Do you keep a campaign journal?

[Callista]

Yeah... just what the title says.

I like to do this because it helps me keep facts straight--especially names--and helps me understand my character better. My characters have a habit of taking on lives of their own, whether I like it or not, and if I want to keep up with that, character journals are good ways to get into their heads. And of course I also enjoy writing; I wouldn't do it if I didn't like to write--after all, gaming's entertainment and I do enough boring stuff for school, thank you very much.

What's your experience with this? Do you like it, or do you feel it's a waste of time?

[Saintheart]

I should do more of it. My PbPs tend to turn into campaign journals of their own; when you've got 6 or 7 switched-on freeformers who've been turned on D&D d20 roleplaying, it's a beautiful thing to see -- because they do dialogue and internal feelings nicely, but they have to play to and write within the rules.

But then I'm probably a bit odd. I once played out Medieval: Total War as the Spaniards and wrote up the round-by-round as a sort of historian's chronicle of the period, complete with economic discussions and the like. I really enjoyed, and they seemed to like it on heavengames as well.

[Fallbot]

I keep one, mostly for my own amusement, since I'm fairly sure it's only me and the DM that ever read it. It's a lot of fun to write, and it helps keep everything straight in my head. I originally wrote an OOC one, decided to switch to IC, and found that unfortunately the temptation to be sarcastic and 4th wall breaking is too strong, so there's not a huge amount of difference between the two styles.

It's here if anyone wants to look. Currently on hiatus.

[Jarawara]

I don't keep a campaign journal per say... but our games are online, through the MSN chat program. I save the chatlogs. That then becomes our journal, though I really should try to edit it down to size.

So far, our campaign journal is... 385 documents, each representing upwards of 10 hours of gaming time (though chatlog gamespeed is much slower than face to face, but still, 385 gamesessions is nothing to sneeze at!)

A total file size of 27.9 MB!

And that doesn't even include our collaborate short stories we've been swapping back and forth the last nine years. Add another 3.22 MB of files to the total, as those short stories represent additional things the characters have been doing, as part of the ongoing story.

If I tried to edit it all down into a more readable format, I'd probably get writers block. "The characters went to Farmville, and ahhh... did stuff. There was a battle, with something. Dice rolled. And stuff. Yeah."

So I think I'll just leave it all as is.

[valadil]

Yes, but only when I take a game really seriously. Most of the games I'm in aren't serious enough to warrant this kind of effort.

[Cyrion]

I don't keep a narrative journal, but when I DM I do keep notes on people, places and events that might come up again later. This was especially important in my last campaign where I had a fair amount of political shenanigans going on.