Tracking in-game events
 

A conceptual question... wondering how (or if!) others do this....

Generally my campaigns are multi-year runs with multiple arcs and threads twisting around. I use the Manage>Realm>Game Sessions to track my game sessions, typing notes as I go during each session. It would be very helpful for me to have session highlights show up in the Timeline.

Of course I need to create a DATE snippet somewhere, but any suggestions on the cleanest location/way to do so, from an organizational standpoint? I want to keep duplicate typing to a minimum.

Maybe in each EVENT/ADVENTURE I just add DATE snippets to the bottom of it?

Thoughts?

You could add a Date Snippet "Occurred" or "Resolved" with the game date to each Scene Topic.

I don't use Game Sessions myself, as I run primarily Play-by-Post or Play-by-Email campaigns recently. What I did was to create a custom topic for "Game Log" entries. The name was "Day XX" of the campaign (so they sort sequentially). Add a Text snippet for the in-world game date, then snippets (defined on the Topic) for "Weather" (labeled Text), "When Occurred" (date, with time), and "Where" (labeled text), and "Who/What" (labeled text).

Create a new section for each entry you want to make with "When", "Where", and "Who/What" as needed... add "Weather" if it changed.

I add a date snippet into the Overview section at the start of each topic with a label of "Occurred on", or "Visited" (for settlements).

Nothing fancy, I just add an "In-Game Date" snippet or an "In-Game Date Range" snippet and enter the date there. If they return to the area I would add another snippet, but I'm not tracking each instance the visit commonly visited places. I just want to capture important periods and milestones. I intend my game world to have multiple parties run through it over time and these dates will become part of the world's lore.

This is where I need to improve my system. Just putting in "In Game Date" is not going to be helpful once I have multiple parties run through it. I don't know if I can bulk rename these snippets, so I'll likely just have a separate, better labeled set of date snippets for the next group.

I am telling a story, and I'm no bookkeeping slave. Usually one of my players acts as a chronicler so I'm not only free to do as I like but (and that is way more important) I can see what the players understood and where I should make it more clear next time.

I don't see how RW can support me in that way but I'm always interested if someone has a good idea.

Seems like this is a good use case for the players' journal.

You could do what I would guess a number of us do: Have your players email their write-ups to you and then paste them into a revealed RW topic yourself. It may not be as elegant as we might expect the Player Journal feature to be, but it works.