. I am so glad I did! You are throwing out some much needed information! You have won yourself another loyal subscriber. Keep up the good work!
this was a great guide.
most ''note taking'' guides are nearly an hour long.
now I understand an experienced DM might get through this getting the gist of it.
but a guide that is short and concise, with the important points highlighted in the video is SO useful to me.
(me being a first time DM running Icespire Peak for my friends who are also first time players)
your videos contribute greatly to the great fun we will be having soon, and for that I thank you!
This was some really good stuff, not only for gm's, should allow me to take better notes as player as well as when running the games
In Real Life, I have a microphone that i record games so I can note take later. Allows me to go though the game afterwards and remind myself of anythign I miss. I can skip sections where it was combat etc, works well
I wish I wasn't living in Slavic country so I could actually enjoy all these great Kickstarters. Rocketbook sounds like a very nice thing to conserve paper. Right now I'm trying to fill up all my old half-used notebooks from school, making physical notes and then moving most important to digital notes. And when I'll finally out of paper I'm planing on going fully digital while having writing experience with iPad and pencil combo (pros of having drawing as a second hobby).
Upvoting rocketbook. I've got a smaller version (6" x 9") that I use for my DM notes and I love it. I've also started using them for 1 page dungeons. Floor plan on 1 side and the room key on the other, which I prop up against the inside of my DM screen. They're spiral bound and lay flat which is always a plus.
As a player and a DM I type notes and since moving to that I have been FAR more organized. I have a scratch pad for random stuff but that all gets adding to my google docs notes after the session. Spending some time after each session refining and correcting notes after every session has made my planning and organization far more streamlined.
I moved to Onenote which has helped my organization greatly. I have a notepad to jot stuff down in session and just transfer whatever is important post-game. Both of those (writing down, reviewing immediately after) help me study in general and that translates to d&d stuff too.
@@TopTierKnees I did try out OneNote for a few months but I was unhappy with how it treated multiple devices and the lag time between whatever syncing method they use.
I use a tablet and my PC to DM and that doesn't work well in real time in my experience with OneNote which is why I moved back to using google docs and a table of contents instead.
I fell statblocks are worth their own section. They take up a lot of paper space, are not always needed but still important
Great video Guy! Breaking everything into categories is brilliant! Thanks for covering the topic
Perfect timing on this video. I actually just picked up a Rocketbook a few days ago to try out. Thanks for the note tips!
I always enjoy watching your videos Guy, so firstly thank you very kindly for the amazing, consistent, and encyclopeadic content. It's been an absolute pleasure absorbing nuggets of highly valuable wisdom from what you have to say. I found myself here finding that once again; you think about the game and experience the role of GM in almost exactly the same ways I have.
I often find that you have the advantage of being so prolific as to have need to put names to the behaviours you talk about. I often discover language to describe these things through listening to you on the subject!
The points you made about discovering your lore as you proceed through a Campaign really sung to me as something I feel in kindred works really well for my open style. It also makes it very easy later on in a campagin to start weaving lots of the early concepts together into the story you're additively creating; which has the effect of making the campaign and it's world feel grounded. All about that verisimilitude in the small ways.
Thanks again for the awesome content!
That rocketbook thing is exactly what I've been looking for, for a long time now! I ordered a notebook and when I checked the Kickstarter there was exactly 103 minutes left.. Feels like fate thrust me there at the last minute, so I backed the kickstarter while I was at it. And ordered the D&D pages add-on! Thanks for bringing this beautiful product to my attention. :D
As a newbie I have fallen into this trap. Luckily I found this video and can rectify before it becomes to much to go through.
Some of this just makes sense when you sit back and think it through. I think I got so excited to start the campaign I never thought about how many notes I will be taking.
I will be spending some time sorting through it and my thoughts and hopefully the next game will be a little smoother.
Good stuff as always. Thanks for all your great content! Cheers!
Made a work flowy entry for my recent campaign while watching this video. I take notes on my iPad using goodnotes (you can use paper and pen), and I've started transferring everything over after each session and just refer to word flowy when needed during the campaign.
Rocketbooks are neat. One trick is you designate certain pages and create a sort of template on the page using a permanent marker. Then you fill in the fields with the Frixxion pen and erase and/or save them to your cloud drive as needed. You can use that for stat blocks of NPCs and establishments you make up on the fly in the game, and the entries all have a uniform look to them. It's cool that they are making a Rocketbook with rpgs in mind.
I tend to run my games similarly to what you have described before. I use a similar not taking scheme to what you've shown here, except I spread the information out across multiple word documents, one for each place/Area and in each document I'll split it into Lore on the area, NPCs, Character specific notes and Quests or anything else that is there for the players to interact with. For each adventure I have a document that holds the NPCs that are specific only to that adventure and typically that'll be the big bad and his intentions and schemes as well as possible things that will likely happen. I mention NPCs and where they are, not copying the information in 2 documents.
It's an incredibly satisfying journey watching my campaign folder grow as I add a folder for each city and forest or mountain with monster stats and a neat document with all I need. The players have their own document for anything they're working on and the campaign folder has 2, one for anything Lorewise and one for the on-goings-on with the world and the BBEGs plans, motivations, pawns and schemes etc
This is an exceptionally practical video.
we're telling a story, using screenplay format and a list of important resolutions to use as consequences later makes it really easy. not just disjointed snippets
My personal preference is to write my session notes in a natural flow during the session, then I revise them into the form of a journal, usually from one of the NPC companions that my parties always end up with. So by the end of each adventure I've got a little in-world journal detailing my player's exploits.
It is content like this that makes you my favourite youtuber. Thank you so much for your work!
I was just about to watch a similar themed video on the other channel, and then you added this. Well done, Mr. Great GM, well done. Even if I am quite organized when it comes to taking notes during the game and managing them afterwards, I think there always is something new to learn, especially from fellow, more axperienced than me, Game Masters. So, I'm grabbing some snacks and starting to watch it... oh, yes, sure, a pen and paper for taking notes may also be useful.
I write a full summary of what happened in each session after we finish. I find that this allow me to avoid pause for note taking during the actual game and gives me very detailed info to work with
Definitly going to try this out! My notes are mostly npc names so connecting them and not having to remember every detail every time will be a blessing! Then adding to world anvil is a simple type away!
I use an app called rpg notes.
Also a great tool since it's always structured and organized.
You can link an adventure, locations, npc's, items all together.
I would also throw out a big recommendation for all my fellow disorganized GMs. Look up bullet journaling! But don't look at it as a 'daily to do list', but as a snappy way to organize notes! I started doing this a few months ago and it has made a HUGE difference for being able to find notes later.
I also commonly use a small sized 3 ring binder for my gm notes so I can re-arrange pages after the fact if needed
I'm not really much of a subscriber of TH-cam channels, but I couldn't resist making the marketing goblin happy. 🤣
Your tone fights my anxiety. Also, one can kinda see the way you organize your storytelling, just by noticing how you organize the videos. Great channel, well done!
Such an important video for the hobby!
It's nice to know that I'm doing something right (only recently, really).
Here's how I make it work even more smoothly:
I have a page I call a plot web. At the center of the webs are the brief descriptions of the goals of the important NPCs (i.e. Culebra family wants the glyphs on the stone to activate the powerrrful spell"). The lines radiate from these with the hooks and events that will lead the PCs to learn of the NPCs' goals. On other pages/note cards that can be arranged and rearranged in different orders.
I include what actor or person I've met that I think of when I embody the NPC along with what they want and their attitude towards the hooks/goals. The product with the note organizing is brilliant.
@11:00 Where you go about "These monsters that seek the tree" you say that no one will write it down, but one of my players is my spouse, and they take excellent notes. They will want to know every monster and every name of any NPC they come across. Then again, we share a house and I can always look back into their notes for reference which helped me out a lot on this homebrew campaign.
I love rocketbook. Had one for YEARS
Note keeping had been a mystery to me for such a long time. Then one day I looked at note taking layouts/formats, tested out a couple and voila, now my notes look like notes instead of chicken scratch. I like the headers you chose for organizing big picture content, thanks for sharing.
I make use of colour and existing office supplies. Office supplies, such as adhesive paper, paper clips, or marker, come in typical colours. I assigned my categories to such colours, and when preparing, I use similarly coloured pens for any reference, and sections are behind coloured separator in the ring binder. For example, any plot-related stuff would be blue, locations green, and so on.
Although prepared, I haven't used them too often: There are also adhesive translucent snippets that I could use to highlight sections in books; I could use a marker, yet I'd like to avoid "ruining" my books permanently that way.
Still, I learned of a few more good categories from this video as well, thank you!
Aight, you had me in the first 5 seconds, awesome video, great work 20/20
I would imagine location would also be a section. Type of location (city, hamlet, etc), names of pubs/inns/shops. Maybe find a way to link hooks and NPCs there (maybe tags or coloured pens).
Oh thank God the acting at the start is like 1 for 1 somthing I've done 2 or 3 times in this campaign (my first I'm running) totally undermines the effort I put in
What a great video! Some great in-session notetaking tips and a great suggestion at the end 😉
I would very much like to see how the Rocketbook works for this situation. I have one and love it for sequential note taking (classes, lectures, meetings, etc.). But I have struggled using it for something more random. Bullet Journaling works better for me for my D&D sessions, but it is difficult to reference the random notes in my index or thread because page numbers don't really have any meaning in the context of Rocketbooks.
Love this video and using old notes
I do like this approach of taking notes, though I don't think it's something I'll really use in that particular way. But this video and the one by the DM Lair from today motivate me to step up my note taking game as a GM. Thanks for the video, really appreciated it!
I am basically a spy in my campaign.
My job is recon and spying, assasination when needs be. But literally it is "get notes, report back."
After each session, (next dayish) I write an official report, like a police report. (1 page max)
Date - Location
NPC Name, position, bio flavor
-Why we care.
Item, simple description
-Why we care.
Event, fight.
-End outcome. Any one cool either side die? (NOT blow by blow.)
-------
This has worked so well that to hand them into my characters ' Boss', IRL the DM has me read them aloud beginning of next session.
Often I begin with, "Previously on the Adventures of..."
It has been a great reminder for the whole party and even serves as the official, small talk done, it's game time.
i take notes of key player actions as time goes on + whatever i improv
Then after the session when the memories are fresh i type up everything important, player actions in one section and lore additions in their proper place. OneNote is fantastic for organizing d&d stuff
I realize I'm a bit late for this one, but this was a useful video. Thank you. The tips on note-taking for NPCs was especially useful.
This is great, I've just reorganised all my notes accordingly :)
During my sessions I have sections where I write down the NPC if they're new and a couple of things about them, like where they met them, accent I use, and mannerisms...like you suggested. I also have notes of what they could be leading too or how they met the players. For the players I jot down choices made against which NPCs. I normally already have NPCs for certain areas along with areas and such so it's easier to keep track of them through the city they met them in or the location. After the session I make sure to write up my notes of what is happening and I start my process of how it effects the world and how it could effect the players come next session or even down the road. I color code them to what they represent. It works for me and how I do things in my head. Have to stay flexible for the those random dice rolls I can't control.
this rocketbook is just nuts!
That intro , yea that's me .
Thank you for this wonderful video, it's helped me so much as a new dm !!
I have a Google docs page I use as I am DMing remotely, I do have a 4 monitor set up on my computer desk so I have plenty of real estate.
I use the document to note down any key information from the session, npc names I make up etc, as well as then tracking hit points, initiative order etc. I then transpose this into my DM journal the day after the session when it is all still fresh, I then post a sanitized version of my journal that is player friendly (recounts the information they know and the things that happened to them on screen) and get my players to review it. They are really good at catching things I might have forgotten or missed.
Ah yes, the art of book keeping at its finest! A stack nicely columned notebooks just feels great!
really a nice video, the categories I gonna use it, because I suck at note taking
I've used Rocket Book notebooks for a few years and they are pretty good. Don't leave them written on for more than a few weeks. If you do, there will be ghosting on the page from the ink. I've only played one campaign and it was great for taking notes and organizing them later.
Is the OCR on the app any good? I was curious about getting one myself.
Erasable Notebooks are a great help. I´m using one for quite some time now. I was sick of pages on pages of hit dice, encounters etc. Just whipe ist away after you are done with it ^^
I use removable pages for encounters. A little wasteful, I admit, but it works super well.
Great channel keep up the good work thanks and kind regards from Germany 👋🏻
I'm fairly new to DM'ing so my note taking isn't great so I really appreciate the tips and insights
The video I have been waiting for! Haven't watched it yet, but I hope it holds what it promises.
Edit: Unsurprisingly, it did! I will tinker with this system, change it up a bit, but great stuff as always!
They always do!!!
I actually take notes on a single page but use different color owns for different things. Then, after session, I copy them into the relevant sections. It helps me process what's happened, it's still fresh so I could remember something else I didn't write down, and it starts the planning for next session.
I find a binder with loose leaf and tabs for the sections is nice. Then if you need to add extra on something after you've used a whole page, you just move/drop in a blank sheet.
What works for me is NOT using my note book during the session, but taking "notes" on just a piece of paper. These are often all over the place with a horrible writing or tiny doodles just because. What i do either right after a session or later that day is to go through these while i still remember details and THEN actually making real notes that make sense and are readable for the future use. So far so good
Great advice for players as well. My note taking as a player looks the same as your GM notebook
Very useful indeed, i take a good note on this ;)
I've been writing my pre-game notes/lore/ plot on the right facing page and in game/ combat notes on the left facing page. Seems to work fairly well.
Great video
I tend to jot down a lot of notes ad then after the session i go back and try to organize then notes but i need to get the notes under control. thanks for the vid, very inormative
Definitely have note-book for imidiate writing (chaos book for all from improvised word notes to initiate and hp [basically session hystory]) (I go with two pages in A4 notebook per session) this star's void at start of the session. And then second place, where you categoryze your chaos. The process of manually rewriting notes, will help you not to forget single detail. It's also place for planing.
Whenever I made notes about a scenario, plot hook, etc I used hollow bullet points to list out all the critical information, so I can check them off as I convey that info to the players. That way I know I’m being fair to my players and making sure they get all the info they need before moving onto the next area (or as a reminder to double back to get more clues)
Honestly, just picked up one of those books last week, just for DM notes. Great minds think alike.
As always, a great video.
Can you please make an episode more oriented to a starvtrek adventures game. We are having trouble setting up the obstacles for the heroes to overcome. Not the pew pew type od problem, the think think type. We always run out of creative problems for them to solve in a star trek manner and not revert back to DnD tactics.
Rocketbook is awesome! I use one for all of my dnd notes too.
I literally have a rocketbook and I was thinking during the video of how it would be an excellent way to apply what you were talking about
One thing I use is note cards. I can arrange NPCs, lore, geography, factions, or whatever. The small size makes them easy to manage.
I love my rocketbook. I have several. They are so handy.
I have a very rough script (PCs meet druid, she tells them to get rid of goblins that threw the eco-system off balance) of the session written down beforehand (what I expected). Afterwards I write down what happened in detail (looking at what I expected usually brings back memory of where something different happened).
I also write my own reference material (NPC cards; lore/rules of the world and how my PCs learnt about that (since NPCs might lie / be misinformed); magic artifacts and who posseses, wants, understands them,...) and add to them after every session (one goblin took hostages, negotiated his survival. PCs may meet him in the future as a leader who told everyone the heroes fled before him).
Great video and good product. I‘m using the Remarkable 2 for this purpose, but this is a far more expensive solution than this. 👍🏻
Just an FYI for anyone looking to get a Rocketbook, they're supposed to release the Axis version soon that will have removable pages and will have a DnD character sheet package.
Watching this late. I love Rocketbook! They recently came out with RPG specific pages. Only way it could be better would be if there was a better way to mix and match pages