When I want the players to “catch a clue”, I use the Socratic approach – ask questions, sometimes as an NPC, sometimes just as a GM. “Why do you feel the Grand Vizier is trustworthy?” “Why do you suspect the Princess?” “What makes you think it was the butler? He only appeared once, to take your cloaks.”

I tend to name and give details for key items and many othes for a few reasons. One is versimilitude. By highlighting certain things you want to be remembered; the ideal of ‘World in Motion’ suffers. In otherwords, the background details (so vital for the versimilitude) are forced further back by shinging the bright light on the forground details.
More, I don’t like to make it so easy for the players. I like cool, fun items and details. But I also enjoy writing backstores and interesting details on useless and bizarre items. My “Roasting Pan of Cooking” magic item comes to mind.

I like the ideas above; well thought out and well described. But at the next level, this should be done with lots of items, quest/adventure connected and not. If you only carefully describe the pertinent, you are giftwrapping the game to the players as well reducing the versimilitude of the game.

Picture
Name
Clan
Desc
Notes

I filled in picture, name, and desc (physical description, then handed one sheet to each player. They wrote everything down and I sometimes gave them index cards with special events written on them. Think clue style (Brujah Jacobus In Arizona With the last surviving knowledge of the temporis discipline). They didn’t always remember everything, but they went to those sheets and cards real quick when I hinted that they probably already knew. Once they had the quick reminders they started to remember events and write down new notes. This was a long game and without some kind of organization it would have been way hard to run.

@Scott Martin – Excellent sugegstion. Relationship maps are a great way to organize, well, relationships. The only downside to one in an RPG is when players would have to discover relationships on their own. I could see doing a magnetic white-board + magnets and image/name printouts to do a very dynamic setup that you can move around and change dry erase lines on. It would be a hell of a prop too. A regular whiteboard and dry erase markers would be cheaper, but image cutouts (like Patrick’s tokens) would be awesome to use. You could pop them off and suddenly have minis, then move them back with changed relationships/notes being marked.

@Mike’s DND Blog -Michael made a reference to this post in his own blog and had a great idea that I totally missed! A quest item list. Being the old school JRPG dork that I am, that one should have been on my radar. Providing a separate list of “quest loot” would automatically mark it as more important. Even just telling the players to mark xxx item on their quest or important things list would instantly denote its importance. They can then roleplay how and why their characters felt its importance. Check out Mike’s post here:

http://mikesdndblog.com/2010/07/16/they-were-in-our-back-pocket-the-whole-time/

@refinement – Rolling or a friendly reminder work well, depending on time. It can be hard to remember something that passed only a few hours ago (game time), but weeks ago (real world).

When in doubt, write it down. If it will make you happier to have the people recognized, pass out a sheet with NPC names and a few blank lines between them. That cues your players that the NPCs on the sheet are important and gives them space to write down their reaction to the character.

For factions, a similar trick applies: write it down. This map of China’s relationships between companies, shadow investors, and various levels of government is more clarifying than paragraphs of description– and can clarify exactly what group is the lynchpin the PCs can strike. This relationship map captures some of the power in a good RMap.

For more examples, this google image search for relationship maps shows lots of different ways of displaying connections and conflicts to make them clear.

Combine a map for the relationships between the organizations and a name sheet for the PCs, and your players should soon know who’s who– or at least where to find the info quickly!

One question for discussion: what is your course of action when (despite all attempts to red flag them) your players forget crucial or even just useful details? Roll checks? Wait for an opportunity for repetition? I’ve been struggling to balance player responsibility for details and GM interaction. My current 3.5 game involves a number of factions that my players tend to have a hard time keeping straight. They also often fail to recognize recurring adversaries and rarely remember names of places or people (despite all my attempts to provide compelling description, they only seem to remember the most unimportant characters). At what point should there be a kind of penalty for not taking notes or remembering? Ever? I struggle between giving away plot elements and letting them try to figure it out on their own (because I feel like that is a large portion of the fun).

Also, this is my first comment. I’ve been lurking for months. Just wanted to say: Keep up the good work, Gnomes. This is my favorite gaming blog. I’ll be buying your book when it arrives at my local gaming shop and voting for you all for the Ennies.