How to show new players the importance of note-taking

[BestMaster46]

So this might seem obvious for some, but I've found that new players tend to miss how important note-taking is. I don't see it talked about much, but it really slows down gameplay when players can't remember simple things like town names.

What have you done to help new players see the importance?

In the campaign I'm in, we roll for recaps of previous sessions to make sure everyone is on their toes. But I'm curious to see what other methods people use.

I've written an article about it here (https://medium.com/dungeons-and-stationery/why-taking-notes-makes-you-a-better-d-d-player-3ddc4d1dbef6).

Thanks in advance for the feedback!

[Demonslayer666]

First, the importance of taking notes is highly optional and table dependent. If you play often and have players with good memories, this is a non-issue.

If your players struggle with what is going on from session to session, then I think it's ok for you to ask someone to start taking notes. One of my pet peeves as a DM is players asking, "why are we in this dungeon again?" At the same time, you should also give some leeway to players since they are not living the experience like the characters are, so the characters would likely remember more. Depends on if you like testing the players ability to recall information or not. I am in the not boat, as many of may players do not find that fun.

I am also a player, and we play weekly. It's tough to remember what happened a week ago. We do ok without notes, but we actually had a game come to a crashing halt because no one took notes. I always take notes now, regardless of how forgetful or apathetic my character is. I can roleplay my character and still discuss what happened out of character as a player.

About the best thing you can do is show them it is important to you. Cover it in session zero, reward recalled information, or just remind them from time to time that they should take notes.

[BruceLeeroy]

As a DM, it infuriates me when my players can't recall important information (like the above poster says, asking "why are we in this dungeon?"). But at the same time, I get it - we play sporadically, and people have other things going on in their lives. I've done the recap thing myself, and asked the players to do it... But sometimes the players have a very skewed recollection of the game, full of biases and character interpretation, and sometimes it's just wrong.

Asking them to take notes is sometimes helpful, sometimes nagging. I think rewarding the notetaking is a better method. Inspiration or some other in game effect as a reward helps motivate good behavior, rather than using DM tools to punish bad behavior ("oh, you didn't write that down? I guess your character doesn't have it anymore. Too bad.")

Also, all my players are veterans with years or decades of DnD experience, they have no excuses in that regards. New players get a thorough recap at the start of each session.

[Wuzza]

Maybe reward them with XP/inspiration if they can give everyone at the table a run down of what happened last week/why they are there/the story so far?

I'm sure they'll start taking notes of things a little more.

Also, if they are new players, don't be too hard on them. They may still be getting to grips with the rules/their classes etc.

I've given my current group a few exposition handouts, maps etc, and also have pictures and names with all of the relevant bad guys on the player side of me DM screen that they can easily refer to, to jog their memories. Quite often we will start a session with "what are we doing again?" and they will refer to this. (also have one player that takes really good notes, which is obviously a bonus) I generally only have to give them a slight pointer and they're back on the case.

@bruceleeroy great minds :)

[BestMaster46]

Asking them to take notes is sometimes helpful, sometimes nagging. I think rewarding the notetaking is a better method. Inspiration or some other in game effect as a reward helps motivate.

Now that is a good idea. I often treat Inspiration as in-game rewards. This would be a great way to incorporate it in a meta way that has direct benefit to gameplay.

[Bjarkmundur]

My player actually came to me just after our last session and talked about note taking.

He said that he loved when I gave him a written recap after one of the sessions, and how it helped organize character information. I kindly stated that I was a bit busy planning the future of our campaign, and not focusing much on the past. It's also not my place to decide what your character feels is important. He said he knew he should be taking more notes, apologised, and said "I just get so cought up in the story and the roleplay I forget to step back and write things down" . That's when I realized note taking isn't a character action, it's a player action, meaning it can break immersion. That's the last thing I want. I told him I had no idea, and that I was ecstatic the game was so engaging. We discussed this a bit and decided a good compromise would be for me to suggest writing various things down as they come up. This means he can focus on the story in character , and I did not have to write down notes for my group.

We're trying this system next session, and I think it's going to be great.

[ImproperJustice]

Yeah.
It’s a very group dependent kinda thing.

Our table is mostly older adults with jobs and kids, and responsibilities. We play mostly to socialize so it’s not a big deal if we struggle to remember details some.

Then in another campaign, several players are deep into lore keeping and unraveling mysteries a d the campaign is more political.
The GM mostly rewards the note takers there with some eye winks and special attention with them just picking up more of what is going on, and occasionally getting a small npc favor or reward for interacting with bits of the game world. Usually the whole table benefits and that seems to encourage everyone to be more involved.

[Lunali]

As a DM, it infuriates me when my players can't recall important information (like the above poster says, asking "why are we in this dungeon?"). But at the same time, I get it - we play sporadically, and people have other things going on in their lives. I've done the recap thing myself, and asked the players to do it... But sometimes the players have a very skewed recollection of the game, full of biases and character interpretation, and sometimes it's just wrong.

We've taken to using discord to coordinate our game between sessions, one of the channels is dedicated to giving in character recaps of sessions. These are intentionally very skewed and heavily biased, but they help both remember what's going on and the help the DM see what gets latched onto by various characters.

[NecessaryWeevil]

Our DMs write a recap after each session and post it on our private message board.

[greenstone]

It infuriates me beyond description when players don't remember stuff. I stayed up till 2am working this out, and you can't even remember the king's name!!!

I have used the line, "A character's memory is a player's piece of paper." for many years. As a player, if you didn't write down the name of the king then I am going to take that as you telling me that you wanted your character not to remember it.

Despite that, players still get that hurt puppy look in their eyes when I give their characters social penalties. "Since you don't know the king's name, the guards don't even let you into the palace."

"But it's been three weeks since the last game, you can't expect us to remember this stuff."

"But my character would remember the name of the king."

Or a personal pet peeve of mine: "Can I make an Intelligence roll to remember the name?"

Arrgghh!

But seriously folks. I know I'm overreacting here, but not much. Is it really too much to ask for players to write down the name of the priest their character is escorting to the other side of the kingdom, or the name of the king who is paying a boatload of gold to do this?

Or alternatively spend a few minutes looking at the Obsidian Portal wiki? I mean, you've spent the last twn minutes looking at that smartphone instead of listening to me. What were you doing? Oh.... Facebook. I see..........

Repeat Arrgghh! as often as needed. :smallsmile:

[Grimmnist]

I don't think it is a problem if player recollection of events is biased and in fact I think it can help you as a DM to know what your players think happened. Often times when I DM what I say at the table doesn't line up exactly with my session prep and I skip or add details, getting insight into what the players experienced helps me reconcile where I went off script.

As a player I take notes in character, skipping information my character wouldn't know and writing in their tone, this helps keep me immersed. My process for taking notes is to jot down quick details like proper nouns in the moment, fill in details during dead air like between my turns in combat, and go back later between sessions to annotate my notes with questions and conclusions.

[LordCdrMilitant]

So this might seem obvious for some, but I've found that new players tend to miss how important note-taking is. I don't see it talked about much, but it really slows down gameplay when players can't remember simple things like town names.

What have you done to help new players see the importance?

In the campaign I'm in, we roll for recaps of previous sessions to make sure everyone is on their toes. But I'm curious to see what other methods people use.

I've written an article about it here (https://medium.com/dungeons-and-stationery/why-taking-notes-makes-you-a-better-d-d-player-3ddc4d1dbef6).

Thanks in advance for the feedback!

I've taken notes for them :).

It is my opinion that only the GM is obligated to take notes. There are a couple of reasons for this:
First, only the things recorded in the GM's notes matter: the color of the flowers might have been given as blue, but it affects nothing so I didn't write it down, and the players don't need to know that. And there only needs to be one authoritative set of notes.
Second, the GM records everything that does matter: players miss a lot of things out of character. If the ask later, I tell them what my notes say. Because the GM knows what's important, that's why the GM should be the one taking the notes and not the players.
Third, we're playing the game for fun: note taking as a player is pretty tedious, aggressively un-fun, and contributes nothing that can't be also achieved by just asking the GM what X random NPC's name was or what the creepy statue looked like again. As a player I don't want to spend the game taking notes, so I'm not going to make my players take notes. The characters remember the things they saw even if the players don't, so the GM should just tell them what's in her notes. The players will naturally remember everything that's important to them [ie: the stuff that makes the game fun], and the GM's note remember everything else.


That said, I do like letting the players give the session re-cap before I give my own: that way I know what they remembered from previously, and therefore what they perceived was important enough to be excited about what comes next from it for this session [and thus helping to inform me what I should focus on, what events I should have, and where I should take things]

[Sigreid]

Yeah, I'm not going to take notes. Our group has a couple of people who will though. On the plus side, I pay attention and generally play characters who don't actually care what the king's name is.

[Laserlight]

As a player, I take notes and write a report after each session, posted on our Facebook group. Usually in character, since that gives the opportunity to show some of the character's inner dialogue; of course, if something is not important to my character, it may not get mentioned, and the player to whom it's relevant will have to remember it on his own.

As a DM, I do a brief recap at the start of the session.

[Enixon]

Or a personal pet peeve of mine: "Can I make an Intelligence roll to remember the name?"




Ironically, to me that seems like the perfect middle ground, you're not flat out spoon feeding them the information since even a high INT character can have a terrible roll, it's using their abilities for something other than mindlessly killing things, it lets "smart" characters actually seem smart rather than INT just meaning "I can cast fireball better" and heck isn't "see if your character knows something you don't" half the point of Knowlege/Lore/[Whatever the "know stuff" skill called in your game of choice here] skills? (the other half of course being "see if your character knows this thing you DO know OOC but is supposed to be obscure in universe)



Now granted I've always been big on the notion that "you are not your character" so I just see it as obvious fact that what the players know and the characters know are often very different things. The players see this world for a couple hours every week or so, the characters have (usually) lived in it their whole lives. To the players, the King is often just another name that got dropped once in the GM's opening narration a month ago, to the characters the King is well, The King, their sovereign lord (assuming the characters are actually from the kingdom the game is taking place in of course)

[FrancisBean]

Give the extreme ends of the spectrum of opinion here, what do you all see as the value of the Keen Mind feat, vis-a-vis such things as would be covered by player notes?

[Rynjin]

It infuriates me beyond description when players don't remember stuff. I stayed up till 2am working this out, and you can't even remember the king's name!!!

For the other end of the spectrum, half the time when GMing I forget my own NPC's names.

Names of fictional people don't really register as important information to people the first time they're encountered. Hell, they don't register to people as important info in real life a lot of the time. I've been working with a guy for 5 months and just started remembering his name 2 weeks ago. It happens.

[Kane0]

A few years back we had a google site for each campaign but now its facebook and discord chats.
In game, inspiration is pretty much made for this.

[Demonslayer666]

It infuriates me beyond description when players don't remember stuff. I stayed up till 2am working this out, and you can't even remember the king's name!!!

I have used the line, "A character's memory is a player's piece of paper." for many years. As a player, if you didn't write down the name of the king then I am going to take that as you telling me that you wanted your character not to remember it.

Despite that, players still get that hurt puppy look in their eyes when I give their characters social penalties. "Since you don't know the king's name, the guards don't even let you into the palace."

"But it's been three weeks since the last game, you can't expect us to remember this stuff."

"But my character would remember the name of the king."

Or a personal pet peeve of mine: "Can I make an Intelligence roll to remember the name?"

Arrgghh!

But seriously folks. I know I'm overreacting here, but not much. Is it really too much to ask for players to write down the name of the priest their character is escorting to the other side of the kingdom, or the name of the king who is paying a boatload of gold to do this?

Or alternatively spend a few minutes looking at the Obsidian Portal wiki? I mean, you've spent the last twn minutes looking at that smartphone instead of listening to me. What were you doing? Oh.... Facebook. I see..........

Repeat Arrgghh! as often as needed. :smallsmile:

Yes, it is showing a slight bit of disrespect to your efforts, but the players do not live in a realm with a king where their name is mentioned several times a day and affects nearly every aspect of everyone's life in the realm. King does not carry the same weight to a character as it does to a player. For a fair comparison, ask them the president's name.

I pride myself in taking good notes, but if the DM ever punished me for not taking notes in game any more than giving me guff, I'd talk to them about how that is not fun for me and how unrealistic is for my character not to know common knowledge. If I want to be judged on my note taking ability, I'll go take more college courses.

[sithlordnergal]

It infuriates me beyond description when players don't remember stuff. I stayed up till 2am working this out, and you can't even remember the king's name!!!

I have used the line, "A character's memory is a player's piece of paper." for many years. As a player, if you didn't write down the name of the king then I am going to take that as you telling me that you wanted your character not to remember it.

Despite that, players still get that hurt puppy look in their eyes when I give their characters social penalties. "Since you don't know the king's name, the guards don't even let you into the palace."

"But it's been three weeks since the last game, you can't expect us to remember this stuff."

"But my character would remember the name of the king."

Or a personal pet peeve of mine: "Can I make an Intelligence roll to remember the name?"

Arrgghh!

But seriously folks. I know I'm overreacting here, but not much. Is it really too much to ask for players to write down the name of the priest their character is escorting to the other side of the kingdom, or the name of the king who is paying a boatload of gold to do this?

Or alternatively spend a few minutes looking at the Obsidian Portal wiki? I mean, you've spent the last twn minutes looking at that smartphone instead of listening to me. What were you doing? Oh.... Facebook. I see..........

Repeat Arrgghh! as often as needed. :smallsmile:

Considering I can't remember the names of my friends and co-workers until I've known them and used their name for a month, and write far too slowly, you and I would never do well in a game together. I'm all for taking notes, but unless its some obscure piece of knowledge, I see little issue with giving a player a reminder or recap. A DM who takes things too personally is doing just that, taking things too personally and should probably chill. Hell, I couldn't remember the name of Luke Skywalker's actor for several years and I have been a star wars fanatic since I was six. Didn't manage to remember it till I was 16. I'm not gonna remember the name of any NPC given to me.

[MikeRoxTheBoat]

I usually jot down notes of those as that seem important. Usually new names with brief descriptions. I got positive reinforcement from DMs early on when I would know the name's of certain places and NPCs, so I just kept doing it. That seems to be the easiest way. If you see or know someone is taking notes, just recognize it every now and again.

I actually used to write a short paragraph or so in character journal entry right at the end of each game session about what happened during the session. I ended up stopping that just 'cause so many of my games ended after only a few sessions, but it gives an interesting look back on things that occurred.

[FrancisBean]

I usually jot down notes of those as that seem important. Usually new names with brief descriptions.

My wife does something similar, just a few key words and names. Being highly dyslexic, half of her notes are in pictures. She's still the best prepared of the group. :smallbiggrin:

[Tanarii]

A character recalling something the player cannot is literally the entire purpose of the Intelligence (Lore) skills. Set a DC, player rolls. Done.

[HappyDaze]

Our DMs write a recap after each session and post it on our private message board.

Offload that duty onto a player--or better yet, rotate among the players--ASAP. The DM has enough to do.

Really, if you want to make players see the point of taking notes, just don't give them any hints or breaks when they can't remember things. This includes any treasures not written down just fading out of existence and likewise make them track their own XP (if they fail to do so, then no XP for them). Let them know all of this up front, and work it in gradually if you're feeling generous, but after 2-3 sessions, it's on them.

[MarkVIIIMarc]

So this might seem obvious for some, but I've found that new players tend to miss how important note-taking is. I don't see it talked about much, but it really slows down gameplay when players can't remember simple things like town names.

What have you done to help new players see the importance?

In the campaign I'm in, we roll for recaps of previous sessions to make sure everyone is on their toes. But I'm curious to see what other methods people use.

I've written an article about it here (https://medium.com/dungeons-and-stationery/why-taking-notes-makes-you-a-better-d-d-player-3ddc4d1dbef6).

Thanks in advance for the feedback!

If no one in the group does it, this can be a thing.

let the rules lawyer type guy take notes for the party. Maybe suggest to the party, "this guy seems nuts, remember him"

Sometimes I enjoy rotating my tires. Sometimes I don't.

Don't make people who don't want to do something have to do it.

[Wildarm]

Names, places and events are the key things to encourage them to jot down.

As a DM I also send out a session summary via Discord to the group. Really useful to capture key events, names and places. It's especially good since you can refer back to it(and digitally search) as a DM or player for future adventure reference. It's really up to the DM if they have time to write it but I find it incredibly useful for writing future sessions and I think my players appreciate it too.

[pming]

Hiya!

This was getting a bit out of hand in one game a couple years ago. My solution? At the beginning of the session I went around the table asking each player a question relating to something of the last session. They WERE ALLOWED to refer to their OWN notes if they wanted. They got XP for correct answers. The catch? If they did it WITHOUT referring to their notes...more XP. If they had to look at notes...regular XP. If someone helped them...no XP and the person who helped LOST XP.

I started 'small'. Like "What is the name of the world we are playing in?". Yeah. Dirt simple...or it SHOULD be! After a few sessions it was more specific, like "What was the name of the Innkeeper who seemed to have a 'thing' for your half-orc wizard?", or even "What was the name of the Inn you stayed at last night?". Questions about NPC's, locations, history, religion, etc.

The result? Significantly more note-taking! :) Even better, because they were writing stuff down, they often didn't need to refer to their notes (writing something down tends to help with memory).

I also gave some minor bonus XP for people who drew maps, who organized and kept track of the parties 'expendables' (torches, oil flasks, iron spikes, food, etc), and for players who took copious amounts of notes to be able to do a 'recap' after the initial one-player-one-question pre-game 'test'. (My late wife was REALLY good at the whole 'recap' thing...man I miss that woman! :( ).

So, my suggestion is to do what others have mentioned; give a minor reward/pat-on-the-head to players who take more direct interest in the game. Don't punish those who don't...some people just want to roll dice and kill things...as that won't work as well. Kind of like magic items and treasure: You can easily give out a bit more later...but it's almost impossible to take back stuff you already gave out. Stingy DM Tactics FTW! ;)

[Hairfish]

Have you considered just telling them the name of the town or king they're asking about and getting on with the game? The extra 5-10 seconds it would take can't be that big of a deal, unless they're asking 12+ times an hour.

When I run a game, my players are often better than I am at remembering the names of towns and people. If no one can remember the name, I just make up a new one.

Or I make the players come up with a new name, generally by making increasingly stupid suggestions.

"This town? Smithport."
"Wasn't the last town called Smithport?"
"Oh, okay. This one is Port Smith."
"Oh god."
"Smortpith? Tropthims? I'm open to suggestions."

[Safety Sword]

So, a few of things:

My invitation of the next game usually includes a recap of the last session
I have excellent note takers
I have a very big group (9 players last session)



I think I probably use all of the methods mentioned in this thread.

My recap is usually a "big world" version of events, I don't mention character names generally but of course I do mention important NPC names that I want to draw attention to. e.g. "The heroes travel to Waterdeep, meeting with The Blackstaff and asking his help with finding the location of Iymrith, the Doom of the Desert".

I reward people who have good notes, usually by allowing them to make checks in game that allow them a deeper knowledge of what is going on, they are clearly the most interested in the in's and out's so they deserve something.

I have a lot of players so only half of the group needs to take notes to have a lot of notes. Between them, they capture all of the things.

[Bundin]

I never take notes. I don't remember most of the npc's names (same goes for rl, I just suck with names), but I generally remember the plot in some detail. Doesn't have anything to do with disrespect, but I just cannot be bothered to write things down, go through notes during sessions, or be quizzed. It breaks immersion, is tedious, and unfun for me. I'm not my character, so I don't know the name of that king/wizard/town/neighbour. I assume my character will though, what was 3 weeks ago for me (the average between our sessions), was 9 hours ago in game and he actually lives in that world.

If that's not good enough, and I run into "because you don't remember, your character doesn't know either and <negative thing> happens" too often, I'll opt for a before-session chat to ask for the reasons behind that and see if I'm a minority that's bothered by it. If so, I'll take the penalties if the enjoyment during the sessions outweigh those, or leave if I get fed up with it.

Fortunately, this has not been an issue yet.

[Sigreid]

Man, this is a game, not school. But whatever, you all do you.

[MarkVIIIMarc]

Have you considered just telling them the name of the town or king they're asking about and getting on with the game? The extra 5-10 seconds it would take can't be that big of a deal, unless they're asking 12+ times an hour.

When I run a game, my players are often better than I am at remembering the names of towns and people. If no one can remember the name, I just make up a new one.

Or I make the players come up with a new name, generally by making increasingly stupid suggestions.

"This town? Smithport."
"Wasn't the last town called Smithport?"
"Oh, okay. This one is Port Smith."
"Oh god."
"Smortpith? Tropthims? I'm open to suggestions."

Ditto.

When I'm DM I feel a need to generally "have a map" and have SOME notes on the NPC's. Occasionally an NPC i just random name generated becomes someone important because he was funny or the players kept investigating her background or something and I'll even have to write down their name after the interaction.

When I'm a player I try to have a map of the area and maybe write the mayor's name down someplace. It isn't terribly organized though and even an open notes test would take awhile.

Far as all the demands for note taking, I've learned that while I LOVE EXCEL/Google Sheets, not everyone thinks using a spreadsheet to track character progression is tons of fun. Then again I don't have a need to do some things other people enjoy and I don't naturally remember real people's names that I meet but I probably will remember their car and where they work lol.

This gets around to my advice to the DM's not to be part of the "NN" or Note Nazi club. Occasionally tell your players to write something down if its important. Know your players, let the guys who love notes in your group kinda lead the effort otherwise and don't make the game not fun for 1/2 the players.

[Tawmis]

So this might seem obvious for some, but I've found that new players tend to miss how important note-taking is. I don't see it talked about much, but it really slows down gameplay when players can't remember simple things like town names.
What have you done to help new players see the importance?
In the campaign I'm in, we roll for recaps of previous sessions to make sure everyone is on their toes. But I'm curious to see what other methods people use.
I've written an article about it here (https://medium.com/dungeons-and-stationery/why-taking-notes-makes-you-a-better-d-d-player-3ddc4d1dbef6).
Thanks in advance for the feedback!

For myself - as a DM - I do the notes for the players.
Having a website to direct them to where they can read my notes has helped.
I simply write a summary of what happened; and send the players the link.
Then send it to them again, just before we play.
However, I will say, there's three of my seven players that enjoy taking notes themselves because they want to know more about the world.

But if you're still wanting players to do it, as someone said, inspiration is nice.
But if you have more than one player taking notes, it would be difficult making sure they actually all took notes.
Unless you did it like school, "Player one, read your notes. I will tell you when to stop. When I do, player two take over from your notes." And so on and so on.

In the end, I think it's better for the DM to do it for the core (if someone wants to do it, let them, but don't expect it).
After all, as the DM you will (should?) have notes of all the encounters.
And your summary can include pieces of information the players may have missed - that once they read your notes - might be more enticed to pay more attention to the smaller details.

[Randomthom]

About to start a new campaign and this thread made me think about this which I hadn't up until now so thanks! :)

I've opted to put a text channel on our game's discord channel where players can submit a written journal covering the last session if they want. Inspiration will be given, I'm using Milestone XP or I'd probably be giving XP for exceptional ones too.

I've become a note-taker in other games i play in, mostly because I feel it validates the DM's efforts to make a world (or exposes their limited planning!)