Tracking Campaign Activity

I DM an extremely detail-oriented campaign, which I still supplement with emails in down time that add to the flavor and progression of the campaign, but I have ceased writing recaps and sent out an email that players ignore details at their own peril. I decided not to prompt any more, and no one else has taken up the duties of annalist. I have the details in my notes; so I can keep my end consistent. If the players miss something they should know about, they have been warned.

At some point a DM needs to have the time to develop the campaign.

Falcon said:

I DM an extremely detail-oriented campaign, which I still supplement with emails in down time that add to the flavor and progression of the campaign, but I have ceased writing recaps and sent out an email that players ignore details at their own peril. I decided not to prompt any more, and no one else has taken up the duties of annalist. I have the details in my notes; so I can keep my end consistent. If the players miss something they should know about, they have been warned.

At some point a DM needs to have the time to develop the campaign.

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What peril are the players risking if they ignore details? Will an unstoppable foe simply descend on them and kill all the PC's if they don't discover his plan first, or will the results of their failures simply be used as further plot hooks. While it seems like they deserve firery death for their insolence, somehow killing them for something in the past doesn't seem the same as having them die because of bad battle tactics.

At some point, it seems like their should be real absolute consequences for missing things like this, but I don't know how that should be worked out. If the players don't know enough to figure out what's going to happen to them, they probably won't figure out the situation even after they suffer the consequences. Once again, the DM is left with a dilemma. Let them think their deaths were pointless and arbitrary, and have the PC's learn nothing, or else offer up an explanation, which will probably make them more upset.

I really like the group of people that I play with. We used to meet twice a week under another DM, who did a great job, and I think is probably better than me. He got burned out by being the DM all the time, so since I've got a fair amount of experience DMing, I started running another game once a week, and he DM's on another day. I think the problem is that my style is alot different than his.

He makes up alot of things on the fly, and is very good at coping with the PC's wierd and unpredictable decisions. Also, there's more social interaction in his campaigns than in mine. The thing is, except for about three or four major NPC's, most of this interaction was with people that quite literally had no names. There were alot of towns and inns with no names also. The PC's were very much in control of the direction of the game, so in one sense it was very non-linear. OTOH, from the perspective of time, it was very linear. The party was always moving forward, and never really revisited any old NPC's or situations, so it didn't matter that they didn't have names to be identified by.

I run more combat heavy games, and I do more prep work ahead of time. Its funny that I run a less social game, but have alot more named NPC's and locations. After being dissatisfied with all the nameless NPC's in the other DM's game, I made a secret vow to try and introduce more consistency into the plot. I'm also trying to run several plot arcs at once. The problem is, the party always just grabs onto one plot, and keeps trying to move forward fanatically on that one front. To keep the game moving, I usually let them, and just start making stuff up. While they're doing this, they seem to lose all knowledge about what else might be happening in the campaign world. They don't seem to realize that I intend them to be gathering clues for a variety of paralell storylines, and it might not be possible to advance on any given story arc and every given time.

The players do seem to getting the hang of my style as we play more, at least a couple of the more knowledgable and involved players. And actually, typing all this up indicates that these are things I probably should explain out of character to the players, so they a better idea of what I expect.

Well, campaign notes help out quite a bit. I use those as a starting point then add notes right after the game is done and from that I write up my story hour. A couple of my players are nice enough to read the storyhour and usually let me know if I left something out.

I also keep other notes on various ideas in my big notebook and keep NPC's on index cards, for my own reference since planned battles use sheets with statblocks. I really need to add a timeline for upcoming planned things but I never get around to it.

After each session, I sit down at the computer and start to write notes about the session - my memory is good, but too darn short.

What I write:

• What goals were accomplished by the various factions?
• What information has the factions gained about other factions?
• What long- and short-term goals were changed due to actions from other factions?
• How will the faction respond?

These four questions do wonders for campaign continuity. I have lots of factions involved in the plot to manage: several political/economical ones (merchant guilds, noble houses etc), religious ones (churches and druidic circles), and of course the players themselves. It takes a lot of work, but it pays off!

Zerovoid,

It does sound like, IMHO, that you need to discuss these things to the group out of character. The bottom line is that you are all there to have fun. Find out what your players want and try to give it to them, but your players also need to understand that you, as the DM, have needs to be met as well. Try and come to a compromise.

Hope this helps!