Notes

One place that I've identified as a spot of improvement for myself is taking notes on campaign activity. I generally write down the date of the session start, locations, and such, but even significant metadata about the session, such as which characters are present, is often missing. I've been considering what information, exactly, I should be recording as a matter of course, as opposed to what I do now, which is write down information I suspect I might want to refer to in the future.

As I've mentioned before, I run very timeline-centric games; the date and time of any particular action is important to me, especially when running in a documented in-universe time and place, like Terra during the Jihad. I'm usually very good about referencing the date in-session events occur in my notes. That, however, is not enough.

Really, I should be noting every time the "scene" changes. Some RPG's have a much more explicit meaning of the term "scene", but I find it a useful concept even in A Time of War. A scene is a set of interactions the PCs take in a certain place for a contiguous stretch of time. At a bare minimum, I want to be recording each scene, the place and date it occurs in, and what major plot or mechanical developments occur there. Thus far, I only sometimes do this, and it leads to a broken narrative when I try to go back to my notes.

Also, generally speaking, I believe anything that occasions a modification to the character's sheet occasions a note in my notebook. Again, I'm bad about this, but that is the standard to which I am now striving. Edge is the most pertinent element here -- when a point of Edge is spent, it is generally on something worth putting in my notes anyways. Also, combat hits, and standard damage -- in a system as deadly as A Time of War, these should come up infrequently enough to merit a note.

Finally, major finds that the characters make that aren't recorded on an in-universe document. This includes conversations with NPC's, and exploration discoveries, especially off-the-cuff additions that weren't in the session plan. These are perhaps the most important, because there is nowhere else for this information to be collected. Right now this section constitutes the bulk of my notes, and while it is important, I need much of the other information I've mentioned here to really give it the context it needs.