What do you like in a session write-up?

[Koloth]

IMO - session write ups should include
The RL date of the game session and the in game start date and end date
a brief recap of the session's events
notable things lost, destroyed or used up
notable things found and who in the party has them.
XP, character build points or similar awards.
Perhaps things like the next game time, food plans, etc.

 

[djotaku]

IMO - session write ups should include
The RL date of the game session and the in game start date and end date
a brief recap of the session's events
notable things lost, destroyed or used up
notable things found and who in the party has them.
XP, character build points or similar awards.
Perhaps things like the next game time, food plans, etc.

I think for the table and/or the GM this (what you wrote above) is absolutely perfect.

Because I enjoy writing I do a summary of the major plot points including anything especially interesting or funny. I post them to my blog if anyone wants to read them. I know at least some of my players read them.

If my players who are artistic provide drawings, I include them.

 

[chuckdee]

I think for the table and/or the GM this (what you wrote above) is absolutely perfect.

Because I enjoy writing I do a summary of the major plot points including anything especially interesting or funny. I post them to my blog if anyone wants to read them. I know at least some of my players read them.

If my players who are artistic provide drawings, I include them.

I think this point to the disconnect - what are the logs for? I write my logs for entertainment, to piece together events into a narrative, and to maintain a history of the world and campaign. A purely factual account wouldn't accomplish this, IMO.

 

[Koloth]

I think this point to the disconnect - what are the logs for? I write my logs for entertainment, to piece together events into a narrative, and to maintain a history of the world and campaign. A purely factual account wouldn't accomplish this, IMO.

Nothing says you can't do both. A brief 'just the facts' recap and a more verbose story telling.

Link to a long abandoned campaign blog from 2007ish : Greyhawk's Cauldron
IIRC - 3 folks contributed to that one. Other things like next game time and food plans were handled via a separate email group.

If there is a party bookkeeper, perhaps that player could do the Just The Facts posting while others could do story postings.

 

[Piperken]

Anyone else read writeups often?

Not serially. As a reader, I most often come across or read others' session write ups when they're nested as part of a convention report, or a table runner's analysis of an rpg they haven't run before, a set of procedures, or a new or different way of how they handled a particular situation.

I'm also seeking things like a table runner's experience with a game or games, I'm less familiar with, or whether their trying something new they hadn't worked or didn't work for them, why was that so, or how a player's experience was trying a new game.

 

[Blue]

I’ve been posting write ups on some forums for more than a decade now, so presumably other posters. Since I’m the only player who attends every session, they’re control+ F searchable for major characters. We also maintain a huge NPC database.

Looking at the replies, which mirror in gist what I was about to say, I think the audience for most of our session write-ups is much more local than what you are doing. Not sure how much help we'll be.

In the groups I'm in we rarely have a GM-provided session write-up. At least once that's come up that it can highlight things that the GM knows are important, plus since it doesn't provide more hours in the day, it takes away from GM prep time.

So recaps are from players with an audience of players. When playing online, I do a shared google doc with an header for each session about what happened, NPCs, and plot and puzzle things we're piecing together. Anyone can write in it, but I'm the main one keeping it up to date. I keep a separate section for loot with a bit of an audit log. One of the other player also keeps notes, and she's great at brainstorming all sorts of things and she'll often have bigger picture items than I catch, but also some wild flights of fancy, for what's going on. She uses a paper notebook and a selection of colored pencils, and includes rough sketches as well. She'll gladly show us but there no publishing mechanism where were have it between sessions to just peruse.

Last game we also made more use of our player discord in a slightly wiki-ish way, with channels for NPCs, locations and such that we had threads under, as well as a "Missives" channel that was letter-writing in the intrigue-heavy, French-inspired campaign. That's a touch similar to your database which is why I mentioned it, as it's not attached to session recaps specifically.

 

[ironregime]

When I’m a player, I appreciate any and all efforts to chronicle games, and I read them prior to the next sessions to refresh my memory.

When I’m a DM, I try my best to do some form of write-up after most sessions. It could be a bare minimum bullet list of what happened, a more detailed one-page prose summary, or a full-blown multi-chapter fiction piece with dialogue, etc.

My favorite use for other DMs’ write-ups is to get ideas, details, and story beats for published adventures prior to running them. I used JollyDoc’s Shackled City Story Hour (among others) to great effect back in the day.