D&D Note Taking: we're missing the point
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 30 ม.ค. 2024
- Mercer's method works, but like all D&D campaign note-taking methods, it works best if we first consider one important point (that most RPG notes videos don't cover). ▶️ More below! ⏬
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How do YOU take notes?
💥 Lore Frog Notes: lorefrog.com/
When everyone is doing a long rest I RP journal and take some notes IRL at the same time.
I might be biased... But I use Lore Frog! 😉
But in seriousness, I built the app because my paper notes were impossible to find anything in, and my subsequent digital notes became equally scattered to the point where I couldn't find half the things I wanted to. After a 8 months of campaign, I couldn't bear that continuing on, so I build Lore Frog, and as was said, we're working on it to make it even better.
I started using Obsidian. It's kind of like Lore Frog but free and not technically built with TTRPGs in mind but flexible to accommodate them
I've really taken to using Notion. If it works for Sly Flourish (Mike Shea), it works for me... plus, he's published alot of useful tools native to Notion.
One note, the best dm tool
the double-sided conclusion at the start hit me like a bolt lmao. that it is both true that 1. notes are important as you will forget *but also* 2. you can absolutely have so much fun without them that you play for 40 years
Right?? This comment came from a video I posted a few months ago, but I only recently noticed how profound it was
I am a blessed DM. One of the players is playing a bard, who is on the adventure simply to find inspiration for his next big hit. So every session usually ends with him reciting the lyrics to a song he’s written during the session. These have served as the groups notes for what has happened during the campaign
As a player we had a "journalist" follow us around but she also had ADD, I would create youtube videos using AI for the rest of the team to view from her perspective. She was more interested in floor colors and flashing lights then and the adventure was almost superfluous..
That’s really cool!
That is wonderful!
Amazing!!
Was showing both my son and nephew notes I took as both a player and as a DM back in the mid 80s. I have several dozen spiral bound notebooks to this day. My son and Nephew both started playing during the pandemic and wanted to know morr about ite history of the game. Being able to show notes from sessions 38 years ago made me feel like I had bridged the gap between new and old players.
Bingo! That's amazing. Good on you for keeping those books, and hey, maybe consider scanning them for a digital back up!
@@BobWorldBuilder yeah I should again. Long past time. I know I scanned them once but I lost the 16 meg usb drive they were on. 😀
Likewise. My campaign notes (pre- and post-adventure) from the 80s and 90s, stored in ring binders and box files, are amongst my most treasured possessions! I still look back over them today and drag out half-remembered parts for use in my current campaign. Oddly, even though my content from the 00s onward are in digital form, and more convenient to access, I use them less.
"Subsequent to" had me rolling
Edit: All my DM notes are in the private notes on my dndbeyond campaign and all my post session notes are on the public notes, and none of my players ever look over them and that is okay.
Thanks! And nice!
I agree that it's ok, but I've started putting little hints in my recaps. Like going back and bolding a critical piece of info they overlooked or that suddenly became relevant or doing [+1 Inspiration to the first person to notice this].
No bites yet. But again, I am totally fine with that.
What did you roll? 🎲
Truthfully, I've found I have to write the entire adventure out by hand. My brain just doesn't get inspired by staring at a screen.
Gotta do what works for you!
ONENOTE!!!! I love it. It's already set up for how anyone would organize a campaign with folders, sections, subsections. So easy!
Yes! I use One Note. Google docs suck when it comes to organization. One Note is way beyond anything else I've found. Underrated IMO.
Personally I like notion more. Especially as a DM. I can create a Wikipedia-ish page with databases and links to said wiki pages
I use OneNote too. I run two campaigns within the same world, so I ended up using a single notebook for everything, with a humble NPC section growing over time to a structured compendium of the lore about the world, with location maps and all, where the NPCs are just one part of each section describing a location they're in. Then I have a section group for each campaign, with some general stuff about the party, and a section for each session (which are also structured into chapters using groups for easier navigation). On top of everything I have a few general sections which function essentially as my GM screen (quick reference to equipment, generic item prices, monster sizes, etc), and one for homebrew rules. It's awesome.
2:01 - ouch! You have no idea how much of my approval seaking inner child you just wounded
I think I made that joke for the same reason xD
i feel like 'subsequent to' must be a reference to something i don't understand.
@@Jay-ru6kn don't worry - no in-joke, or cultural reference. Just a human (me) who receives mild affirmation when I correctly predict how people's sentences end. And when it didn't end how I expected, it made me realise how much I try and feed my 'approval seeking inner child' with these insignificant moments of affirmation. And I think some other people relate to the feeling.
@@RevocerGM ohh okay thanks for explaining. i'm old and assumed it was a pop culture reference that went over my head, lol
Bob, i think you'll love something like Obsidian as a tool.
It's a markdown editor (tldr: quick formatting) which has some awesome functionality for linking pages, subjects and chapters. (So you can find stuff and linked stuff to that quickly.)
Thanks for the recommendation!
@@BobWorldBuilder Yeah I'd recommend Obsidian too, it reminds me of Lore Frog, from the brief description, but it is free for personal use.
Have you seen Black Cat DM's Familiar? Free Windows tool - does the same kind of stuff but combat management too.
Upvote for Obsidian! Specially if you have any sort of programming experience, it is incredibly intuitive and straight-forward with plenty of plugins if you want more elaborate functionality
100% agree. Super super simple to make folders and new notes and tie them all together, meaning it strikes a great balance of ease of use and functionality. Being free is great too. I get that Bob got sponsored for this video, but if you’re curious about that kind of thing try Obsidian instead.
the whole "before, during, and subsequent to" gag made my day. Thanks for the video!
1:54 AFTEEERR!!!!
Well done sir, i see what you did there. And fell for it anyway.
Thanks for playing along haha
You are a gem, keep up being awesome and chill.@@BobWorldBuilder
I am horrible at taking notes as a DM (and, honestly, as a player), and this is exactly the kind of video I need.
Also, I wish I could give you more than one time record, and would love to see a video on your minimal note method.
Very funny, Bob. Baiting us into "after" while saying "subsequent to."
Currently, the top two comments are about that xD I apologize for betraying your trust 🙏
NEVER apologize for comedy.
The idea of the multiple page prep document is brilliant! thank you! I'll start doing one of those for each session... I often feel bad that I forget to incorporate moments for each player or elements of their backstories... this will help a lot.
Well hang on there haha, the pages part around 6:30 is talking about how to organize a digital doc (though it could work in a journal too) to record post-session, summary notes. And I say that it's useful to review the party page before each session as part of prep, but definitely not to recreate this multi-page doc for each session! However, the ultimate lesson of this video is to go with the methods that work best for you, so if that works, go for it 👍
I laughed at "subsequent to"
Thank you for that, Bob. 😅
I love using onenote, adding images and having lots of freedom to organize text and tables is really useful and keeps everything very organized
I've got notes in OneNote, both for games I'm running and games I'm playing in. I like being able to link to other pages from inside other ones, it helps me get a handle on how things are connected.
I hear that's a pretty popular tool for this
Helps that there is no monthly cost for OneNote, and it's just as powerful@@BobWorldBuilder
Yes! OneNote is the perfect blend that allows me to keep everything together, but also the freedom to add in other aspects like pictures and maps and other documents. It also makes searching for things so much easier and efficient.
Oh 100%. As someone who is running a survival semi-sandbox campaign, OneNote is far more favorable to having dozens of Word docs. The players can go anywhere they want and I still feel prepared no matter what.
I will say, Lore Frog looks very nice. Personally, I prefer Notion, as I'm already using it, it allows cross-referencing and it's incredibly flexible (if you know how to use it). On top of that, I can sort and view my data in all sorts of different ways, which really helps if I need to look something up during a session.
While we're playing I take notes with a pencil and a notebook, the way my character would, sort of like a diary. After each session I go back through them, highlight what I feel is important to remember and maybe write a small to-do list as prep for the next game, but that's about it.
That means my notes are messy, full of doodles and misspelled names, but it helps so much with immersion and I'm having tons of fun with it! Previously I tried a more structured approach with binders and notecards, but it became a chore and really didn't help me remember things either 😅
Yep, so much of finding a good method for RPG notes is just about finding what feels natural. Once it becomes a thing you feel like you have to do, you've gone too far. It's a game!
Would love to see a video on those current campaign notes 👀 great stuff Bob!
I like to see a video about it.
Now that is out of the way, Matt Colville did Video recaps of his sessions and they were SUPER fun. I wish more people would do it. Actual play is nice, but condensed session recaps are the best thing in the universe. Even better than cheese cake (and I would take a good cheese cake over a luxury vacation 10/10 times).
Ontop of notes, I record the audio of each of my sessions. I listen to them as I write up the next session. A thing that helps is my sessions are only 3 hours long so listening isn’t to bad 😂😂
2x speed for sure haha
@@BobWorldBuilder oh absolutely!! 😂 I’ve always been pretty bad at note taking so it helps.
I use google docs. And then a google spreadsheet with a summary timeline, quest tracker, loot vault, etc. It's pretty nice.
I take a stupid amount of notes ... ex: in new campaign right now and I have 160 pages after 8 sessions. A lot of screen captures from the VTT though.
But it's super fun to read back before the next session and summarize the major events:
* really good or really BAD rolls that had some funny impact (especially in an open ended d100 system)
* character catch phrases that pop up in the moment and stick
* knowledge bombs (a ha moments)
* clever solutions to challenging problems that make the night memorable
You knew what you were doing by saying "subsequent to" instead of after 😂 got me
For those that look for digital tools that they own instead of being on someone else’s computer, I recommend either Obsidian (low setup) or Trilium (only nerds like me :p). When thinking about 40 years of notes, I think it’s important to have local copies of everything! And that includes handwritten notes. Take pictures and store them somewhere digital :)
For over the past 2 years, I have been following this so much. I am the one of two players from my seven-person campaign to take notes, and I am my strict time-keeper of the group, and here are some of my hightlights/tips for my fellow notetakers.
I absolutely rely on the mid-session and post-session notes. For Mid-Session I use some looseleaf paper in a binder, but each session is on a new section after the previous so that these are tidy and easy for me to look back through in order. And my post-session notes are something I refine and post publically on our discord server.
My one first tip is that I will wait a day or two to write down my post-session notes, do it from memory, and then I will look over my mid-session notes. That way I write down what I remember as the most important events from that session then I get all the information from my mid-session notes that I missed.
Additionally for my post session notes, I actually write down the notes in two styles, with the first being information I know in character, and the second being information everyone knows out of character. And to do this, I actually write down in a journal-estique my notes from my character's POV in a journal I own, and then the information everyone knows I write it down as a discord message with bullet points and dashes. This often helps me remember my own character's goal and motivations, or even his feelings on events I may have forgotten about.
Another tip I have is that if you guys are often finding yourself not sure what to do once the session starts is to write down a list of things to do in the post-session notes, that way you can briefly look at it, and see what options are there, and it also helps the DM know what to prep for before session. I will say that several times my DM has been thankful for this because from their POV, they did not know what we were going to do next, but with this small list, they can at least start prepping stuff in that general area.
Lastly, I suggest that if you guys are going on an extended break, to write down a quick recap of like either last session or maybe even the campaign up to that point. And I post it before the session starts so that everyone has a chance to review it. This is sorta pre-session notes, but I only occasionally have to do it.
And now to my fellow timekeepers, all I can say is mark down every Long Rest, even the Short Rests, and try to ask the DM if they know the current date. But even if the actual in-game is lost, ask the DM what day it should be, or ask an NPC that the DM presents before you (if you want to know it in-character). Also if the DM has special months/days make sure to note the end of each month, and what next month follows it.
Sorry for the wordy paragraph, but to all my fellow notetakers,
Best of luck!
My favorite part was the computer montage with the screeching modem noises. This is my brain.
Another great video. Brilliant editing. Well executed. Brilliant work good sir!
I am the note-taker in my group. I also draw digitally and have made a habit of drawing a magazine poster after we complete every adventure. It’s fun sharing art of great character moments or writing fake headlines of all the inside-jokes.
My paper notes at the session uses the long-loved “two-Column method”. Works for life, works for DnD
Fantastic video! I've been on a journey of trying to hone in what my ideal note-taking methods are. Currently, I use Notion. I like organizing my campaign into different sessions, players, monsters, etc. It was overwhelming at first, but now I'm addicted! Admittedly, I would love to eventually not rely on my laptop behind the screen. I feel like I'm always looking at "what's next" instead of focusing on the players. Like I said, a DM still in practice!
Can confirm. Notion has a bit of a learning curve, and then it's an addiction. Organization feels so exhilarating on it. XD
I DM for a 6 players group (with guests sometimes), and we have a been playing online weekly for nearly 5 years on the same homebrew campaign.
My note taking evolved with the scale of the campaign.
First there is a very strict difference between taking notes and doing prep work. When I take notes, it's usually because the players did something that will be changing my prep work, like asking a NPC for help, stealing from or antagonizing a faction, any act out of the ordinary made by the players that might be useful to use later from a narrative point of view. As a DM, my prep work consist of writing descriptions, gameplay ideas (skill challenges, battles, etc), dungeon design (or any landscape), the relation between the NPCs their objectives and how they are planning to act before any input from the players.
Basically, my note are about the players, my prep is about the rest.
It is entirely possible that my prep work will be useless for the whole session, because PCs decided to do something entirely different and unexpected.
For me personally, there is no "subsequent notes taking" to a session, it fused into prep work for the next session. However there is a 4th type of note taking that is not linked to a particular session, and is in the background of every session. Lore building. It can be files with information about each town, deity, faction, or even sometimes about the PCs.
As the PCs gain fame, experience and power, the DM's Lore building and prep work needs to reflect their reach in the world. As a DM creating a homebrew world, you can begin with just a small region when your players are level 1 to 4, but when they are level 17 and can teleport or change plane, you'll need to make a lot of lore building and prep work for them to still maintain that suspension of disbelief. This is why it's very hard to DM for high level content.
I prefer a digital format for my Prep work and Lore building, but I use a traditional notebook for my note taking.
I use pen and paper. And I can usually fill out 1-2 pages with bulletpoint information about what whe did, who we talked to and who/what were mentioned during the session. Oh and Loot ofcourse ^^
USE A NOTEBOOK!
At least for live notes, I do all my writing on the computer and print it, but I've taken so many notes on loose leaves. Needless to say I don't have many of them anymore. Even when I was keeping better track of them they ended up overfilling folders. Now I always have my notebook in my zippered RPG binder for table notes. I find this helpful for writing in general; I think better with a pen, but it's almost impossible to edit paper.
I also love taking my notes somewhat in character. My wizards take detailed notes with extraneous details and everyone's name, my barbarians take more colorful notes and focus more on what I actually fought. As a generality, but I try to actually focus on character and interests.
As a DM, I honestly never keep notes during sessions. It happened maybe once or twice because a player did or said someting potentially campaign changing, so I wanted to be sure to remember that, but most of the time I let my players take notes and recap at the beginning of each session.
As far as prep goes, it genuinely depends on how I'm feeling lol
If I'm in the mood for precise planning I may spend days on a single combat encounter, just becuase it's fun, but there are also times where I improv A LOT, I just can't always force myself to do something that would ultimately lead me to not enjoying DnD as much
EDIT: Oh, and I'm a Google Doc fan as well, it's nice, clean and easily manageable
Using Matt Mercers method actually made the hobby harder for me. Then i came across The Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master and it changed how i prep for games.
The amount of work i was doing was so much less and i didnt feel so stressed snd burned out all the time.
I honestly look baxk ar it and regret copying Matt's style and wish i had stumbled across Lazy Dungeon Master sooner.
Yeah some approaches are just going to feel more natural for different people. Sly's approach seems to work for many!
I’ve been running Monster of the Week for my group. Our sort of meta narrative has been that it’s a show and sessions are scenes in episodes. I even narrate little pre- and post-credit scenes to help set the stage. So my post-session note taking has been in the form of “episode synopses” so everyone can look back and be reminded what happened in a given session; who they met, what they learned, important elements of the hunt, etc. I take my own brief notes for stuff I need to remember that they might not know
As a DM, I love OneNote the best. My players pretty much don't take notes, I'm gonna send them this video. My husband (DM) makes the latest player summarize the previous session for the group, and that works pretty well. That group has a meticulous note taker in it though. Taking notes after the session is probably the most essential step to actually remember what's going on.
Great video as always Bob! I ve been living in a different city for the past year and adult life got a bit in the middle of dnd campaign. I've been having trouble finding a good way to prep notes for the sessions we play. I'd like to try a good less-techy-more-papery focused approach but don't know how :/
For our current campaign, I use my written session notes as the basis for a (typed) account written from the pov of my character. In-game, she maintains both a diary as well as a research journal, so my idea is that she's compiling her own experiences into a full-blown account, in case she herself or someone else might one day find it useful (it's a cosmic horror campaign so she's fairly unnerved, haha). Of course, the main goal is so that I'll remember this campaign properly, in contrast with the ones I played about a decade ago when I last played. And it also helps me actually process what happened during a session / during the campaign so far!
Most of us take notes as players and I love being organised about them. For exmample I always use square boxes for NPC names, or Arrow marks when getting to a new place. Also since we're all artists, we tend to doodle while playing. One player's drawings are essentially comic strips of our adventures and it's awesome to see them shared on our Discord every week.
As a DM my during-session notes are way more chaotic because I'm too busy. The more I DM the better I know how to write down my pre-session notes. I also use Google-Docs and heavily rely on the document structure on the left. One of my most important files is the Calendar, which is essentially my posts-session notes. And it lets me keep track of the moon cycle too ^^
One DM of mine uses post-its for his notes, each making up a plot-point or encounter or NPC.
That all sounds great! Well done :D
I was about to say what if the GM(me) barely even takes notes, but you covered that nicely at the end. Sigh as far as Google privacy invasions, Google knows my whole life... Thanks again for making great videos!
Would love to see a video on your process for notes during the session. I always feel like I'm too busy to take notes properly!
My favorite note ever taken as a DM was "jar of rat hands." I have no idea why this was written down, and neither did my players.
I record my sessions and upload them as unlisted TH-cam videos since the campaign isn't public. Major benefit to this is that TH-cam's transcript system allows me to quickly skim a 4 hour video for a specific moment and see EXACTLY what happened then.
I do the same! I then use those transcripts to write in-world poetic recaps for my bard to recite
Great video Bob. One thing I didn’t see you mention was recording the session itself, either visually or just audio. As long as you have the parties consent it’s a great way to get a refresher on the last session for planning the next
A secret... Microsoft one note is f**king amazing for planning and archiving campaigns. It's a literal digital binder where you can make tabs for each location, event or session complete with tables or images
As for in session scribbles notes, I've started taking them almost like a journal. Every main location gets a box title with all the notes that happen there. Then the travel between each point also gets a box title with everything that happened on the trip. And I keep a tally of days spent on each location/journey. It keeps the whole campaign organized linearly in my notebook so if I can remember when it happened in real life I can easily find it in notes. And if not, I have big boxed titles so as long as I can remember it happened in that town, I can go look through each instance of that towns notes
As a DM I have a small notebook that I can carry around for putting ideas down when they pop up. But the bulk of my campaign lives in OneNote this has been very helpful with most of my game being a homebrew world. I can link between tabs, pages, and even files saved on my computer for easy access. The last one is nice so I don't waste game time looking for a saved file.
As a Player I have a ARC style notebook that I can add pages as needed. My character sheet and all notes are kept here. Out of the different character sheets, character journals, etc that I've used this current option has been the best for my play style.
When I was playing 3e, I started trying to write the story of our adventures after we'd been going a while, and I soon found that I was forgetting lots of details, or event orders, etc, and I didn't have the notes to fall back on. Even the DM couldn't remember a lot of it. Of all the things I wish I had from all those games over the years tho, it would probably be video, of the games and the *afterwords* with friends. But we did indeed have lots of great times with very few notes ever taken. And I do still have some memories, so there's that.
These wise and wholesome words on why we play TTRPGs are why you’re my favourite TTRPG creator Bob! Games come and go but what really matters are the experiences we build with the people at the table
I set up a custom wiki for our campaign. It's been awesome. We have one "Session Notes" page, with one heading for each session, where I jot down each noteworthy thing that happens. And then we have pages for all sorts of npcs, locations, lore, etc. that's easy to link to and search for.
Mine is all in handwritten notes - the biggest benefit being that my awful handwriting keeps my GM notes encoded against the players reading it....slight downside being that I struggle to read it sometimes too
Haha it adds to the mystery!
I recently discovered your Dragon of Icespire Peak DM guides and game sessions. Listening to you and Grace enjoying some lighthearted D&D has inspired me! I’m going to give DMing a try and run that module for my friends. I would love to see a video detailing your minimal and concise note-keeping! Thanks Bob!
Had to watch this on .75 speed to keep up with you this time, Bob, lol
I just found your channel and loving your steady, calm, optimistic and informative style :)
I love the idea of the home video for the campaign, what a delightful way to keep the memory
Whenever I am a player in a game (a rarity) I draw vignettes of the things that are happening. Most of my player notes are tiny little pictures with a few names of NPCs, location names, and items found jotted down next to them.
As a GM my prep notes consist of printed off pages out of reference books or stuff I found online with post-it notes or hand-written adjustments and corrections. If I am running from a book (like Curse of Strahd) I have index cards and post-its riddling the book with page numbers that contain related info or things that I am doing differently from the book.
During the game I keep a single page where I jot down what we've gotten through and the random stuff I had to make up on the spot, because my players never do what I anticipated they would.
I also usually just type out an outline for where I expect a game to go if I'm running a one-shot or a limited story arc.
Then I search the internet for pictures of how I see the people, locations, and items that will be in the game; Print them off, then organize them in my folder for that game in the expected order they will be revealed, usually with names, stats and relevant info on the back of the picture, that way I can hold it up so the players see the thing, while I get the relevant information about that thing on my side of it.
I use a lot of index cards and easily re-arrangeable small tokens so that if something is missed in one place, I can easily shift it to a secondary location or person that can reveal it at a later time.
My group collectively wrote a document with as much information we could remember over 25 years. The more we wrote together, the more we remembered. Recommended to every group.
We play on Zoom and record all our sessions. My post-session notes are mostly brief annotations of where we were and the situation at various points in the videos. It's great to have!
I have a GM binder, i have session notes, player notes, idea notes, a section for NPCs, villains, unresolved plot hooks. It's basically my world Bible.
My group is starting to automate our note taking using AI. All it takes just recording the session to generate a transcript (a lot of programs will do that like TH-cam, Whisper, etc) and then feeding the transcript file to a custom GPT who will summarize the session from that transcript that can then be copied into a doc. Its not perfect and requires a little clean up but as LLMs get better this will improve. Overall it saves a lot of energy and time as it takes very little effort to run through the process.
My method:
Before (Session Prep.): 2-4 pages (2 sheets). Google Docs. Usually Lazy DM advice and a few extra stuff. Printed. Lots of blank spaces for...
During (Session Notes): Analog. On the blank spaces of my session notes. Including internal jokes.
After (Session Log & Campaign Track): Google Docs. Mostly for keeping track of stuff. Updated once every 2-4 sessions. Character Info, NPC Info, Given Magic Itens, Calendar (time records), Campaign Plan, Session Log (1-2 lines per session).
That's it.
As an avid note taker, I agree with your video a lot :] I've started playing Dnd last year and I love to take notes specifically because I reminisce on what we did and it helps me remember better! That way I can bring up little jokes and moment easier. I also had good enough notes that after when we had a little time skip during the summer holidays, I was able to write down in text the whole campaign, journal style (Very fun, I did spend about 2h/a day for a month copying by hand. My handwriting is beautiful now.)
For notes on paper, I would recommand to either use a pen or a marker, not a pencil/crayon (since it can smudge and become less easy to read with time). I find that using a black felt pen/lineart pen with white paper works great for me because it has good contrast, has a consistent opaque color, allows to be quick and makes it easy to read :DD And also you don't waste time erasing stuff which help me personally.
On digital, the tools I'm using (not only for ttrpg) to take notes are either:
- OneNote (Allows for multiple notebook, with sections and different page, allows for drawing directly but also formatting, adding images, etc. You can add and move around paragraph which I like a lot, it also has easy sync since it's Microsoft)
- Obsidian (Allows to type, group, section and page, but also link stuff! It does ask a bit more prep and isn't quite as flexible with images, but it is very good and I understood all of what I needed with a 20 min video. You can also make boards to see a bunch of stuff easily, etc. I still need to see if you can link/have a cloud but it's good!)
- Google Doc (Less flexible to arrange notes and a bit limited with formatting, but very easy to access on any devices. It's good to make bullet point list of notes)
I can’t stress enough how good of a tool it is to have a video recording of each game, especially if the group is playing online via Zoom, etc. I’m fairly new to TTRPGs so I’m still working on my notes, but having timestamps as context for my notes makes it super simple to go back and write down what is important.
I guess this isn't really a form of note-taking per se, but every week on the day before my group's game night, I write a detailed recap -- like a "Previously On" segment -- of last week's session in our Discord channel; I recount the important details, interactions, and plot points, as well as a vague sentence or two about what the group can expect in the coming session. I've found this is a great way to remind everyone of what happened last, and it gets them thinking about what they want to accomplish next. Plus, it keeps any player who may have been absent the previous session in the loop. Highly recommend this method, I've been using it for several years!
Me and my friends started our first campaign the other day. I summarized the first session in the form of a diary from the prespective of my character, kinda inspired by how the main character keeps his journal in Red dead redemption 2 and loads of other games. It's fun and helps me develop the character as well as remembering what we did. Thanks for the video Bob!
I have my prep on onenote... not optimal but it works.
I am a new dm and I can find it very difficult to take notes mid-game, so my players took on that "task". We have one prolific note-taker (in an physical notebook), who after the session collects whatever notes the rest made, and he writes a summary -from his character's pov- and collects it all together, using overleaf, into bacisly one large campaign book, including maps they've collected, NPCs meet and so on. It's really neat.
And that way I don't get overwhelmed and can focus on prepping, and running the game
Another great way for more visual people and people who get distracted easily is doodle notes!
My page looks like a map with hieroglyphics but I can quickly remember what we did and who we met. It also makes flipping through them for info a lot easier!
As I tend to be a VTT DM I take notes on what the players do straight into the computer as we play, usually adding these notes straight to my 'plot hook' story pad or this quests progress in the VTT (Fantasty grounds user for a long time now, though I understand pretty much all of them have the very similar functionality in most respects now). I do have a scribble pad I might use, but it rarely gets used in session.
As these notes are all in the VTT campaign folder as long as that folder exists I can go back through all the campaign I have ever DM'd (which is almost all of the TTRPG i've done, though I do also keep the few PC I've played and some concepts with notes for them under a dummy campaign too). Though my love of giving these campaign folders daft, funny, or plain obtuse names finding the right campaign for that one memory you can't quite recount could be a pain - for instance one of the players really wanted to play 'wild beyond the witchlight' as a rabbit when we started a new campaign, and is known to be a rather chaotic player so that campaign is called 'WascallyWabbit'.
Thank you for the video! Love your stuff! I would like to see your system for analog notes.
Thank you! And thanks for your interest in that video. It'll be a little while, but I'm planning on making it
I add a room on my server that is right underneath the main chat for the game. I called it "recap" room. During and after a session i put date, highlights of what party did, any special items or treasure acquired, and a screenshot from vtt. It can help remind me to see how long ago players leveled up, what i gave them, and also when new players join campaign i dont have to rehash last 4 or 5 sessions.
I like to keep in world notes. For a superhero campaign I ran a few years ago I made a one page newspaper after each session. The Headline was a reference to the events of the last game and the other stories where foreshadowing upcoming events, like a celebrity coming to town, or just bits of world building.
For my current campaign I'm creating a bunch of social media posts to do the same.
I'm a big bullet journaling person, but I also find that having to take meticulous notes during really pulled me out of the session and stressed me out about missing stuff. My solution was a scrap notebook where I take rough, minimal notes during the session and a character notebook (or often a binder) where I record more detail after the game of what happened, have different spreads for listing NPC's and locations, and keep charachter information I need to reference often. I love making it part scrapbook, part character manager, part world wiki, and when a campaign is done I take all the pages from that binder and bind them together as a fun memory of that character to look back on.
“Subsequent to…very good” had me rolling
You know we'd love to see those notes. I think it's fun to see artifacts of how other people play their games. I have an absolutely destroyed binder that is held together with duct tape that houses the notes from my first campaign, as well as maps and illustrations we made for the adventures. Honestly, it's an eyesore, and I would probably do well to toss in the garbage, as the highlights of the campaign are remembered fondly. The notes themselves are only kind of fun to look at as a "oh yeah, remember when you got lost in the Forbidden Woods?" kinda thing; some of the events in a campaign get overshadowed by the big hits, but are still fun to think about. I still take notes in this way; 3 ring binder, hole punched paper, so if I need to print something out I can stick it in easy, and then taking notes isn't that bad!
I sure wish I had campaign notes from my playing days back in the 80s and 90s! Started playing again in 2017 and been DMing a campaign since 2018. I'm very greatful to have a player that's been takes great notes of the campaign. He gives me a break sometimes and runs an adventure so I can be a player as well. I definitely take notes during those sessions now. I'm going to take all the notes and create a timeline and poster of the campaign!
I'm one of the note-takers for my regular group (there are two of us who take notes during sessions). We play online so take notes digitally as we go, with occasional post-game in character journals. It's great to go back and read the stories of our games, especially when we're preparing for sequel seasons! Makes it easy to remember what happened and to get excited about what is still to come
On a Starfinder campaign I literally formatted my character sheet, abilities, and notes into 4 different .txt files in Notepad
Notepad is fun because it uses uniform type since it's used for coding, so each character takes up the same amount of room. You can do fun things like make boxes and uniform formatting.
It actually worked surprisingly well, and I had a lot more freedom than using a digital PDF (since I've almost exclusively played TTRPGs online due to my friends being around the country.)
this channel is growing so fast since I first found your RoTFM videos over a year ago! Congrats!
Our group has a Discord where we dealing with scheduling and communication anyway, so our solution for session notes was a dedicated channel that people contribute to during each session. As DM, I get to read back the (often chaotic) notes afterwards, which is both fun and often enlightening to see what players actually took away from the session/campaign. (I keep secret DM notes in a 3 ring binder that's a combination of analog scribbles and printed Google Docs.) Thanks for the vid!
Audio only is another option. Many of the conference style microphones do a decent job of capturing the voices in a room. It is a process I've only been using for the past year and has served its purpose for reviewing a session.
I have a different pretty notebook for all of my campaigns. I take session notes in them in the front half (during session - its usually just a list of what's happening, notes on AC/resistances during battles and sometimes what people said word for word. That last one is usually the lore relevant stuff but sometimes my friends just said something really cool) and then my after session notes is just occasionally adding to my various reference lists - towns and taverns and shops and NPCs oh my
I do prep notes in Google slides. That way I can have everything I need for a particular scene or setting all on one page. Also the limited space keeps me from over prepping... sometimes.
For post session notes I use Google docs in pageless format. Then I use the heading and subheadings feature which automatically creates a nice table of contents on the side
I'd love to see your campaign notes!
I did a whole project on paper versus plastic back in elementary school that examined the current research on which is better: electronic or analogue forms of media. The writing stuff by hand actually works in a really cool way by engaging certain neurons in your brain more intensely than typing. Note though: you can still write on a tablet and achieve the same effect. The theory (when I did the project) was you were engaging multiple portions of your brain simultaneously, leading to better retention.
I used to record "lines of the night" for each of my sessions and then type them up, maybe with a single sentence before each explaining what was happening. Even now, decades later, I can pull up those documents and enjoy the highlights (funniest and most badass moments) of the campaign. It's a really fun alternative if you don't want to do a full-on chronicle of what happened each session.
When I'm planning, I tend to write things on my PC. During session? I combine recording with written notes. Usually those notes are good quotes, mentioned things to reference later that may or may not pertain to the game at hand(rules, movies, scenes, shitposts, etc.), and things they do I want to ensure gets incorporated. Then? I reference my recording when I plan...which is usually an hour to a day before the next sesssion. Don't be like me if you're not ok with heavy improvising. I doubt I'll need these recordings, but I love having them so I can look back on the game for years to come. Nice video as always, Bob!
My usual method of note taking is to write what I need to know in a notebook, then transfer them to digital form after the game. My group also has a note taker that uses Google Docs to write down damn near everything and shares them to the group.
When I run a game, I will usually write down the location info I need and get stat blocks printed off for the monsters that are intended for the group to encounter, as well as spells, if needed.
I use either the built in handouts or journal in roll20 or Foundry VTT (since we play with them anyway), as then I have my journals right there in the game, so I don't need to shuffle around, looking for my notes.
I find OneNote provides a convenient way of recording and organising my session notes alongside my session prep and world building. It allows my to link different notes, quickly search through hundreds of sessions, organise things into logical sections (e.g Places, Religion, NPCs, Session Notes, etc.) and pages (e.g. one per NPC or NPCs in a location), and I can combine hand drawn pictures with text.
I would love to see a video about your pre and mid game notes!
I yesterday hosted my first dnd session as a dm and I took wayyyyy too much notes that I got lost in it haha, would love to see how you do it! ❤
Ty for the amazin videos!
The thing I use to take notes is called Obsidian. It is free and you can link entries together and it will show connections relating to each other on what I refer to as the mind map. It is really cool to see the "map" grow as your campaign progresses and it was so cool when we got to a new town and I started an entry for it and saw that it already had a link from a previous npc who said she was from there. We were like "Oh cool! Nia lives here...we should look her up!"
I'm a DM for an online group, and I record our sessions! Since I have to take off for work soon after we're finished, it's great to watch back for note taking on a later day.
Just realized the clever channel name reference to your real name. Love your vids, thanks for bringing all of this to us!
9:03 - I would love to see a video about your note taking method! Glad I found your channel, it's great.
I'm running a Rime of the Frostmaiden game at the moment and each session the players take notes for themselves (and me!) to paste into a discord channel we came to call "The Daily Dale" and it's been a godsend for me as a DM to see what plots they've followed and NPC names etc. as a reward for the person taking the notes, they gain a point of inspiration for the following session that cannot roll over. It's been such a great tool for our campaign that the DM of my other game has taken the same concept for his game.
In regards to post game notes. As the DM, I take those notes and write a wrap-up, like each "chapter" is a session, and by the end of it, you have book to share.
Try using a Rocketbook? Analog notes that can turn into digital notes. Sure, it's an extra step to upload it, but you get both benefits.
Started DMing ToA as our groups first big campaign commitment. I forced all my players to take notes, but I split up the responsibilities to
People
Places
Quests
Rumors
session summaries
xp, weather, date and time
Highly recommend!!!
we all do paper notes except for me (I try not to take notes except for very important story beats) and while everyone groaned in the beginning, they're happy we did so
I'm using Obsidian to organize my DM notes for my campaign I'm running (first one!) I also record the audio from each of our sessions, and have been doing so for years in campaigns in which I was a player. The idea originally was to upload them to TH-cam so we could all access them, but the editing time required to remove Things TH-cam Says You Can't Talk About killed that off pretty quick. For the campaign I'm running, though, I've started uploading the raw audio to Odysee (no conversion to video first required!), and I listen to each session afterwards to make sure I didn't miss something important or useful for the future.
Otherwise, lots of Google Docs.
Notion is my favorite note-taking app. my favorite feature is that you can create sub-pages and link to them in the main page, its pretty neat
As a GM I blessed in having one player that takes a lot of note like pages full each session.
Especially then we had to stopp my homebrew campaign and switch to a module, now I know that when I come back I'll have 50+ pages of detailed notes.