How do you record your game sessions?

[Laurel]

The group I am with currently uses a combination of me jotting down during game play a really brief summary of what the entire group is doing. We now also have two (possibly three) of us individually writing journal/stories of the game thus far.

Though if you are looking for complete accuracy go with the tape recorder idea if you are all in the same room (Thanks for the idea, eris 404) This maybe something will subject my group to soon

 

[eris404]

I'm seriously considering that. I also write the logs in short story format. Did anybody feel inhibited by it or did they tend to forget it was recording?

grrr...I hit a key accidentally and I think I lost my post. With my luck, it will show up again when I least expect it.

What I had originally wrote was that we forgot it was there to the point that I forgot to switch tapes/sides. The added bonus is that you get to hear all of the hilarious jokes and out of character (and sometimes in character) conversations. I was laughing out loud while transcribing these tapes.

For anyone considering this, I am serious about getting enough tapes. I kept pausing the tape when people went off on tangents for too long, because I only had 1 90-minute and 3 60-minute tapes. In retrospect, having 6-7 tapes probably would have been better.

Also, in case you're wondering, I'm using a generic Walkman-type tape recorder that uses regular cassettes and has a fairly decent built-in microphone. We had eight people around a dinning room table and with the except of one person who speaks softly, I could hear most of the voices on the tape pretty clearly.

 

[res]

For me, it all depends on the type of character I'm playing.

One was a Wizard who was interested in knowledge. I was always taking notes and a few days after the game I would usually write out a brief review of what happened. One day I'll write it up as more of a story than what we had.

One friend of mine is currently turning an old campaign of hers into a Comic with someone else who played in their game. Its turning out pretty cool but it is a little slow going since one of the people involved is now living in Koria.

But for the rest of us, we each take our own notes but no one really records anything. I even tend to vary my notes on the type of character I'm playing. For example, I might have a slow, dim witted character who doesn't pay attention to things, I don't write anything down. That character probably wouldn't remember it anyways.

Others are more observant, and thus more notes.

 

[Bendris Noulg]

Notes, lots and lots of notes.

There are both the notes I make preceeding a game and the notes I make during a game.

Then there are the notes my players make while we play (which kinda is more of "their perspective", but keeps me in-touch with that, so it's good).

After a session, I compile them together into a journal and then start prepping for the next session.

 

[Mr. Kaze]

I'm a bit of a control-freak DM, so I keep a campaign web page with tallies of each characters' current level and XP (XP gets tossed out every time the party rests, so it helps if I keep track... and I need to know how big they are...) and a short session journal featuring the highlights that I remember and any salient plot-points that the party picked up (in the clearest verbiage I can provide, such that even if I'm incoherent when DMing, they've got the info they need to move the story along). It removes a bit of the red herring intrigue from the game, but having winged through several sessions of red herring fishing (we call it "getting a ladder"), I don't view it as a problem.

This worked out really well when the party found an informant NPC and gave him a lot of money -- one of the players jotted down notes about what they asked which I collected after the session. I compared their notes to my script and wrote the parts that they asked about out as a rant, posted it, printed it, and handed it back (inclusive of all of the little details that I hadn't anticipated them asking for, but they did and I was able to tell them that "he gives you an answer that the specifics of won't be relevant for a while yet but they will be in the copy I give you...").

I find that it's a good way to keep everybody engaged in our 3-hour sessions instead of letting anybody go heads-down (worst of all me) to scribe. Then they refer to the web page if something occurs to them between sessions, make their prep notes based on that and voila, we're all in the same parliance again with correct NPC names and everything.

::Kaze

 

[Zappo]

I don't.

On the plus side, when a player remembers something from six months ago, I know for sure that it was a good session.

 

[jmucchiello]

Buy a tape recorder. No, seriously. I write our game logs in short story format and I don't want to miss any details, so I decided to try it. I used it for the first time last session and it was brilliant. Just make sure you buy enough blank tapes.

Actually a video camera hooked up to a vcr would get you 6 hours of recording that is time indexed for you. Just look at the vcr when something interesting happens and jot down the time index for later review. And with 6 hours if you forget it's running you won't miss the "tape swap" time.

Whether or not you point the camera at folks is up to you. But I'd suggest a tripod in an unobtrusive corner and hoping people ignore it (or even better, hiding it and only using the audio portion). Just don't blame me if this increases the "ham"myness of your players RPing.

 

[Bendris Noulg]

Whether or not you point the camera at folks is up to you.

I thought of doing something like this, only with the camera not facing anything. I'm a tad camera shy, and the last thing I want is players either freezing-up for the same reason or hamming it up. All's I need is sound.

 

[Alhazred]

When I'm GMing Cthulhu, I like to recap the events of last session, or possibly the last several sessions, tacitly reminding the players of NPCs with which they've interacted, information learned and the consequences of their actions. Whether or not they clue into the fact that I'm highlighting what's important is another matter. Sometimes they put the pieces together, sometimes they don't.

In the D&D campaign in which I'm currently playing, I record the party swag and distribution (to try and ensure reasonable distribution), whilst another player records NPC names and locations. The DM has commissioned me to draw a map of his home-brew setting, so I inlcude those locations in which we've adventured along with those areas the DM has already created.

 

[blargney the second]

I have two ways of recording game sessions:

1) As DM I award 50 XP to each member of the party if I receive a journal before the next game starts. It's worked very well so far!

2) As a player, I jot down one-word notes from time to time: names, locations, items, etc. At the beginning of the next game, I take out my notebook and get the other players and the DM to help me reconstruct the last game. This serves double duty by giving *everybody* a recap, as well as logging the game. Again, lots of success with this one so far!

-blarg