Warstories: The Game Recap
Here’s a quick thing I’m sure all DM’s do in one form or another, whether it’s via email, wiki, pen and paper, or some other form: the game recap. In my particular case, we don’t get to game as often as most of us would like, so as game recap is a great way to get the players up to speed on the events that have occurred in-game up to the current moment.
This is something that I’ve only implemented recently, but I’ve found that it helps cut down the 10 minutes or so of last-session questions and answers before we start gaming for the night. Here’s what I’ve been doing… I’m building a document as a narrative of the previous game’s session, and I add to it at the end of the night.
A sample page from my recap document
Within the documents I’m adding maps, images, NPC quotes and other stuff directly lifted from the adventure I’m running, in order to make it more attractive and engaging to the guys. The document is simply a word one, converted to PDF. Very simple, yet effective. I even noticed that there were some printouts at the table last time we played. Everyone knew what had happened previously and we got right to playing for the night. That’s the point.
Now, what kind of recap you give your players works best depending on your group. Some groups and DM’s may prefer to write their own version of events on a wiki, using Obsidian Portal for example. Others may use a Google Group to keep track of what’s going on. Those are all great tools to use to keep track of your party’s progress, but in my case I’m using what I know is the best for us. Knowing my players, I don’t think they’d have the time to sit there and dig through a wiki looking for campaign info.
So how do you guys recap your game? Do you have any links to your campaign websites or wikis out there? I’d love to see them, as I’m sure other Dm’s would as well.
My wife and I are the chief chroniclers (surely that’s not a word?)of our game. We write the session reports and as the group was formed through the East Midlands D&D Meetup group we get to use their space to host stuff. Here’s the main page for our game:
http://www.eastmidlandsroleplayers.org.uk/pages/The_Tales_of_Gravidy%27s_Crossing/?name=The_Tales_of_Gravidy%27s_Crossing
Session reports are kept up to date. Other stuff less so. We don’t write in character as I also like to include moments around the table that happen as well. Session 10 is my favourite report.
I am currently using Google Sites to host a webpage for my campaign, it is still a bit of a work in progress. We are looking at migrating the page to Wave when more people get invites, the preliminary work is underway.
http://sites.google.com/site/enemy4ecampaign/
Phaezen
I host my own wiki on my server and update it with a `Current Events` section that acts as the game recap. Before we start a session, I briefly recap what happened last time.
http://www.czaralex.com/wiki
However, now we’re using Google Wave to have RP and plot movement between sessions so I may not have to recap at the next session as the momentum is still there.
Although I also have a wiki page, I currently put my campaign journal in my blog, in a very succinct bullet point style. My players love it, and very often I use it to remind me a name or old event. You can check them out in a poor Google translation at:
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.rolando20.com.br%2Ftag%2Fescamas-purpuras%2F
Cheers!
I post session reports to my blog. I’m going to broach the subject of a wiki and player journals at our next session. After reading e’s latest DM monologue, I’m going to try small XP rewards to get the players to contribute adventure hooks, provide feedback, and maybe flesh out their PCs via their journals.
I’ve been using both a blog, where I enter reports written by the designated scribe, and I add and correct some details. Also, I have players using the notes feature of character builder, and they got small notebooks at the gaming table. Once I ran a session when we started up all thing e.gaming fluff, and we have live blogging, which was a complete disaster as the players was busy reading each others notes, but at the same time, that session notes really captured the session.
This was back in the end of the 3.5 days, and a a female player in our group wrote commens about the Warblade like “What is he doing stupid man? No brains, typical males…”
So, keeping track is hard, and we’ve even tried to record the whole session with iPods, but no one hand the time to listen through 10 hours of gaming session to write a nice report.
Obsidian Portal, Baby! Great resource for DM’s and Players alike!
My 4E Campaign is at:
http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/the-darkness-between
Obsidian Portal – all the GMs in our group have tried to move to it. Makes it very easy for folks to catch up on nights they’ve missed, to keep track of “who was that NPC we met at the Libraries?” and the like.
For the players, I have a Ning portal. I keep my wiki private through Luminotes.
I have my players do this for me. Works great so far!
I used to encourage my players (with a small XP bonus) to do their own recaps of the previous play session. We’d store/share these in a private forum, often in the form of in-character journals.
That way, not only did I get a weekly recap – but I got it from the Point of View of (multiple!) characters, so I could what they were getting vs. what I was giving.
Was a great way to keep everyone on-track, and to make sure I (the GM) was on the same page as my players.
[...] sends a PDF recap to his players after each session so they have something for them to think about in between [...]
Play by email « Mike's D&D Blog said this on November 16, 2009 at 5:04 pm
http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/conan-ae
This is the wiki for our Conan campaign. It has lost some graphics due server problems and it’s not nearly up-to-date but it includes years (both in game time and real time) of adventuring. Earlier stories are written by our GM but later on you have stories from character perspective – mostly told in character and not always reliable.
My characters are Alcemides (dead), Feng Bai (dead), Flavius (dead) and Thothmekri the Stygian.