Michael Morris
First Post
My current group of players are still a little wet behind the ears, and I'm frighteningly rusty, but last session a player crossed into 6th level and the campaign will have session 8 next weekend (these are 10 hour sessions if the advancement seems fast, it isn't).
A problem I need to nip in the bud starting next week is my players aren't taking notes - at all. They aren't even tracking their hp on paper. I intend to have a short chiding session, and then I'm going to point out how they're hurting themselves. One example -
Samara's player forgot she had a dagger +1 because she never wrote it down -- Those are useful for fighting gargoyles. Instead of participating in the battle she got to twiddle her thumbs.
I'm cleaning their character sheets up now and redoing them with portraits so that it will be easy to spot the new sheets. Also, I'm now running from home so I have my computer to track things which will help. But I need the player's help and I'd like some help from here in getting ideas for encouraging the writing part of the game.
One thing I'm doing is passing out tally sheets. I'm going to tell them, in no uncertain terms, that if I don't receive the tally sheet back at session end, they don't get experience. Also, I'll not be doing level ups mid-session anymore - they bring the game to a halt for up to an hour which is a bit ridiculous. Part of this is my fault - I've been keeping custody of the character sheets - but starting this week they can take everything home with them except the current session's tally which I'll be using to calculate xp between sessions at my leisure.
The tally sheet is attached as a PDF in case anyone wants to use it - it's extremely generic with nothing campaign specific. Character name - session date - campaign starting day, xp total at start and at end. The hit point tally is an area to track the rise and fall of hp without using the character sheet. The experience tally will work like this - I'll give them an encounter name matching my notes after a fight - I'll cross reference those later and write the xp total in the space provided between sessions. Then the section on changes to gear and wealth should be self explanitory - these changes are entered and amended onto the player's permant character record on my computer.
Convincing them to use it though might be tricky. I hate to latch down, but at this point I need to - I need to be able to gauge how quickly they are gaining treasure and xp - too quickly or too slowly can mess up the campaign and I have been lax in eyeing this.
A problem I need to nip in the bud starting next week is my players aren't taking notes - at all. They aren't even tracking their hp on paper. I intend to have a short chiding session, and then I'm going to point out how they're hurting themselves. One example -
Samara's player forgot she had a dagger +1 because she never wrote it down -- Those are useful for fighting gargoyles. Instead of participating in the battle she got to twiddle her thumbs.
I'm cleaning their character sheets up now and redoing them with portraits so that it will be easy to spot the new sheets. Also, I'm now running from home so I have my computer to track things which will help. But I need the player's help and I'd like some help from here in getting ideas for encouraging the writing part of the game.
One thing I'm doing is passing out tally sheets. I'm going to tell them, in no uncertain terms, that if I don't receive the tally sheet back at session end, they don't get experience. Also, I'll not be doing level ups mid-session anymore - they bring the game to a halt for up to an hour which is a bit ridiculous. Part of this is my fault - I've been keeping custody of the character sheets - but starting this week they can take everything home with them except the current session's tally which I'll be using to calculate xp between sessions at my leisure.
The tally sheet is attached as a PDF in case anyone wants to use it - it's extremely generic with nothing campaign specific. Character name - session date - campaign starting day, xp total at start and at end. The hit point tally is an area to track the rise and fall of hp without using the character sheet. The experience tally will work like this - I'll give them an encounter name matching my notes after a fight - I'll cross reference those later and write the xp total in the space provided between sessions. Then the section on changes to gear and wealth should be self explanitory - these changes are entered and amended onto the player's permant character record on my computer.
Convincing them to use it though might be tricky. I hate to latch down, but at this point I need to - I need to be able to gauge how quickly they are gaining treasure and xp - too quickly or too slowly can mess up the campaign and I have been lax in eyeing this.
