Keeping a campaign chronicle

[Halivar]

I'm starting a 4th Ed campaign this Wednesday, with a goal to go all the way with it (my usual DM is taking a year-long sabbatical). I've got an idea to help keep in-game continuity, and also help players keep track of information from week-to-week.

One of the things that gets annoying is the long recap at the beginning of each session. Worse, we often forget what happened (sometimes even the DM), and so important events or information that our characters really should not have forgotten get left out.

Since I still consider myself very much a newbie DM, I know that keeping up with everything the players have seen and done is too much for me to handle on top of my other DM'ing duties. For this reason, I've decided to delegate the task of keeping the "campaign chronicle" to the players.

It works like this: at the first session, I ask for a volunteer to keep the chronicle. I hand that person a blank hard-bound journal. Each PC in the party (and each subsequently added PC) gets a full-page write-up by the player, including appearance and backstory. The chronicler then records as much or as little of the game's events as he/she thinks necessary. The catch: I will not do any recaps. It is incumbent on the chronicler, therefore, to get all the important facts. The chronicler reads the recorded events of the previous session at the beginning of the session. If other players have input, the chronicler can addend at any time (this can be dangerous though, if a player misremembers). The duty of the chronicler can be transferred at any time.

Now, this is a lot of work for a player, and I am therefore required to offer significant incentive to the volunteer. I also need incentive for character write-up's (a whole page is a LOT).

I could award bonus XP for each session a player chronicles, but I'd like to move away from players having disparate levels.

Action points? I could give bonus action points (separate from regular action points) each session to the chronicler, with no restrictions on when it is used.

If a session chronicle is written in narrative prose (I think I got at least two players that could do this), there could be increased incentive... 2 bonus action points?

For character write-ups, perhaps a +1 to an ability?

Does anyone have any ideas advice, or experience?

 

[hectorse]

What I am doing is Logging the campaign after every session in a local gaming forum.

Nothing fancy, just a quick run-up of what happened so people who couldn't attend know what's up and to make rules and treasures clarifications before the actual session.

As it's a forum, everybody can check it at any time and write to their heart's content even in the midst of night

 

[kigmatzomat]

Go get a yahoo group or something similar and write up the session. You don't need to detail every conversation, just that they happened. Start out with single line entries:

"The players went to interrogate Lord Barkin. They found nothing conclusive but he was irritable and distracted by his cat."
"The goblins were noticed, so the ambush was not very effective. Victorious, the party acquired 32cp, an old mule, and several weapons in poor condition."


Trust me, do it yourself for the simple fact that you are a newbie DM. Nothing makes games fall apart more than a DM who doesn't remember what the heck happened last session. By writing it up you will cement it in your memory and it will be a record in your words making it easier for you to find important tidbits and jog your memory.

Not only that but it gives the players a chance to dispute a recollection between sessions without derailing you in game. Furthermore, if they fail to dispute something that was in the game chronicle then the chronicle was correct. No more "I said/We heard" arguments since it is quickly trumped by "...as told in the undisputed Official Game Chronicle..."

 

[weem]

I definitely second the idea of doing it yourself. You can, as per the example above, keep it very simple and it can still be very effective.

If you absolutely don't have the time, I don't see problem with having a player do it as long as you think what they come up with will be helpful and thorough. As far as rewards, I think the action points are best out of the options you gave but if you allow for a reward to be given, you may need to give everyone the opportunity to log the game (switching off perhaps).

I will be keeping a log of my game (not sure where yet) but I may take mine a step further. The log will consist of my brief summary of the session, but I will also include an "in character" writeup in a journal/diary form from the point of an NPC I will be running with the group. The NPC will not appear in every session as he will have other things to do (related as well as not to the group) so it will be a good opportunity for the players to get an RP feel of the session (they are not heavy RP-ers) but will also give them a secondhand view of things going on they do not see for themselves (for example, a jounral entry from the NPC relating to a conversation he had with someone while away from the group).

Anyway, that should be fun.

Good luck with your game

 

[Merkuri]

For our World's Largest Dungeon a few years ago I (as a player) created and mostly maintained a wiki for the campaign. One of the things I used the wiki for was a calendar or timeline of sorts to keep track of what happened and when. It kept track of both in-game days and session numbers. For each day/session I would write up a little summary of all the important things that happened. A lot of times I'd use the built-in wiki functionality to link to pages about NPCs or events that had more detail about them. I also bolded places where new PCs joined or old PCs left/died because our DM gave us bonuses for PCs that lived past X sessions, and having that part bolded made it easy to look up when a certain PC started.

An example summary is:

Enter the next region. Yolanda runs into a few fire traps. We come upon doors we cannot open. We see an image of a DamselInDistress. Attacked by spider-like creatures.

"DamselInDistress" links to a page about the vision we saw and the quest we're on to save her.

You can find the timeline page I did here, but there may be World's Largest Dungeon spoilers.

I'd recommend a wiki for this type of thing if your players are computer-savvy and all have internet access. One person could do the summaries and other people could review them and add things that the original person left out. It's much easier to search and edit a wiki than a regular journal, too, though you might want to stick with the journal idea for taking notes.

If your players are interested in the plot you probably don't even need to give them rewards for doing this. I heard an idea on these boards once where the DM doesn't do the recap at the beginning of the session, he asks one of the players to do the recap. The player doing the recap will change each session, and the DM could ask somebody to volunteer or could pick somebody randomly.

You could assign somebody to take notes each session, or have the players pick somebody (maybe one person hates taking notes so he rarely has to do it, and one person loves taking notes so he does it more often), and then the next session you ask the note-taker to do the recap at the beginning of the session.

 

[Halivar]

Campaign wikis are a great idea. Unfortunately, two of my players (out of four) don't have access to the internet.

 

[ShadowDenizen]

If your group can access the Internet regularly, I'd toss my vote in the way of a wiki as well. (My current groups uses a Yahoogroup for scheduling and chit-chat, and a WIki for campagin info.)

It can be as detailed or as brief as you like, and you can take turns writing up session recaps.

(Our AoW wiki is at http://ageofworms.wikispaces.com, if you want to take a look at it.)