My friends and I are starting a new campaign tomorrow, and I want to be sure that I take good notes this time around, since my notes from the other campaign I have going on are a bit of a mess... I would like to avoid that this time around.
Does anyone have any good tips for note taking? Any kind of help would be greatly appreciated! ^^
Are you a DM or a player. Very different kinds of notes taken.
In either case, I would suggest that you decide before hand what kinds of things you will be noting and use Word to create a document that has labelled collumns for that data.
Pages with word clouds for NPCs work well, or really just any sort of style of note that gives them their own page. Instead of just having chronological notes for the sessions in general, where "John Doe" might come up in several bullet points pages apart from different session days... just go ahead and give John Doe his own page in your notebook when you're first introduced to him. Every time something comes up about John, just drop a little short note about it on the page, even if you're also writing out a more detailed note somewhere else for the quest or something. Doesn't matter if John's page gets messy, you can always tear it out and rewrite it from scratch, because the entire page will be just for John and you won't be messing anything else up... maybe give short notes with a reference number for what other page or character has more detail, if you're using shorthand ("Evil? See Saturday August 8, alleyway").
Not only does this help get everything you know about John collected into one tidy area, it also puts you in the practice of just creating pages for NPCs as you meet them, even before you know they're important. It's real common for players to forget the name of whatsisface from three sessions ago, you know, the king's daughter's boyfriend's uncle? And its real annoying for the DM when you constantly forget their name and just call him "that guy" or "Chad" when his name is Cha'kowsta Dongle the fourth, lord of Bleepbloopblop.
This format works great for NPCs, but the same theory can be applied to places, or to quests, etc. Treat your notes less like a novel, and more like a bunch of independent Wikipedia articles, where you may drop some citations of other pages to flip to for related information, but which try to collect everything worth knowing about that subject. It uses up a LOT more notebook space, but fresh notebooks are cheap and plentiful enough that that shouldn't be a problem for anyone.
A wiki can also work really well for a campaign. You meet a new NPC, you make a page for them. Then every time you meet them, you link to that page, and can easily update it if there’s new information. You also make Other pages for places, for the PCs, for session recaps, all linking to one another. And of course a page that’s just a list of NPC names. And you can use it to track party treasure and inventory, and give permissions so anyone in the party can update it. And it’s easy to refer back to while playing if you forget who someone was.
for me my note taking is similar to when I was in class. I write down as much info as possible in the moment, then I go back through and transfer it (usually to a google doc) in a more refined way either right after the session or within a few days so it's all fresh in my mind. But I use pen and paper during the session because I can write faster than I can type. Advice I also give (though I always fail myself) try not to abbreviate unless it is a well known short hand. I always shorten something and say "I'll remember what MEE" means but when I look back I'm like "MEE they heck is MEE."
However I do a full writeup at the end of a session (within the day or two) and, as a DM, publish it for my players. This becomes the notes. Might be a different way to go about it. Lets you have a more storied approach, lets you have plenty of time and honestly if you forget something it likely wasn't too important. Also being in a digital format you can search it easily.
I tend to reread the last session before the next and take it from there.
Some campaigns have a lot of NPCs and you're not always sure which ones will figure prominently (and neither might the DM).
I prefer one page with a list of NPCs and a couple brief sentences about who they are. If you're struggling to sum them up in that small a space, or if they show up again in a new development, only then do they get their own page. I follow the same model for places, rumors, factions, etc.
Speak to other players and try to all work down notes as it goes on, or at least one other player. Like someone else mentioned, thought clouds coming off of an NPC name or location etc are super useful. You'll realize as the campaign goes on what is highly important and what is not. Our DM does a fantastic job or giving us super important information at times, and funny useless information at other times just to slip us up.
Write down every proper noun you can, as well as several things about them (such as for NPC's appearance, voice, quest involvement, relation to other characters), that way you can remember what they are later and why they're important.
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My friends and I are starting a new campaign tomorrow, and I want to be sure that I take good notes this time around, since my notes from the other campaign I have going on are a bit of a mess... I would like to avoid that this time around.
Does anyone have any good tips for note taking? Any kind of help would be greatly appreciated! ^^
Are you a DM or a player. Very different kinds of notes taken.
In either case, I would suggest that you decide before hand what kinds of things you will be noting and use Word to create a document that has labelled collumns for that data.
Basically, make a form.
Pages with word clouds for NPCs work well, or really just any sort of style of note that gives them their own page. Instead of just having chronological notes for the sessions in general, where "John Doe" might come up in several bullet points pages apart from different session days... just go ahead and give John Doe his own page in your notebook when you're first introduced to him. Every time something comes up about John, just drop a little short note about it on the page, even if you're also writing out a more detailed note somewhere else for the quest or something. Doesn't matter if John's page gets messy, you can always tear it out and rewrite it from scratch, because the entire page will be just for John and you won't be messing anything else up... maybe give short notes with a reference number for what other page or character has more detail, if you're using shorthand ("Evil? See Saturday August 8, alleyway").
Not only does this help get everything you know about John collected into one tidy area, it also puts you in the practice of just creating pages for NPCs as you meet them, even before you know they're important. It's real common for players to forget the name of whatsisface from three sessions ago, you know, the king's daughter's boyfriend's uncle? And its real annoying for the DM when you constantly forget their name and just call him "that guy" or "Chad" when his name is Cha'kowsta Dongle the fourth, lord of Bleepbloopblop.
This format works great for NPCs, but the same theory can be applied to places, or to quests, etc. Treat your notes less like a novel, and more like a bunch of independent Wikipedia articles, where you may drop some citations of other pages to flip to for related information, but which try to collect everything worth knowing about that subject. It uses up a LOT more notebook space, but fresh notebooks are cheap and plentiful enough that that shouldn't be a problem for anyone.
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I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
Player!
And that's a good call, I'll be sure to do that, thank you! :D
A wiki can also work really well for a campaign. You meet a new NPC, you make a page for them. Then every time you meet them, you link to that page, and can easily update it if there’s new information. You also make Other pages for places, for the PCs, for session recaps, all linking to one another. And of course a page that’s just a list of NPC names.
And you can use it to track party treasure and inventory, and give permissions so anyone in the party can update it. And it’s easy to refer back to while playing if you forget who someone was.
I are you writing on paper or typing?
Guide to the Five Factions (PWYW)
Deck of Decks
for me my note taking is similar to when I was in class. I write down as much info as possible in the moment, then I go back through and transfer it (usually to a google doc) in a more refined way either right after the session or within a few days so it's all fresh in my mind. But I use pen and paper during the session because I can write faster than I can type. Advice I also give (though I always fail myself) try not to abbreviate unless it is a well known short hand. I always shorten something and say "I'll remember what MEE" means but when I look back I'm like "MEE they heck is MEE."
As a DM or pc I don't take notes.
However I do a full writeup at the end of a session (within the day or two) and, as a DM, publish it for my players. This becomes the notes. Might be a different way to go about it. Lets you have a more storied approach, lets you have plenty of time and honestly if you forget something it likely wasn't too important. Also being in a digital format you can search it easily.
I tend to reread the last session before the next and take it from there.
Some campaigns have a lot of NPCs and you're not always sure which ones will figure prominently (and neither might the DM).
I prefer one page with a list of NPCs and a couple brief sentences about who they are. If you're struggling to sum them up in that small a space, or if they show up again in a new development, only then do they get their own page. I follow the same model for places, rumors, factions, etc.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
Speak to other players and try to all work down notes as it goes on, or at least one other player. Like someone else mentioned, thought clouds coming off of an NPC name or location etc are super useful. You'll realize as the campaign goes on what is highly important and what is not. Our DM does a fantastic job or giving us super important information at times, and funny useless information at other times just to slip us up.
Write down every proper noun you can, as well as several things about them (such as for NPC's appearance, voice, quest involvement, relation to other characters), that way you can remember what they are later and why they're important.