game sessions notes section questions

[the_redbeard]

folks,

The game session notes aren't nearly as useful as I thought they would be.

Is there something I'm doing wrong that topics in the notes section aren't linked by Realm Works?

Why are game sessions only found in realm management?

I thought they would be listed in Timeline or something.

Related question: is Timeline for historical events in the world? I seem to be missing how to create them.

Please give the noob a clue.

thanks

[Vargr]

Well, this will not be much help, I am afraid.

I, too, are somewhat baffled by game sessions notes. The system handling them feel unfinished and not very useful.

I hardly use them. I guess it is one of those things that will be fully fleshed out at a later date. The lack of formatting of the text you input seems to indicate that LW intends to do a lot more work on this feature at a later date. They have a lot on their plate at the moment, so patience is probably the keyword here :-)

As for the Timeline:

Everything that you give a date using the in-build gregorian calendar will be listed here in chonological order. You will get a kind of very detailed timeline over your realm.

Unfortunately, we happen to be a lot that uses any calendar but the Gregorian, so it doesn't really make any sense to input any dates into the "date holders" of RW.

We are eagerly waiting for the Calendars to be finished :-)

[Parody]

Timeline links to Date snippets in your Topics/Articles. That's pretty much it.

The other place Game Sessions can be used is the Reveal History, but only the last one and the current one (if any).

[rob]

The game session notes are something small we added at the very beginning as a way to wrangle the reveal history in a convenient manner. As the product has evolved, there are a zillion things we've thought of to do with game session notes. I'm sure you're envisioning many of those same things.

Alas, we haven't had the opportunity to go back and implement any of those ideas yet. Once the content market and web version finally get out and solid, we'll be able to focus our energies on all the other cool things that will make Realm Works an even more indispensable tool.

[Yes, calendars happen to be one of those things - he says before someone does their best imitation of Donkey from Shrek. Pick me! Pick me! Pick me!]

[MNBlockHead]

I do use session notes. While they may be feature-sparse, I find them helpful. Here is how they fit into my session-management workflow.

My games are 8-hours long (inclusive of lunch) and meet once per month. Because of the amount that happens during the game and the amount of time between them, it is important to records notes on the prior session and to recap what happened last time at the start of the session.

DURING GAME
1. Begin Game Session. As soon as everyone is situated, I start the session and begin the game.

2. During the game - I usually jot my notes on a notepad. I should do it on the computer to save time, but I hat losing focus on the current encounter tab or whatever reference I'm using for actual game play, so I don't take notes on the computer during the game.

3. End of Game - I end the session.

BETWEEN GAMES

4. I enter the in-game dates for the session notes. I have a separate spreadsheet that I use to keep track of in-game dates that have dates in multiple calendars. I've included Gregorian as one of the calendars and use that date to update the in-game dates in the session notes.

5. I type up a summary of the game session for my players and e-mail it to them and copy and paste it into the session notes.

6. I use user notes to keeps notes for my eyes only. I have a note group called "Session-Bridge Notes" that include a version of the summary of the last game that includes DM-only information, notes on what has happened in the interim (if applicable), and notes on starting the game at the next session. I always have this user note open at the start of a session.

I wouldn't want the session or user notes to appear in the timeline. For me the timeline is for in-game events. The user notes and session notes are metadata for the DM to use in game prep. The session notes are just a simple log for me. I don't miss the lack of content linking and other features, but that may be because I take much of the session note content and expand on it in my intersession user notes.

[Chemlak]

Originally Posted by rob

[Yes, calendars happen to be one of those things - he says before someone does their best imitation of Donkey from Shrek. Pick me! Pick me! Pick me!]

*innocent whistle*

[the_redbeard]

Originally Posted by MNBlockHead

I do use session notes. While they may be feature-sparse, I find them helpful. Here is how they fit into my session-management workflow.
<snip>

Thanks. I really appreciate seeing how other people are handling different kinds of information.

I'm probably going to continue taking session notes for the in game date and real date fields and future utility.

But I may cut and paste from the session notes into something else (possibly a scene, or something with a date field).

I want to be able to go to an NPC and look through and see what the interactions with them have been, who has talked/offended/bargained with them, etc.

[liz]

Originally Posted by rob

[Yes, calendars happen to be one of those things - he says before someone does their best imitation of Donkey from Shrek. Pick me! Pick me! Pick me!]

I love the Shrek reference, Rob.

[MNBlockHead]

Originally Posted by the_redbeard

I'm probably going to continue taking session notes for the in game date and real date fields and future utility.

But I may cut and paste from the session notes into something else (possibly a scene, or something with a date field).

I want to be able to go to an NPC and look through and see what the interactions with them have been, who has talked/offended/bargained with them, etc.

I find that I end up with fairly verbose session notes, so slicing them up can create a lot of busy work. One thing I've learned over the half year since I got back into tabletop RPGs after a long absence and started using RW, is that I rather than prepare like I'm going to publish something and turning my GMing into a unpaid 2nd job, I focus on what I actually need to run a session.

That said, I DO sometime create an event topic from something that happened in session. But I try to keep this rare and only to events that really drive the story and give me something to build a future game session from.

One example of when this makes sense is if the party wrongs someone in someway (whether intention or not or justified or not), I can enter this as an event tied to an NPC who may come back for revenge at a later date. Another example could be if the party did something that gained them fame, I could enter that to drive plot ideas on why groups may reach out to the PCs to help them with one problem or another.

[Sleepwalk]

I was also disappointed by the lack of utility for the game session feature. Instead of waiting for enhancements there, I created a custom category called "Game Session Summary". It has fields for the in-game date range that the session covered (my game world uses a calendar system that matches the gregorian calendar, so the lack of a custom calendar isn't a problem), the real-world date when the session occurred, a session summary, a list of encounters, a list of loot and other rewards gained, and the experience gained. Most of those are just simple text snippets.

My realm has an event list category called "Game Sessions", and after each session I'll add a session summary topic to it, fill in all the fields, and reveal all the snippets. Since it's a proper topic in RW, the text in the fields will auto-link to other topics in the realm. For the summary, I'll usually just write up a couple paragraphs that cover the key points of what the party did, making sure any relevant things that have their own topics get mentioned to create links. I'll format the encounter and loot snippets as simple bullet-point lists. If there's additional information about that stuff that the PCs don't know (like what unidentified magical items actually are), then I'll add that in GM directions for the snippet so I can refer to it later.

I don't currently use the storyboard/plots feature at all, so this has been a good way for me to track the storyline in a cohesive manner that utilizes all the linkage that RW provides, in a way that's visible to both myself and the players. It isn't perfect, but I think it works fairly well for the way I do things. Sometimes players miss sessions, or just forget potentially important details about what happened in a given session, so it's good to have that information available for them to reference.