How To Take Notes Efficiently As A Player Character? - Tips & Tactics

• Swordsman
• Join Date: 3/27/2018
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Right now my group is about a weeks worth of ingame days into ToA. And we've ran across several notable places/characters/quests.

I tried to section these off but i now have about 3 pages of a mixed bag of info that i have to flip constantly back and forth through to hopefully see what I'm looking for.

As well as sometimes I don't hear everything the DM says even when I ask them to repeat the name/place etc.

Can any of you give me some tips on how I should FORMAT my notes on a general notepad paper (so I don't have to use all my ink to create special 'notes' sections)?

Occassional Dungeon Master.

• (Perfect)
• Join Date: 1/16/2018
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You can have separate sections designated to important things.

TOWNS: A description of what it's like, what it's known for, and notable people in that town.

PEOPLE: A list of people and what makes them important. Also not a bad idea to mention skills they're good at and where they are located.

QUESTS: A nice way to keep track of the quests you are working on or past quests you've done. Also not a bad idea to take notes on who you did the quest for.

GENERAL IMPORTANT INFORMATION: You put any important information here that doesn't really fit anywhere else but you know it'll matter and may pertain later in the campaign.

MISCELLANEOUS: You put any random information here that may be good to know but won't necessarily pertain to the whole campaign (Ex. you might sketch a random maze you find on a statue you stumbled across in case it may be of importance in the future).

Hope this helps! Let me know what you think. If you have any other questions feel free to PM me, I'd be more than happy to help.

• Swashbuckler
• Join Date: 4/2/2018
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What is important to one player is fluff to the next. They layout that Tyrannosary gave you is all well and good, I'd simply offer that you'd be well off if you can get another player on board with the note taking.

I don't take notes personally, I have a bad habit of becoming the party leader so I delegate notes to someone else. Some of the practices I've seen from the players I've Dm'd for and played with are as follows:

Bullet point what you feel are important bits: Rather than trying to write every little detail simply jot down the quick points: Village called Doledrum, dirty, thief overlord, port, blah....

Post-it heaven: one of my players jots down everything on post-its and uses them to create maps of how the stories intersect and where they belong on time lines.

Note book with categories (See previous post)

All in all, as I'm almost always on the DM side of the screen, I'd offer that npc names, location names, plot points, and pivotal character interactions are very important parts to write down.

The random, odd, and not quite right moments are important if your DM likes to call back to events that may have seemed trivial. The strange wagon that sold you those giant healing potion vials...yea, write that down.

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• (Perfect)
• Join Date: 3/20/2017
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Onenote is a tool I am really getting into recently and I have seen others tote it as well. First it saves the trees, and the ink. Second it's searchable. So if you create a note and then forget where you sectioned it you can go back and search for it and quickly find it. It also has the ability to section things off in customized sections so you could keep things in overarching sections like mentioned above, or if you wanted to you could keep them by date of the session. Also it's free and has a mobile app.

• Swordsman
• Join Date: 3/27/2018
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Thank you both, I more or less had a semblance of what you guys speak of, but i guess I need to expand the total space of each one (since some details got added to some notes later, but i already had noted that didn't pertain to it on the immediate next line :X

So I have a few days to deal with this and I'll see what I can come up with :)

Occassional Dungeon Master.

• Swordsman
• Join Date: 3/27/2018
• Posts: 4,747
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@ MadClergy

I'm not a fast typer on a phone, and lack a laptop :X

Occassional Dungeon Master.

• Acolyte
• Join Date: 1/12/2018
• Posts: 15
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I use onenote also, but only because I have essential tremors and writing legibly takes too long during the game. I use a Microsoft foldable keyboard (bluetooth) and a phone. What I do is have a page for just writing short clips of anything that happens that session I want to remember. Basically a dump page. Then between sessions, I move the notes, and expand them as needed, into an organized notebook.

• Protector
• Join Date: 3/23/2017
• Posts: 608
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don't fret over things like spelling names and places -- just write it down somewhat phonetically, so that you can reasonably repeat the name (or close to it). Asking for spelling of something like that slows the game down, and chances are it doesn't really matter, you likely aren't going to need to know how to spell the name of the town you're going to or person your looking for, you just need to know how to say the name.

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Wave!

• Keeper
• Join Date: 3/20/2017
• Posts: 33
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I download this Quest Tracker sheet a few days ago. I have yet to use it, but it should be useful. http://www.dmsguild.com/product/233545/Quest-Tracker?term=quest tra&test_epoch=0

• Acolyte
• Join Date: 6/3/2018
• Posts: 17
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I do mine like this.

• GM of Many Things
• Join Date: 3/20/2017
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I personally only take notes of things my character would find significant, and then I have special symbols I use for those things. In between sessions I flip through to find those symbols, and mark the edge of the page with some washi tape, so that I can see easily what's an NPC / location / important knowledge / character motivation or something else.

• Adventurer
• Join Date: 5/6/2018
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For me, a lot of this depends on your character. Are you the kind that would take detailed notes of information, names, places etc? Some people fixate on certain things (my Rogue can smell money everywhere she goes from checking out the best-dressed merchants to the nicest houses) so they would take note of those things.

I wouldn't bother to note every detail unless your character would do that or unless they have a high Int score (because my characters are often smarter than I am so I figure they should remember more).

• Acolyte
• Join Date: 3/28/2018
• Posts: 10
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This is rather time-consuming, but I use the Rev app to record sessions and then write stuff down later. I like the Rev app because when I listen to stuff later I can jump around and fast-forward in increments of 10 seconds so I don't have to sit there for an entire day while I wait for my friends to stop laughing about tangential jokes. Another tip for recording: when your DM says something significant, check the timestamp of the recording and make a note of it on paper so you can skip back to it later.

• Adventurer
• Join Date: 1/26/2018
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I know I'm a bit late to the party but I use Evernote. This way you can create notebooks for each character and make sub-notebooks to separate them in categories. Then, within those categories, you create notes.

>Character >Towns >Solitude >Riften >People >Riften Guard Pete > >Quests >Shops (If you wanna keep tabs on those)

• Master Trickster
• Join Date: 6/3/2018
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Just in case anybody else reads this- you could try assigning different categories of notes to different players. E.g. one player doing towns and people, one doing quests and one doing everything else. However, it could result in everyone writing what they DM says and not really getting immersed into the story.

• Swashbuckler
• Join Date: 1/8/2019
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Lots of good advice already. I would just say to develop some sort of short hand that you understand and can utilise in game. You can then go back after and flesh out your notes. Feel free to focus on what your character would find important. Others in the group should do the same, which might mean that they don't take notes at all, or it might mean that you have duplicate notes on everything. Find out if some players are willing to stay after the session (or get together later so as not to impose on the host) to go over notes and important events. If you do get some technology going, you can look into Google docs (hopefully while on the wifi of the host or with plenty of data available, though I think I remember seeing offline options). It offers the option to have headings that appear out to the side for easy access to material.

• Adventurer
• Join Date: 3/17/2018
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Currently we have one player in our campaign who is playing digitally and webcammed in. Since he's at a computer he sort of just types along with the action. He puts the raw text on Google docs for us. Between games I'll sift through it and organize it into tables for myself. Places, quests, people, party stuff, and misc each have their own table.

In the past I have just printed them blank and filled in by hand at the table. Having them already broken into categories helps speed things up.

• Warrior
• Join Date: 4/23/2018
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I'd have a notebook to jot down general words down of things I find important for my character that happen during the actual session.In between sessions I organize those notes into a proper organizer with sections for towns, quests, npc's, items etc. which I use when I need to look stuff up that happened over longer periods of time when playing.

• Adventurer
• Join Date: 3/1/2019
• Posts: 1
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I use a Bullet Journal system to take notes while playing. I'll use symbols to help me sort out the notes later: ? for new quests, ! for information learned, for example. I write the word LOOT in all caps. It's basic, but it's enough.

I later type up the session notes into a shared Evernote notebook. I break it up into the following headings:

Players, Current Objectives, Progress, Information, Detailed Session Notes, Session Loot, Goals for next session, and a tally of group funds with itemized list of expenditures, if applicable.

• Adventurer
• Join Date: 2/21/2019
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I am also on the bandwagon for OneNote! I grab a digital copy of maps that our characters are aware of and then draw on them in OneNote interesting locations and notes. Or take a picture of our current game board layout as well and write notes on that too. I don't really have bullet points, I write stream-of-thought/action/event/etc, so it reads like a disjointed story.. These OneNote pages can also be shared out with other players, so I keep note of important NPC's, party loot, etc, as well.

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