After another eventful session of D&D, I find myself yet again looking to my mistakes in the hope of course-correcting my DMing and perhaps preventing you, dear reader, from making the same mistake! This time, let’s talk about a common faux pas made by players and DMs alike: poor note-taking!

Like writing/storytelling of any nature, proper notation can mean all the difference between an excellent tale and a poor one. If you don’t believe me, try moving your PC notes into one journal, your campaign setting notes to another, and your story notes to a third resource. Now, run a session and you’ll immediately notice how aggravating it is to keep your game and story elements together in the heat of the moment. Hell, you may even forego some brilliant pieces of development for a weaker, off-the-cuff response to an intense moment in the game. In fact, you may already be doing this without even realizing it!

If you find yourself caught in this self-induced game killer (or are new to the scene and wish to avoid this pitfall), then I implore you to keep reading and discover how to undo (or prevent) the very circumstance I found myself in.

Collect Your Thoughts…Again

First and foremost, you need to pull together all of the various notetaking resources you’re currently using (in my case, it’s a physical journal, Microsoft OneNote, and Roll20 Handouts) and re-organize the information contained within by “big bucket” topics. My topics were PC Backgrounds/Story, Campaign Setting Details, and Campaign Story Elements. Because I usually connect my NPCs to a particular location, I loop them into the Campaign Setting Details, but you can also create an entirely separate bucket for them if you wish.

Once all of your notes are filtered by these buckets into one resource, filter them again by as many smaller buckets as needed. Then, re-organize the information by their importance or chronology. In my case, I organized my Campaign Story Element notes chronologically and my Campaign Setting Details by order of importance.

NOTE: whether chronological means when you wrote the note or when the content of the note affected the campaign is entirely your choice. Whatever you decide, however, remain consistent throughout all your notes. This makes them simultaneously easier to organize and reference moving forward.

An organization task like this is why I love using OneNote; I make a tab for each big bucket, a page for each smaller bucket, and reorganize the info as needed without wasting physical paper! If you’re using a virtual tabletop system like Roll20, however, you may find creating a series of handouts and organizing them into folders may be easier to reference during your game!

Are Your Notes Truly Helping?

As you re-organize your notes, you may find some of them no longer apply to your game. I recommend marking these outdated notes with whatever style suites you (highlight, asterisks, etc.) and continuing to centralize your notes into one location. Then, once everything has migrated, revisit the notes you marked and then update or delete them as needed!

This method ensures you complete the critical task –moving your notes to one location– before starting to address the minor issues.

“But how do I know which notes are helpful, and which are not?” Since everyone’s situation is different, I could cop out and say “go with your gut!” While part of that sentiment is true, we can do better than that.

When reviewing each note, ask yourself the following:

Does the thing this note is about no longer exist in my game?

Will aforementioned thing never appear in any future campaign?

Was this note a possible option the players could have persued, but is now irrelevant?

Is this note absolute jibberish in hindsight?

If you answered Yes to any of these questions, you can (usually) mark it for removal.

When keeping notes about your game, you typically want to track:

Critical story elements, how your players react, and how the story changes to reflect their actions

Memorable encounters your players have

Short recaps of what happened in each session

Any rewards or treasures the players found

Any trinkets or lore your players/PCs seem invested in

Notable NPCs, businesses, or points of interest in memorable settlements

Nuanced rulings you made due to strange circumstances (e.g., perhaps you ruled that Mage Hand could be used in an unconventional way)

In all these cases, you ultimately have to decide what notes are important for the game you’re all trying to play and the story you’re trying to tell.

Final Thoughts

The greatest distinction between good and bad notes are how useful they are to you. Notice, however, that I did not say how detailed they were. If all your notes are paragraphs in length, you’re drowning out key details in an ocean of text. Notes are outlines, not first draft of a novel.

When in doubt, follow the ABCs of writing –Accuracy, Brevity, and Clarity. Ensure your notes are accurate, easy to understand, and short enough to be worth reading. Following this method can take time, at first, but you’ll notice an immediate improvement in the usefulness of the notes you take. And, when compiled into a single resource and with all the junk notes cleared out, you’ll likely find your games far more manageable!

What note-taking strategies do you employ for your games? What works well, and what do you think could improve?!

Until next time,

Matthew Wulf

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