Notes for Every GM and Player
A Call to Action for GMs!
I have a couple of old 1st edition modules covered in badly obfuscated handwritten notes from my earliest days of playing. I can remember constantly having to improvise various things as we played because I couldn’t remember exactly what we had done or said in previous sessions.
In the mid-90s I ran a lengthy Dark Sun campaign. I have an extensive background document I wrote for my players explaining how the campaign would run and what changes I made to the game world because I knew that many of them were reading the source material and I wanted to avoid confusions between TSR’s Dark Sun and Ryan Dancey’s Dark Sun. Even so I still ended up improvising often because I relied on memory for things like minor NPCs and the decisions set up by various player character choices.
I played once in Peter Adkison’s home campaign. He provided two detailed books, one on the world, and one on character creation. This was a decade-old world (at least) that had dozens, maybe hundreds of people play in it. (During our session I tried to sell Luke Peterschmidt’s wife’s PC to a sorcerer we met in a bar in exchange for his Fire Imp. Mrs. Peterschmidt (who was playing in her first RPG ever) was not much amused by the offer.) Peter was a very improvisational GM and created much of our adventure on the fly from bits and pieces of things he’d used in previous games and from the long history of his world, but I doubt he remembers Lady Peterschmidt’s character or the name of the sorcerer we met in that bar.
For a hobby filled with Word Nerds, based on a business of selling thousands of pages of material a year, where one mark of distinction is the depth and complexity of the game worlds we play within, it’s weird that “note taking” isn’t something with a higher visibility. If you play poker for any length of time you’ll run into many people keeping detailed records of their play. If you become a chess enthusiast you can review game after game played by people at all skill levels to see how strategies evolve. My father kept detailed records of water temperature and the size & weight of the bass he fished for in Lake Washington for decades. But tabletop roleplaying gamers it seems have a hard time with note taking.
I’ve always kind of suspected that this is due to people following the pattern the publishers create. Publishers provide detailed campaign backstories, and that’s what DMs tend to create. Publishers don’t provide detailed descriptions of actual play, so people tend not to make those things. DMs tend to act like little publishers – they create setting material for the players to consume.
We’ve got to get with the program here people! Valuable info is being wasted!
Basic Notes on Characters
How many times have you asked a player what their AC is? Or the DC of a saving throw? Do you track how many hit points they have? What about their alignments?
Start your notetaking career by getting some basic info about your characters recorded.
You can use this information between sessions to help prepare future encounters. Knowing things like the health and maximum and minimum (with Take 10 and Take 20 figured in) skill rolls can help scope challenges.
You may want to make some of your notes “authoritative”. Your notes, not the players’ are the true record of the game. For example, you can track your character’s hitpoints instead of the players. Giving them exact totals is your option. You may just tell them they “need some healing” when they start to get low. This also solves the problem of players who “forget” to note damage inflicted on their PCs, or who “misunderstand” how many hitpoints they regain from healing spells and potions.
Notes On Play
As the session unfolds, make a running series of notes. Keep track of things like how many of each type of monster the PCs overcome. You might want to keep a running total of things like the most damage a given PC deals in a single round – the kinds of things that could shape the challenge of future encounters (there’s nothing worse than when a PC one-shots the Big Monster!)
Write down the names of anything you give a name to as you play – these can become recurring NPCs and add to the sense of immersion the players have. Even if that entity subsequently dies, something (or someone) else might reference it in the future – the “Grendel’s Mother” effect.
Pay special attention to summonings. Any time a character summons anything with a reasonably high Intelligence score, make a note. That being has a backstory, and it will certainly care about some dungeon delving, thrill seeking adventurer pulling it out of whatever life it was leading into a raging battle without notice or even a by-your-leave. The more powerful (and more intelligent) the summoned creature is, the more likely it is to have the ability to return to the summoner at a later date and “discuss” this experience.
Make a note whenever the characters find a body. Many scenarios assume that the PCs are not the first adventurers to explore the area. If word spreads of their deeds, family members of the deceased may seek out the PCs to inquire about the fate of their loved ones. This can lead to interesting roleplaying, or even to side quests or major plot developments. And in a world where powerful magic is real, getting that body back may mean the family can bring the dead back to life. Its gruesome to think about, but dead adventurer bodies are a form of “treasure” and it might be worthwhile to carry them out to civilization on a regular basis…
Make a note if a creature encounters the PCs and flees. Many challenges that characters face are not stupid and if unprepared, surprised, or overwhelmed, they should run away. That creature will be more ready to face the PCs next time – it may have seen some of their spells & abilities in the first encounter and be ready to cope on a rematch. Since fireball is such a common tactic, have intelligent monsters subjected to one get some fire resistance for Round 2!
Make a note about encounters the PCs bypassed. They may not have time to explore every passage leading from a given area, or miss a secret door, or not be able to bypass a lock or an illusion. Knowing what they missed is as important as knowing what they encountered.
Make a note about the path not taken. The PCs may be surprised at what comes out of the hallway or door they didn’t explore. You can have the PCs get “trapped” in between two opponents – even a small force coming on the party from behind can become a major scare especially if they aren’t paying attention or are resource depleted from combat.
Consolidating These Notes
Between sessions take some time to work your notes into a coherent report on what happened in the session. These records of “Actual Play” can become invaluable especially if the campaign has to take a hiatus. Absent players will also appreciate being able to get briefed on (suitably redacted) information on the sessions they missed.
You can also use these notes in conjunction with your quest to figure out Who is Sitting At Your Table. Look for trends – are the player psychographics emerging, or remaining opaque?
If you are playing a smaller game system, the publisher would probably love to have access to your records of Actual Play. One of the hardest things about being a roleplaying game publisher is knowing how your product is used for its intended purpose (gaming) as opposed to as literature to be read and debated by those who may never have actually used it.
I highly recommend using a wiki to keep your notes organized. There are several services available that will set you up with a wiki and administer it for you if you don’t want to do the setup and maintenance yourself.
A Clarion Call for Players!
You outnumber the GM many to one. The GM has to deal with managing lots of characters. You have to deal with just one. The GM has to deal with skills and abilities that change constantly as new creatures and NPCs are introduced. You only have to pay attention to one character that changes relatively slowly over time.
You players have a tremendous opportunity to engage in a little parallel processing to your own benefit.
When I was a young gamer, my character sheet consisted of ability scores, an AC, hit points, a handful of permanent bonuses and a character name. The whole thing could have fit on a 3x5 index card. Today, players come to the table with complex and detailed character sheets filled with trivia. As characters become more complex so do their character sheets until eventually they comprise volumes of information, much of which is rarely (if ever) actually used in play.
Simplification is called for.
The Combat Card
The first thing you should do is make a Combat Card for your character. This is a simple list of things you will need to know in every combat your character experiences:
You want to note the types of bonuses and penalties because the GM is likely to need to know them – often.
Many characters can play session after session with no more information than this. Keep it simple. Keep it fast. Keep it easy!
The Ability Card
Second, make an Ability Card. This is a simple list of things your character can do that are likely to arise in any gaming session:
These are things you’re often likely to use when not in combat. They tend to be the part of the game involving puzzles, interaction with other characters, exploration, and recovery.
The Spell Card
If you’re playing a spellcasting character you have a special obligation to your group to be organized. Prepare a Spell Card:
The emphasis here is on “likely to use”. Most spell casters have a lengthy list of spells they could cast, but rarely do. Leave that stuff on your full character sheet. Keep your spell card focused on the stuff you do repeatedly.
The Pet Card
If you have a familiar, animal companion, eidolon, or other creature that you regularly put into harms’ way, you should make a Pet Card for that creature:
If you choose to play a character with a pet, it is your responsibility to reduce the overhead incurred to the minimum possible. Help move the game along by keeping track of your pet’s information and being ready to answer questions about it quickly.
Be Kind to your GM
Make 2 copies of each card. Give one to your GM. You just made the GM’s job easier and you likely sped up the game a considerable amount. Everyone at the table benefits. Also, in the event that you lose/forget/vaporize your character sheet, you can still play by using the GM’s copy of your cards.
Synergize
As a group, the players need to get on the same page. You should exchange your cards and study them. Figure out how your character can help the others. There are tremendous opportunities in the game system, and in regular play, to magnify your combined party effectiveness through this kind of pre-planning.
Melee combatants should be planning on how to flank. Spellcasters should know how to buff their friends, and how to extract them from overwhelming danger. Think about how to control the battle space with terrain changing effects (web, entanglements, etc.) Think about how to confuse your opponents with invisibility, short-range teleportation, using walls and ceilings for travel, playing with light & shadow, etc.
You may, as a group, want to create a series of Tactics Cards to help you all remember what you can do together. This pre-planning can massively speed up the game as well as give you an advantage in tough encounters.
The End of the Beginning And The Next Series of Columns
I’d like to thank everyone who has been following along with these initial essays. Now that some groundwork has been laid, I am going to turn my attention to changing the way the game itself is played in the upcoming columns. We’ll be building on the ideas we’ve explored and finding ways to start amping up the fun!
--RSD / Atlanta, April 2011
A Call to Action for GMs!
I have a couple of old 1st edition modules covered in badly obfuscated handwritten notes from my earliest days of playing. I can remember constantly having to improvise various things as we played because I couldn’t remember exactly what we had done or said in previous sessions.
In the mid-90s I ran a lengthy Dark Sun campaign. I have an extensive background document I wrote for my players explaining how the campaign would run and what changes I made to the game world because I knew that many of them were reading the source material and I wanted to avoid confusions between TSR’s Dark Sun and Ryan Dancey’s Dark Sun. Even so I still ended up improvising often because I relied on memory for things like minor NPCs and the decisions set up by various player character choices.
I played once in Peter Adkison’s home campaign. He provided two detailed books, one on the world, and one on character creation. This was a decade-old world (at least) that had dozens, maybe hundreds of people play in it. (During our session I tried to sell Luke Peterschmidt’s wife’s PC to a sorcerer we met in a bar in exchange for his Fire Imp. Mrs. Peterschmidt (who was playing in her first RPG ever) was not much amused by the offer.) Peter was a very improvisational GM and created much of our adventure on the fly from bits and pieces of things he’d used in previous games and from the long history of his world, but I doubt he remembers Lady Peterschmidt’s character or the name of the sorcerer we met in that bar.
For a hobby filled with Word Nerds, based on a business of selling thousands of pages of material a year, where one mark of distinction is the depth and complexity of the game worlds we play within, it’s weird that “note taking” isn’t something with a higher visibility. If you play poker for any length of time you’ll run into many people keeping detailed records of their play. If you become a chess enthusiast you can review game after game played by people at all skill levels to see how strategies evolve. My father kept detailed records of water temperature and the size & weight of the bass he fished for in Lake Washington for decades. But tabletop roleplaying gamers it seems have a hard time with note taking.
I’ve always kind of suspected that this is due to people following the pattern the publishers create. Publishers provide detailed campaign backstories, and that’s what DMs tend to create. Publishers don’t provide detailed descriptions of actual play, so people tend not to make those things. DMs tend to act like little publishers – they create setting material for the players to consume.
We’ve got to get with the program here people! Valuable info is being wasted!
Basic Notes on Characters
How many times have you asked a player what their AC is? Or the DC of a saving throw? Do you track how many hit points they have? What about their alignments?
Start your notetaking career by getting some basic info about your characters recorded.
You can use this information between sessions to help prepare future encounters. Knowing things like the health and maximum and minimum (with Take 10 and Take 20 figured in) skill rolls can help scope challenges.
You may want to make some of your notes “authoritative”. Your notes, not the players’ are the true record of the game. For example, you can track your character’s hitpoints instead of the players. Giving them exact totals is your option. You may just tell them they “need some healing” when they start to get low. This also solves the problem of players who “forget” to note damage inflicted on their PCs, or who “misunderstand” how many hitpoints they regain from healing spells and potions.
Notes On Play
As the session unfolds, make a running series of notes. Keep track of things like how many of each type of monster the PCs overcome. You might want to keep a running total of things like the most damage a given PC deals in a single round – the kinds of things that could shape the challenge of future encounters (there’s nothing worse than when a PC one-shots the Big Monster!)
Write down the names of anything you give a name to as you play – these can become recurring NPCs and add to the sense of immersion the players have. Even if that entity subsequently dies, something (or someone) else might reference it in the future – the “Grendel’s Mother” effect.
Pay special attention to summonings. Any time a character summons anything with a reasonably high Intelligence score, make a note. That being has a backstory, and it will certainly care about some dungeon delving, thrill seeking adventurer pulling it out of whatever life it was leading into a raging battle without notice or even a by-your-leave. The more powerful (and more intelligent) the summoned creature is, the more likely it is to have the ability to return to the summoner at a later date and “discuss” this experience.
Make a note whenever the characters find a body. Many scenarios assume that the PCs are not the first adventurers to explore the area. If word spreads of their deeds, family members of the deceased may seek out the PCs to inquire about the fate of their loved ones. This can lead to interesting roleplaying, or even to side quests or major plot developments. And in a world where powerful magic is real, getting that body back may mean the family can bring the dead back to life. Its gruesome to think about, but dead adventurer bodies are a form of “treasure” and it might be worthwhile to carry them out to civilization on a regular basis…
Make a note if a creature encounters the PCs and flees. Many challenges that characters face are not stupid and if unprepared, surprised, or overwhelmed, they should run away. That creature will be more ready to face the PCs next time – it may have seen some of their spells & abilities in the first encounter and be ready to cope on a rematch. Since fireball is such a common tactic, have intelligent monsters subjected to one get some fire resistance for Round 2!
Make a note about encounters the PCs bypassed. They may not have time to explore every passage leading from a given area, or miss a secret door, or not be able to bypass a lock or an illusion. Knowing what they missed is as important as knowing what they encountered.
Make a note about the path not taken. The PCs may be surprised at what comes out of the hallway or door they didn’t explore. You can have the PCs get “trapped” in between two opponents – even a small force coming on the party from behind can become a major scare especially if they aren’t paying attention or are resource depleted from combat.
Consolidating These Notes
Between sessions take some time to work your notes into a coherent report on what happened in the session. These records of “Actual Play” can become invaluable especially if the campaign has to take a hiatus. Absent players will also appreciate being able to get briefed on (suitably redacted) information on the sessions they missed.
You can also use these notes in conjunction with your quest to figure out Who is Sitting At Your Table. Look for trends – are the player psychographics emerging, or remaining opaque?
If you are playing a smaller game system, the publisher would probably love to have access to your records of Actual Play. One of the hardest things about being a roleplaying game publisher is knowing how your product is used for its intended purpose (gaming) as opposed to as literature to be read and debated by those who may never have actually used it.
I highly recommend using a wiki to keep your notes organized. There are several services available that will set you up with a wiki and administer it for you if you don’t want to do the setup and maintenance yourself.
A Clarion Call for Players!
You outnumber the GM many to one. The GM has to deal with managing lots of characters. You have to deal with just one. The GM has to deal with skills and abilities that change constantly as new creatures and NPCs are introduced. You only have to pay attention to one character that changes relatively slowly over time.
You players have a tremendous opportunity to engage in a little parallel processing to your own benefit.
When I was a young gamer, my character sheet consisted of ability scores, an AC, hit points, a handful of permanent bonuses and a character name. The whole thing could have fit on a 3x5 index card. Today, players come to the table with complex and detailed character sheets filled with trivia. As characters become more complex so do their character sheets until eventually they comprise volumes of information, much of which is rarely (if ever) actually used in play.
Simplification is called for.
The Combat Card
The first thing you should do is make a Combat Card for your character. This is a simple list of things you will need to know in every combat your character experiences:
- Ability Scores and bonuses
- Hit point maximum and hit point current total
- Attack bonuses
- Full AC
- Touch AC
- Saving Throw typed bonuses
- The full calculation for your weapon damage with all die types and typed bonuses
- Your movement rate
- Persistent typed bonuses and penalties that arise from race or class features or supernatural effects
You want to note the types of bonuses and penalties because the GM is likely to need to know them – often.
Many characters can play session after session with no more information than this. Keep it simple. Keep it fast. Keep it easy!
The Ability Card
Second, make an Ability Card. This is a simple list of things your character can do that are likely to arise in any gaming session:
- Skills and their bonuses and ranks
- Race and class features you can choose to activate
- Extraordinary, supernatural or spell-like features provided by the gear your character is wearing that you can choose to activate
- Healing potions (include the full calculation for the healing provided)
- Wands (include the full calculation for the effect produced) and charges remaining
- Feats which you can choose to use, and the full calculation for their effects
These are things you’re often likely to use when not in combat. They tend to be the part of the game involving puzzles, interaction with other characters, exploration, and recovery.
The Spell Card
If you’re playing a spellcasting character you have a special obligation to your group to be organized. Prepare a Spell Card:
- The number of spells per day per level you can cast/prepare
- The spells per level that you are likely to cast, and the source and page number where that spell can be referenced!
- If you intend to use metamagic, copy out the adjusted spell details with all changes from the metamagic noted
- If you have spell-like features from some item or other source that you are likely to use, note them
The emphasis here is on “likely to use”. Most spell casters have a lengthy list of spells they could cast, but rarely do. Leave that stuff on your full character sheet. Keep your spell card focused on the stuff you do repeatedly.
The Pet Card
If you have a familiar, animal companion, eidolon, or other creature that you regularly put into harms’ way, you should make a Pet Card for that creature:
- The pet’s type and subtype
- Full AC
- Touch AC
- Hit Point total and current hit points
- Saving throw typed bonuses
- Attack typed bonuses
- The full calculation for the Pet’s attack damage with all die types and typed bonuses
- Abilities that the Pet can activate
- Tricks the Pet knows
- Movement rate
- Persistent typed bonuses and penalties that arise from race or class features or supernatural effects
If you choose to play a character with a pet, it is your responsibility to reduce the overhead incurred to the minimum possible. Help move the game along by keeping track of your pet’s information and being ready to answer questions about it quickly.
Be Kind to your GM
Make 2 copies of each card. Give one to your GM. You just made the GM’s job easier and you likely sped up the game a considerable amount. Everyone at the table benefits. Also, in the event that you lose/forget/vaporize your character sheet, you can still play by using the GM’s copy of your cards.
Synergize
As a group, the players need to get on the same page. You should exchange your cards and study them. Figure out how your character can help the others. There are tremendous opportunities in the game system, and in regular play, to magnify your combined party effectiveness through this kind of pre-planning.
Melee combatants should be planning on how to flank. Spellcasters should know how to buff their friends, and how to extract them from overwhelming danger. Think about how to control the battle space with terrain changing effects (web, entanglements, etc.) Think about how to confuse your opponents with invisibility, short-range teleportation, using walls and ceilings for travel, playing with light & shadow, etc.
You may, as a group, want to create a series of Tactics Cards to help you all remember what you can do together. This pre-planning can massively speed up the game as well as give you an advantage in tough encounters.
The End of the Beginning And The Next Series of Columns
I’d like to thank everyone who has been following along with these initial essays. Now that some groundwork has been laid, I am going to turn my attention to changing the way the game itself is played in the upcoming columns. We’ll be building on the ideas we’ve explored and finding ways to start amping up the fun!
--RSD / Atlanta, April 2011
