Does anyone have tips on how to take meaningful notes for the group? This is probably the sixth game I've played in - third campaign and this time I'm starting at day one. ❤️
We had our first official season tonight and I was attempting to take notes but I'm looking for an efficient method.
As someone who scribbles out notes in long hand in a paper diary and gets frequently annoyed at my DM not slowing down so I can catch up I'm afraid I won't be much help but I'd be interested to see if anyone has any suggestions (besides me learning short hand)
I would suggest asking if it would be ok to record the first few sessions, so that you can go back through it at your own pace. As you gain more confidence in taking meaningful notes, you'll speed up.
Note taking is a really quite personal style/choice, so here's what I would do if it were me (as a DM, I tend to prepare my sessions this way too):
Story: this is really down to the individual, but if in doubt, ask your DM if you struggle to remember anything.
Mostly, I would try and keep things to the point, and try to make notes on key information that you think may or may not be important. The rest is really down to personal taste.
A notebook at the table would be your best bet, and if you have time/inclination later, you can always type it up
I have tried a few different methods; Blank Journal with a mix of Longhand and Shorthand, Post-It Notes, and Google Doc (for VTT play).
They all have their benefit, but none of them seem to work for me very well.
For me it is a struggle to balance Gameplay and Note Taking.
If I am fully immersed in the game, and we are all Roll Playing well, having to stop, pull myself out of the immersion focus on what I just heard, try and remember all of it clearly while taking notes is difficult and then I am missing what is going on in the game.
Recently our DM has been giving a little time to take notes when we reach a point that it would be wise to take notes, but that just stops the momentum of the session.
In reality, I think I am going to start using something like OBS to record our sessions and go back later and take notes from the recording.
Hope you find something that will be helpful for you...
Cheers!
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Breathe, dragons; sing of the First World, forged out of chaos and painted with beauty. Sing of Bahamut, the Platinum, molding the shape of the mountains and rivers; Sing too of Chromatic Tiamat, painting all over the infinite canvas. Partnered, they woke in the darkness; partnered, they labored in acts of creation.
What is your motive for writing notes? The two main motivations I see are for recording a "history" of the campaign and the other is to keep important details in case you need to reference them later ("Aragorn asked about a guy called Gollum, and asked us to let him know if we ever see him").
I can't really help with the former. I tend not to like it, as it tends to distract the note taker from the game and being in the moment. As such, I don't have much advice to offer - I tend to play in the moment.
The latter comes with experience. You tend to pick up more and more on what's likely to come up again just by playing - you start recognising Chekov's Gun being placed. The DM will often give hints, they'll use a slightly different tone of voice etc when they talk about NPCs they want you to note. You don't need much time to take these kinds of notes.
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If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
Let's say the party wanders into a small village, let's call it "Plainville", and orders beers at the tavern. But the bartender, a tattooed woman named Hilda, says they only have a shitty homebrew beer available because the regular shipment from over the hills is late. It probably got hijacked by those damn goblins again. So the party is all like, "Goblins? Goblins stole your beer? Where are they? We'll get that beer back!" So the bartender tells you the goblins are in the hills to the west, and the bartender will pay the party 10 gp for each keg of beer they can retrieve and deliver.
The notes you'd take would look like this: "Plainville. Bartender=Hilda. Missing beer. Goblins in west hills. Reward." - Short. Sweet. Simple.
Now, when the campaign starts getting into more of a deep intrigue mystery type of situation, your notes may need a bit more detail. But even then, focus on who you met, where you're going, and why you're going there.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
This is why, as a DM, I write up session notes and post them. I actually need them as reminders for all the left turns the party made during the session, and since I usually have at least some basic notes I can usually do it rather quickly. Then I post them to Discord. Ironically, I'm pretty sure that most of the players don't read them. When I'm a player I very much follow AnzioFaro's method of names, places, goals (and timeframe/sequence if absolutely necessary). As a player it's verb/noun bullet points all the way down.
I imagine this might be hard to do for in-person note taking, but I'm in a couple of online groups and I use mind mapping software (Freemind, to be specific). Everything is sorted in a collapsible tree structure that way, so when I gotta look something up it's pretty quick to find.
My notes are pretty scribbly but they are getting better with practice. I usually go over them right after the session and look for any good quotes I managed to write down, clarify anything that is hard to read. My notes are more complete for the game with the larger party than the smaller, where there's less time for me to catch up.
I focus on:
favorite quote moments
Any clear facts we need to know, gold awarded, magic items given, etc.
Names of important NPCs
Then whatever else I can get in
I keep my notes in an A5 looseleaf notebook.
At the end of the session, I find it helpful to note each page with a page number, session date, party location, and in-world date (in the game where we track in-world time). Makes it easy to get oriented quickly back to the page when I'm reviewing it later.
Write fast, have a quality pen, have everything set up so it's easy to access. It does get easier with practice and some campaigns want more thorough notes than others. In the larger/more intense campaign, the first session notes were barely any and now I usually end up with about two pages of notes per hour of play.
I separate each session with a different color of paper as a divider to make it easier to leaf back the right number of sessions.
I use one long txt file I can access from anywhere, via Dropbox, shared so other players can read it. . Session notes in chronological order, divided by session, latest at the bottom.
Write scribble everything, important, ie the plot/events, on paper during the session, type it up later, when you can sort out information if something becomes obvious as the session progresses https://routerlogin.uno/ .
Make everything as condensed as possible, don't bother noting anything irrelevant: who critted, what you had for lunch. Ask the DM how you spell peoples' names. Write clearly.
As loathed as I am to ask, are there any "ai" apps that can transcribe a voice recording of a session(8-10 hour with breaks) to an OCR'd PDF ? I am just spitballiing, as i will need to get consent from the group before attempting this, but I'd like to be able to give them something to consider and evaluate after my pitch.
ETA: I don't mind paying around $10-$20 a month for the service, as we only play once a month and rent the place we play and the sessions last 10+hours. I'd like a high quality result.
Alot of major note taking points have already been made.
To add a few things that work for me...
If your DM has mentioned something once or twice is one thing. But if that person, place, or item has been mentioned several times it likely something important.
Highlighters & red pens can be used to highlight or underscore something is important. Don't make an entire page yellow you'll hate yourself later.
When have written my notes and want to add more information to that page ( and no spare room) I will make a short note on a post it. Then place the post it on corresponding page.
Tabs on pages with one word on tab can help locate a page that is constantly being referred to.
I use a college composition book with about 100 pages; I write down the names of the players and the names of the characters and then I date each adventuring session. I keep a total of opponents faced, defeated and scared off, a list of what the party finds, a list of the total loot accumulated and how it is divvied up as well as when the party advances in level.
Occasionally, when the DM needs to remember where we are in the campaign, he will review my notes.
WOW! how's this work?? We're using DND beyond and Discord
How does this work??
As I said, with a college composition notebook (available at any office supply retail store or at Amazon) along with a couple of ball points ink pens. In other words, OLD SCHOOL methods that are not dependent on DnDBeyond. As an alternative, if you have a laptop or a notebook with MS Word or WordPerfect, you can use that.
Most of our group uses Google Docs as it is a free Word Processing Program.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Breathe, dragons; sing of the First World, forged out of chaos and painted with beauty. Sing of Bahamut, the Platinum, molding the shape of the mountains and rivers; Sing too of Chromatic Tiamat, painting all over the infinite canvas. Partnered, they woke in the darkness; partnered, they labored in acts of creation.
Later addition: How were you or anyone else supposed to know about my impediment? On-line print commentary tends to hide imperfections and other deficiencies.
Does anyone have tips on how to take meaningful notes for the group? This is probably the sixth game I've played in - third campaign and this time I'm starting at day one. ❤️
We had our first official season tonight and I was attempting to take notes but I'm looking for an efficient method.
As someone who scribbles out notes in long hand in a paper diary and gets frequently annoyed at my DM not slowing down so I can catch up I'm afraid I won't be much help but I'd be interested to see if anyone has any suggestions (besides me learning short hand)
I would suggest asking if it would be ok to record the first few sessions, so that you can go back through it at your own pace. As you gain more confidence in taking meaningful notes, you'll speed up.
Note taking is a really quite personal style/choice, so here's what I would do if it were me (as a DM, I tend to prepare my sessions this way too):
Bullet points: NPC names, locations, monsters fought, treasure/gold acquired.
Story: this is really down to the individual, but if in doubt, ask your DM if you struggle to remember anything.
Mostly, I would try and keep things to the point, and try to make notes on key information that you think may or may not be important. The rest is really down to personal taste.
A notebook at the table would be your best bet, and if you have time/inclination later, you can always type it up
Greetings EmCue,
I have tried a few different methods; Blank Journal with a mix of Longhand and Shorthand, Post-It Notes, and Google Doc (for VTT play).
They all have their benefit, but none of them seem to work for me very well.
For me it is a struggle to balance Gameplay and Note Taking.
If I am fully immersed in the game, and we are all Roll Playing well, having to stop, pull myself out of the immersion focus on what I just heard, try and remember all of it clearly while taking notes is difficult and then I am missing what is going on in the game.
Recently our DM has been giving a little time to take notes when we reach a point that it would be wise to take notes, but that just stops the momentum of the session.
In reality, I think I am going to start using something like OBS to record our sessions and go back later and take notes from the recording.
Hope you find something that will be helpful for you...
Cheers!
Breathe, dragons; sing of the First World, forged out of chaos and painted with beauty.
Sing of Bahamut, the Platinum, molding the shape of the mountains and rivers;
Sing too of Chromatic Tiamat, painting all over the infinite canvas.
Partnered, they woke in the darkness; partnered, they labored in acts of creation.
What is your motive for writing notes? The two main motivations I see are for recording a "history" of the campaign and the other is to keep important details in case you need to reference them later ("Aragorn asked about a guy called Gollum, and asked us to let him know if we ever see him").
I can't really help with the former. I tend not to like it, as it tends to distract the note taker from the game and being in the moment. As such, I don't have much advice to offer - I tend to play in the moment.
The latter comes with experience. You tend to pick up more and more on what's likely to come up again just by playing - you start recognising Chekov's Gun being placed. The DM will often give hints, they'll use a slightly different tone of voice etc when they talk about NPCs they want you to note. You don't need much time to take these kinds of notes.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
Names. Places. Goals.
Let's say the party wanders into a small village, let's call it "Plainville", and orders beers at the tavern. But the bartender, a tattooed woman named Hilda, says they only have a shitty homebrew beer available because the regular shipment from over the hills is late. It probably got hijacked by those damn goblins again. So the party is all like, "Goblins? Goblins stole your beer? Where are they? We'll get that beer back!" So the bartender tells you the goblins are in the hills to the west, and the bartender will pay the party 10 gp for each keg of beer they can retrieve and deliver.
The notes you'd take would look like this: "Plainville. Bartender=Hilda. Missing beer. Goblins in west hills. Reward." - Short. Sweet. Simple.
Now, when the campaign starts getting into more of a deep intrigue mystery type of situation, your notes may need a bit more detail. But even then, focus on who you met, where you're going, and why you're going there.
Anzio Faro. Protector Aasimar light cleric. Lvl 18.
Viktor Gavriil. White dragonborn grave cleric. Lvl 20.
Ikram Sahir ibn-Malik al-Sayyid Ra'ad. Brass dragonborn draconic sorcerer Lvl 9. Fire elemental devil.
Wrangler of cats.
Man, they're getting sophisticated...
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
This is why, as a DM, I write up session notes and post them. I actually need them as reminders for all the left turns the party made during the session, and since I usually have at least some basic notes I can usually do it rather quickly. Then I post them to Discord. Ironically, I'm pretty sure that most of the players don't read them. When I'm a player I very much follow AnzioFaro's method of names, places, goals (and timeframe/sequence if absolutely necessary). As a player it's verb/noun bullet points all the way down.
I imagine this might be hard to do for in-person note taking, but I'm in a couple of online groups and I use mind mapping software (Freemind, to be specific). Everything is sorted in a collapsible tree structure that way, so when I gotta look something up it's pretty quick to find.
My notes are pretty scribbly but they are getting better with practice. I usually go over them right after the session and look for any good quotes I managed to write down, clarify anything that is hard to read. My notes are more complete for the game with the larger party than the smaller, where there's less time for me to catch up.
I focus on:
I keep my notes in an A5 looseleaf notebook.
At the end of the session, I find it helpful to note each page with a page number, session date, party location, and in-world date (in the game where we track in-world time). Makes it easy to get oriented quickly back to the page when I'm reviewing it later.
Write fast, have a quality pen, have everything set up so it's easy to access. It does get easier with practice and some campaigns want more thorough notes than others. In the larger/more intense campaign, the first session notes were barely any and now I usually end up with about two pages of notes per hour of play.
I separate each session with a different color of paper as a divider to make it easier to leaf back the right number of sessions.
I use one long txt file I can access from anywhere, via Dropbox, shared so other players can read it. . Session notes in chronological order, divided by session, latest at the bottom.
Write scribble everything, important, ie the plot/events, on paper during the session, type it up later, when you can sort out information if something becomes obvious as the session progresses https://routerlogin.uno/ .
Make everything as condensed as possible, don't bother noting anything irrelevant: who critted, what you had for lunch. Ask the DM how you spell peoples' names. Write clearly.
As loathed as I am to ask, are there any "ai" apps that can transcribe a voice recording of a session(8-10 hour with breaks) to an OCR'd PDF ? I am just spitballiing, as i will need to get consent from the group before attempting this, but I'd like to be able to give them something to consider and evaluate after my pitch.
ETA: I don't mind paying around $10-$20 a month for the service, as we only play once a month and rent the place we play and the sessions last 10+hours. I'd like a high quality result.
Alot of major note taking points have already been made.
To add a few things that work for me...
If your DM has mentioned something once or twice is one thing. But if that person, place, or item has been mentioned several times it likely something important.
Highlighters & red pens can be used to highlight or underscore something is important. Don't make an entire page yellow you'll hate yourself later.
When have written my notes and want to add more information to that page ( and no spare room) I will make a short note on a post it. Then place the post it on corresponding page.
Tabs on pages with one word on tab can help locate a page that is constantly being referred to.
But that works for me.
I use a college composition book with about 100 pages; I write down the names of the players and the names of the characters and then I date each adventuring session. I keep a total of opponents faced, defeated and scared off, a list of what the party finds, a list of the total loot accumulated and how it is divvied up as well as when the party advances in level.
Occasionally, when the DM needs to remember where we are in the campaign, he will review my notes.
WOW! how's this work?? We're using DND beyond and Discord
How does this work??
As I said, with a college composition notebook (available at any office supply retail store or at Amazon) along with a couple of ball points ink pens. In other words, OLD SCHOOL methods that are not dependent on DnDBeyond. As an alternative, if you have a laptop or a notebook with MS Word or WordPerfect, you can use that.
Most of our group uses Google Docs as it is a free Word Processing Program.
Breathe, dragons; sing of the First World, forged out of chaos and painted with beauty.
Sing of Bahamut, the Platinum, molding the shape of the mountains and rivers;
Sing too of Chromatic Tiamat, painting all over the infinite canvas.
Partnered, they woke in the darkness; partnered, they labored in acts of creation.
Unfortunately, Google Docs is not an option for me at the moment.
Perhaps a speech-to-text app is an option
If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a Mimic.
No. I stutter.
Later addition: How were you or anyone else supposed to know about my impediment? On-line print commentary tends to hide imperfections and other deficiencies.