Protip: First thing you do when the group meets is fix the date for next game night.
First thing you do, when the group is done gaming for the night, is write the recap.Best change I made for games was having a fixed schedule. I used to do a “when can everyone meet next?” but it was a disaster of people not responding or actually showing up when they said they would.
Now we just play every Thursday. Quorum is two players*. Anyone who can’t make it, tough.
*Turns out Fate works fine with two players. DND would probably be harder.
Everyone in my group is now in their 40s, living in different cities, with families.
We try to meet once a month, and actually manage 4-6x a year.
But it’s the same group I started out with when I got the Star Wars D6 RPG for my 14th birthday, so we make it work.
And for those us who know ourselves well enough to know that we’ll never, ever write that right after the session, just bullet point the main things and make sure you have one specific line about each character so everyone is included in a specific way in the final draft you scramble to write an hour before they arrive. It’s usually something like:
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they got half way through the dungeon
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rogue executed a prisoner
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cleric saved barbarian from permadeath
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barbarian found a new magic weapon
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they learned BBEG has a clone army
Just really quick, easy to stitch back together notes
I’d call that a recap. If the players need retelling of the entire session, adjust to the reality and play one-shots.
Idk about you but I find it way more fulfilling to make it more narratively structured. We’re all telling a story together, what better way to get everyone in the mindset then to give a recap with a little soul? Takes me about 20-30min tops to make a solid draft and it helps me organize my thoughts about story beats/the larger arc.
If your table is all about function over form than that’s great, do it your way! Some of us like a little ~* showmanship *~ and mood setting.
It’s also a great opportunity for creativity. Try having a specific character recap things, it’s fun.
Elevates the recap from this
To this
That episode of BSG was so fun. Such a great wind up and delivery of awesome sci fi action
I started another re-watch this week and I’ve missed hearing Previously, on Battlestar Galactica.
Some of the acting is kind of cringe/over the top theatrical but it really is such a great show.
The mini series that launched it is particularly hard to watch except Adama’s speech about whether they deserved to survive (before the attack) and Gaius when he realized what was happening as nukes literally fell around him. That was so, so intense. Really foreshadows how critical those two characters’ performances would become for the show.
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I like having a player write the recap, or notes as we go. If they goof something up we follow the notes!
At least everyone is on the same page that way and I don’t have to keep track of my own shenanigans.
“…and then at the end of the session I found a magic item that lets me cast Wish three times per short rest. Oh, was that a goof? Oh well.”
Three times for three different endings, too!
Four times. They just never released the fourth ending.
The fourth ending is just a red herring.
No shit! Neat!
I always wrote a recap right after each session because it helped keep a history of what happened and made sure I didn’t lose track of things.
Andyougotablessing andyougotablessing andyougotablessing andyougotablessing…
The tradition in my group is for a player to do the recap in exchange for an inspiration token (or a hope in our Daggerheart game). Then the DM fills in gaps.
I actually really like this, I’m stealing it.
I got it from my first DM, and I met his first DM and I think it may have come from him. Who knows who where it started but I’m happy to pass it on.
One of my groups has the DM giving us some bonus exp for writing a “journal entry”
That’s kinda how Margaret Weiss and Tracy Hickman wrote Dragonlance. One of them DMed while the other took notes. The first trilogy, at least, was a retelling of the campaign they ran in their brand new setting. Which they made, because at that point in D&D there were tons of Dungeons, but scant few Dragons.
That’s very clever. Gets folks paying more attention overall
It’s also a fantastic way to steal the superior ideas that your players have misremembered and to reinforce the ones that resonated with them.
As I’ve started co-DMing the group I’ve also realized that it’s a great way to reinforce the plot points that players may have missed or not seen as important.
God I want to co-DM so badly I can’t get myself to take the sole throne again. 2 years wore me down and whenever I sit down to start typing up the story for our next arc I feel almost a wave of panic and I juststop. I know if I try to DM by myself again it will suck all the fun out of D&D for me
I do the same thing in pathfinder with hero points. If I don’t have to fill in anything, or only fill in minor details/joke details, I’ll give the entire party hero points too, in order to further encourage paying attention and note taking
I hadn’t seen this, fantastic!
