Quick Links
Taking notes isn’t the exclusive domain of Dungeon Masters when playingDungeons & Dragons. Players will need to remember what is happening in the plot and what their characters are currently doing when weeks or sometimes months of real-world time will pass between sessions. Committing some of it to writing helps deal with these long gaps.
Notes are also important for the overall group. When somebody misses a session, they’ll want a stronger recap than “Last week we fought some bugbears”. Taking player notes is not that different to taking minutes in a meeting, and you can use some of the same skills.
How To Take Notes As A Player
Session notes serve a bunch of different purposes depending on the type of game you’re playing.
All of these needs have different ways of taking the appropriate notes, and you’ll want to carefully consider your options. If your goal is to jog your memory in a week, simple notes are often better. If you need someoneto understand the full session’s events from the recap, you’ll need both detail and readability.
Details
Characters
A list of which party members were in the session helps, especially for larger groups or formats that don’t have a consistent player group.
A list of characters relevant to the session is also important:Quest givers, antagonists and recurring characters.
Narrative Events
Both the plot of the session and itsrole in the larger campaign narrativeare important.
Character-specific storylines should also be noteddown but may be listed separately.
Enemies Fought
Random encounters may not always seem relevant butmight contain clues that become relevant later.
Measuring what types of encounters you’re facing in a region canallow classes such as wizards and clerics to prepare spells that better counter them.
Rewards Earned
Lots of sessions end just as the party collects their trophies but before deciding who claims what. Havingdetails of what loot the party gained allows it to be divided fairlybefore the next session.
Unfinished Business
Any points raised that will be relevant to the next session.Long quests, unresolved mysteries and ongoing events are all important.
Use Your Notes To Enhance The Game
The way you take notes can also improve your player experience, letting you get more fun out of the game for the added investment.
Use Your Notes To Roleplay Better
Taking notes is a good way to improve your game andenhance your investment in the characters. Here are some different spins you’re able to put on your note-taking technique, depending on the type of game you’re playing.
Benefits
Write Notes In Your Character’s Voice
Take your session notes in the form of aninner monologue or diary from your character.
Putting the notes you take in the tone of your character is agreat way to practise your roleplaying. Examining evidence from the perspective of your character can also guide you in making decisions, bylinking events of the current session to previous sessions and the character’s backstory.
Have Your Notes Be An In-Character Document
Session notes take the form of a guild ledger or after-action report.
Having your notes be a prop for a document that exists in the game is another useful roleplaying addition. Keep in mind that if this is the case, the DM might impose consequences for including or excluding certain information.A report that admits “we backstabbed the quest giver for a bigger payout” is likely to lose your reputation and guild membership.
Notes As Dialogue
Session recaps might take the form of dialogue between party members, or a drunken exaggeration made to impress NPCs in a tavern.
Having the session notes be a joint effort with other players can be a fun way ofstaying engaged during and in between sessions.
If you exclude certain details from your notes for roleplaying reasons, it is worth keeping another note showing what information has been omitted or exaggerated. Even if you think you’ll remember the differences,it is easy to convince yourself of something thatdidn’t happen purely through repetition of readingandwriting notes.
Use Your Notes To Be A Better Player
On top of improving roleplay, your notes can also help you to be a better player. This helps theother players around the tableandthe Dungeon Master.
Considerations
Connect Your Notes
Apps like Obsidian let you turn a series of session notes into a map showing connections between characters, places and factions.Looking back through your notes as a map can let you identify trends you didn’t see before, solving mysteries in the plot and spotting potential traps.
These tools often export in formats that are great for sharing.If you want to create a shared set of notes or take turns with other people, agree to use the same tool.
Compare Notes With Other Players
Players and characters with different perspectives mightpick up on details that you miss. This is especially true if there are sections of the adventure where the party is split up and investigating different leads.
Sharing notes like this can take the form of an in-character scene where the party members exchange information.
This can be complicated to do in a game where not all characters have access to the same information.Check with your Dungeon Master whether you’re allowed to compare notes in this way, as in an intrigue-focused game this can spoil some mysteries.
Use Notes To Ask Questions
Most Dungeon Masters love nothing more than to be asked about the world they created. Often,you’ll come up with questions in the process of reviewing your notes. These may be details that your character would know but haven’t come up in the campaign, which you can ask out of character.
Other questions from your notes might require you to seek out the answer in character. If your notes reveal an NPC lied to you,you’ll need to ask them about it in character during the next session.
