A lot is going on in a 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Dungeons & Dragons campaign, far more than the players realize, between the story, the characters, events that may happen if the players don't go too far off your expectations, and things that suddenly became important because your players decided to interact with them, among other examples.

There's only so much our brains are capable of, which means it's essential to write things down. Making notes is a big part of a Dungeon Master's job, and organizing your notes properly will make the game much smoother for you and, thus, for your players.

7 Con🍸sider The Help Of 🍎Technology

Lots Of Space For Notes And Easier To Carry Around

If you're playing online, you're already doing this, but if you're playing in person with your friends, consider a laptop as your DM screen, if possible. You can use folders, have separate documents for important things, and search keywords to find whatever you need faster. It's also helpful if you type faster than you write on paper.

Tools such as Roll20 or D&D Beyond can also be helpful, even if you're the only one using it. You can have a copy of your players' sheets if necessary or make notes on these tools for you. Or you can use cloud services that help you organize files, like Google Docs or Notion.

6 ܫ Campaign Notes And Session Notes

Not All Your Lore Will Be Relevant Every Session

Depending on how invested in worldbuilding you are, you may have written a deep history for the mighty nation in which your game will take place. And it's wonderful to have all this in case it comes up, or to simply make the world feel alive. But that won't be urgent during session one's random Kobold encounter, and dumping a lot of lore at once isn't a good idea anyway.

It's essential to have separate notes dedicated to what will likely happen during a session and update it afterward with what did happen during the session. You can focus on the key events and have them easy to find among your things this way.

5 Bullet Points 𓄧

Short Sentences Can Say A Lot

"Vecna escaped the cave of despair with the stone of chaos" is a very long sentence. When making notes, especially during the game itself, don't bother with proper grammar and whole sentences; instead, write bullet points.

• Vecna took MacGuffin

Is more than enough to remember what happened.

If you still believe you may forget just from your bullet point - which can happen in long campaigns - then after the session is over, you'll have all the time in the world to write complete sentences about the game's events. However, it's still good to keep bullet points in session notes, as you won't need to read through multiple paragraphs just to check one detail about the session.

4 🌄 Structure Notes In A Way𓆉 That Makes Sense To You

How Do You Organize Your Stuff?

This tip will depend on you, so trial and error is required. But when 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:writing about NPCs, for example, what's the best way for you to find their notes? Would you rather have a file or page for each of them in a folder or throw them all on a chart in alphabetical order? Should you put them all together or separate them into groups, like the characters' species, their importance to the story, or the city they live in?

There's not exactly a wrong way to go about things here; while some notes have easy ways to organize - like a folder for a nation having notes about their cities - each person has their own way of managing these things. Try them out.

3 Ma🎃ke Small Notes During The Game

A Few Seconds During The Session Will Save Yourself From Future Headaches

We've briefly mentioned this part already, but don't be afraid to take quick notes while the game is still going on. Writing a three-to-five-word sentence doesn't take long, so it's not like that will stall your game.

If something happens that you strongly believe will have consequences in the future - even if it's a distant future - it's more than okay to note that right now. You don't need to pretend to your players that you memorize everything; they'll wait the few seconds you'll take to write things down. It's also okay to give players a short bathroom break, so you can make notes, in case there's a lot to write.

2 🍸 Ask Your Players To Share Their Notes 𒊎

Let Them Help You

Sharing is caring. Though you can't share your notes most of the time, as they contain spoilers for the players, the opposite can work pretty well for you. Some players love to make notes about every detail, so if you have one of these players at your table, take advantage of that.

Ask them for their notes. It'll speed up your need to get stuff documented, and you'll get the funny insight of seeing the game's events described by someone else. Besides, if one or more players are constantly helping you remember important events, that can make even the sessions go faster, as they can tell you on the spot. 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Give them inspiration if they're helping you constantly.

1 Use Consistent Terms 🧜

Careful With Silly Descriptions In Your Notes

In our bullet point example, we called a specific item MacGuffin, a popular term for an object that moves the plot forward. That's all fine and good unless you have multiple items that move the story forward, like in 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Curse of Strahd. If you start calling them all MacGuffins, you may have 𝕴a problem in the future.

Avoid using similar or vague terms constantly, as it may confuse you in your own notes. We may believe that our future selves will understand our confusing notes because we wrote them, but that's not always the case, which is another reason to re-organize your session notes after the game is over. You can then rewrite your "MacGuffin" on the bullet point to whatever item it actually is.