How good at note-taking are your players?

[the Jester]

Hit or miss indeed.

I try to track what happens in the combats round-by-round in a notebook; at the start of each combat I typically ask for a volunteer to help. Those who do get bonus xp for helping 'lubricate' the game.

 

[pogre]

None of my players take notes and even though I write a journal (see SH) they often forget names and places. I try to include those with reminders in the background now...

 

[Wormwood]

None of my players take notes and even though I write a journal (see SH) they often forget names and places. I try to include those with reminders in the background now...

My previous group never took notes.

But one evening they discovered that the 'Harper' who sent them on 'vital missions' was actually a cleric of Cyric.

Turns out that over the past month they had assassinated three innocent people who they thought were Zhent spies.

All of the above would have been discovered if they had simply written down a single name a month before .

They took better notes after that.

 

[Altalazar]

I give out 10% extra Xp per sesson when someone writes something up. As a result, my players who do so would take notes during the sessions for the write-ups. Some are more meticulous than others, but the net result is there are a lot of details recorded for posterity.

Even without that XP bonus, most of my players like to keep track of clues and so forth that they have found, so write that down as well. We even get some mapping going on, though only if it is something big and complex. Otherwise, little scraps of paper with rough maps I've given them are what they use to keep track of where they are.

 

[NiTessine]

Very bad. When they finally reached a city to rest after a few sessions of adventuring, and time came to divvy up the loot and identify the magic, we discovered that the party fund was divided across the character sheets of five different people, and most of it was missing altogether. Foolish.

 

[Lalato]

My DM hands out "tracking sheets". We're supposed to write down important notes regarding the session. We're also supposed to use them to keep track of important character actions.

Our DM uses the tracking sheets to help him dole out XP at the end of the session. Even so... some players keep meticulous notes... others do the bare minimum.

 

[gunter uxbridge]

Yeah, well, sometimes it's a result of a bad experience. A group I play in was stymied for quite a while a few sessions ago because we mis-spelled the name of an NPC. We had a note intercepted from the villain, whose initial was "G". We met an NPC named Jerendene. Only we didn't spell it right, the darn woman's name was Gerendene, and the DM thought it was funny we couldn't figure out his *!^%##& clue. He let us in on it after a while, but now we insist he spell names and stuff for us if it's a common regional word, one our characters would know how to spell.

Holding up a game session for a clue based on an initial. What the heck?

Awww come on now...it didn't effect the flow of the game and you guys got it in the next session. Besides, the looks on your faces when you figured it out was priceless.

OK...so maybe I could have handled it better as the DM, but then again I had no idea you guys spelled it wrong or had the wrong impression. No biggie.

 

[Madfox]

Would the character know how to spell a name? If the character would know, then I would tell the player, if not, then I leave it up to the players.

In the end, I have one player who takes rather meticulous notes on treasure, but as far as names and events are concerned my players are not terribly good. I can't complain though, because neither am I - even as a DM I sometimes make too few notes.

 

[Asmo]

wolfen wrote:

"Sir John: Nice guy that curls his mustache. Lives in a sweet, and heavily guarded, mansion. Trusted friend of King Alfons. Asked you to clean up the forest outside Morrustown."

Hmmmm...Morrustown, I have to remember that

Asmo

 

[Zad]

I know personally I don't want to stop and ask the DM to clarify the exact roles (and spelling, hello) of the 3 names he sputtered out in one sentence.

I do it all the time. But then again I write the story hour for our campaign. I take notes but the level of detail will vary - my general objective is to get a historical record and enough notes to do the story hour for the session. I make sure I catch details like people/places/things, but the round to round detail of what happened in combat often blurs. But it ends up being invaluable - after being in the campaign for 3 years now, it helps a lot to call up a document and find what I want (not to mention my retention is heightened by the act of writing it.)