Session notes help you remember what happened in previous sessions! Even a week between games can blur some of the details, and longer breaks even more so. Taking notes is an optional thing you can do to help your memory out! They can help you roleplay, and your DM will appreciate it too.
I’ve been taking notes since I started playing D&D. Over time, I’ve found a process that works for me. These notes help me remember what’s going on over a long campaign, and it helps me keep track of NPC and organization names.
So, I’m going to share my way of recording session happenings. I have a few ways that I’ve found helpful for different aspects of the game:
- Taking notes during a session
- Typing up recaps after a session
- Keeping a campaign timeline
- Writing an in-character journal
Taking Notes During a Session
This is one of the notebooks I’ve used to keep notes. (It’s full now, actually.) I write main campaign session notes by hand because it helps me remember things better.
I highly recommend hand-writing notes instead of typing them! Keeping a physical campaign notebook is a wonderful way to keep a record of what happened. There’s even science that suggests that writing things down manually helps you remember them better than typing them.
And besides, I have way too many empty notebooks.
Here’s a picture of some notes from a SBotLL session—
Don’t worry about, uh, reading that.
As you can see, these aren’t coherent. They’re more like phrases I jot down while I’m playing, because I usually don’t have the time to write down complete sentences—at least ones that would make sense to an outside perspective.
But, these help me remember what happened! I can scan over these notes and get a good picture of what happened, and even remind myself of details I wrote down just so I wouldn’t forget them.
Now, if I came back after a year, these notes might not be as helpful. If I was showing these notes to another player, I would almost have to go line by line to explain it. Because it’s not very legible.
So, a day or two after the session—while it’s still fresh—I set my notebook beside me, pull up a Word document, and type out the session notes in a much clearer format. The notes I took during the session remind me of details I might have forgotten after a day or so.
Typing up recaps after a session
Having a typed, clean version of session notes is great for sending them either to your Dungeon Master or among your group!
I turn my written phrases into clear sentences when I type up my session notes, and make sure that NPC names and locations are spelled correctly. I usually use a bullet point format.
Here’s the part of my session notes that correspond with the handwritten section up there.
That’s a little more legible, right?
I like to record the date of the session and the type of session it was—before the party split, I called them Good Squad Session Notes, but for now they’re Finnith Session Notes. I save them in a folder specifically for D&D notes, organized by year because this campaign has been going for 3+ years now.
I like to use bullet points because it helps me remember that the notes don’t have to be written beautifully. Notes are a memory aid, not a creative retelling of the session’s events. They’re functional, and in this case it’s more important to accurately write down what happened instead of worrying about making it pretty.
Transferring my notes into this format helps solidify my memory of what happened, gives me a coherent recap of events, and reminds me of events that occurred in the beginning or middle of the session that might get lost otherwise. I can also quickly find NPC names and locations to remind me of their past significance if they’ve shown up in the campaign before.
As a Dungeon Master, I have a lot harder time keeping handwritten notes. I keep a notepad around to jot down details I want to remember, and that’s usually around the best I can do. But, as a DM, it’s even more important that you keep track of campaign events!
So, if you can’t keep notes in the moment, typing up what you remember afterwards is very helpful. For the first campaign I DM’d for, I kept an Obsidian Portal Adventure Log. You can read it over here. These are probably about as dry as the session notes, but again—it’s more important that you get the information you need from them. Right after the session, I would hop on the website and type up the Adventure Log. This was not always great for my sleeping habits (I was particularly bad at ending sessions in a timely manner, so I would often start writing sometime after midnight), but I got it done!
For my Curse of Strahd sessions, I write up a recap to read aloud to the players as we start the next session. This recap is usually short and sweet. I’ve found it a lot more helpful than an exhaustive recap written afterwards. But, I have less details to keep track of, since this campaign uses a prewritten adventure. I’ll probably mix the two approaches the next time I run a homebrew campaign.
If I was a player and couldn’t keep handwritten notes, I would try to write up what I remembered afterwards when I had the time. In that case, you may find it helpful to verify details with other players or the DM! Actually, sending notes to the DM can be helpful on its own.
Why send your notes to your DM? Well, you get another set of eyes on what you wrote! The DM could correct your spelling or clarify what an NPC said if they have time to review it. It also communicates that you’re engaged and listening during the session. Some DMs even give out extra experience or inspiration to note-takers!
On top of that, your notes could help the DM themselves remember what happened! The DM has to keep a lot of things in their head all at once. It’s helpful to have another person’s account of what they, as a player, noticed during the session. And since you’ve helpfully typed it up for them, they have it in an easily-readable, searchable format.
If multiple players keep and type up notes, that’s even better! Every player can notice different things. We—or, I know that I tend to most easily remember things that happened to my character. So, if multiple people are taking and sharing notes, then the session accounts become stronger and more accurate.
There are two other types of accounts I keep for the campaign I play in, and both can help you keep your character’s voice and development consistent.
Keeping a session timeline
A lot can happen in one day! The homebrew campaign I ran didn’t last much more than a month or two of in-game time. Keeping track of time can really help you see the campaign in a more realistic light.
While this is helpful for Dungeon Masters as well, I think that players can benefit from helping the DM keep track of how many days since, for example…
- how many days since the player characters met each other
- how many days since the party agreed to a task
- how many days the party has been away from a town
- how much time the party spent in a dungeon
- how much time since the villain’s last run-in with the party
Time is important! The changing of seasons, the attitude of an NPC, the plans of the antagonists all hinge on time. What might happen during the time the player characters are off doing something else? Keeping a timeline can help remind you of the window of perspective your character is limited to. While we have all the time between sessions to process and anticipate, your character doesn’t!
Here’s an old version of the campaign timeline. It’s got a brief (very brief) summary of events by day. I keep note of the date of my last revision, as well.
This is another thing you can send to your fellow players and DM! They might remember something differently. They can help you improve the accuracy of the timeline, and the timeline can serve as a helpful tool for the whole group.
The last thing I do helps me remember my character’s unique, subjective perspective.
Writing an in-character journal
Here’s a bit from Finnith’s journal! This one comes from the session right before the other examples.
It’s an in-character journal, so you can be as extra as you want with it!
Writing in Finnith’s voice helps me stay in-character and think about how he interprets the events surrounding him. It also reminds me of his personal evaluations of NPCs he’s met along the way. Since it’s his own personal journal, it also contains random digressions, nonsensical observations, and the rare bout of self-reflection.
The more comfortable you are in your character’s voice, the easier role-playing gets! So if you have the time, keeping an in-character account is something I also recommend, along with other note-taking tools.
Of course, all of this depends on how much time you have between sessions. I know all of this can seem extra! But, if it sounds like something you’d like to try, I recommend it.
Don’t worry about getting everything down exactly right. It’s Dungeons & Dragons, not There Will Be a Quiz at the End of This Session. I know D&D Beyond has a section on the character sheet for Allies and Enemies, and just keeping that filled out can go a long way!
Do you take notes? What note-taking methods do you use?
Leave a Reply