Comments on: Sharing Your Notes

By: Weekly RPG Link-Around: January « Jonathan Drain’s D20 Source: Dungeons & Dragons Blog

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 13:17:01 +0000

[...] Gnome Stew: Sharing Your Notes [...]

By: Alnakar

Alnakar — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 04:28:54 +0000

@zencorners - That's one of the best things I've seen all year. I think I just had a nerdgasm. I'm definitely going to try to give out some notes to my group after this, though. It's an excellent idea, that I'm not having trouble figuring out why I've never thought of before. Thanks John.

By: zencorners

zencorners — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 03:18:44 +0000

@Patrick Benson & All - Added the 1st batch of NPC cards to the site. Will be sending these out to the players this week. The joys of a little search-fu and some creativity. Information available on the link http://maidenshead.com/2009/01/npcs-of-eberron/

By: Kurt "Telas" Schneider

Kurt "Telas" Schneider — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 03:35:30 +0000

@zencorners - Sure. I really don't have a place to put it, but I can email you some of the player handouts. Ping me at telastx at the gmail thingy.

By: zencorners

zencorners — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 20:30:23 +0000

@Kurt "Telas" Schneider - Do you have a sample of this packet in an electronic format?

By: zencorners

zencorners — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 20:26:02 +0000

@Patrick Benson - Planning a series of these for my campaign. Will post some linkage as soon as I get the first batch.

By: tomg

tomg — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 02:57:53 +0000

This is a really great idea. I would have never thought of it. Thanks for bringing it to mind. I will definitely use this.

By: Kurt "Telas" Schneider

Kurt "Telas" Schneider — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 00:13:00 +0000

I had a "player packet" for my last campaign - a manila folder with maps, brief descriptions of the town, NPCs, prominent locations, etc. I think I might do that with index cards next time - a ring of index cards for NPCs, another ring for locations, etc. I would also have a "GM Q&A" after each plot arc, to answer questions and point out what might have happened had things gone differently. At couple of times, this turned into a "Riddle Reveal" when I made things too difficult for the players to decipher. At other times, it was a "GM Brag Session" for me to talk about how cool I was. (Yeah, I have been that GM before.) But eventually, it became a handy tool for both the GM and players to review what just happened.

By: Swordgleam

Swordgleam — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 23:38:32 +0000

@John Arcadian - From the definitions I saw (didn't want to correct you only to realize I was wrong myself), it's because one definition is to elicit emotion, not just anger. The adjective piqued means angry, but the verb can refer to any emotion. But I agree with you that whatever the cause of the divergence, blaming the French is surely the best solution. Sorry. Bit of a language geek. Studying classics does that to you.

By: John Arcadian

John Arcadian — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 17:48:16 +0000

@Patrick Benson: Thats a great idea. Index cards do truly have 101+ uses. The players can flip through and find or add information at will. I know I used to keep common NPCs on index cards in a box. When I needed one I yanked it out. Now I tend to develop all unimportant NPCs on the fly with a table of character stats and willy nilly addition of necessary abilities. It works for the system I play in, but might not work well for more detailed systems. @Swordgleam: In response to an unimportant note:I have no idea what you're talking about. (Whistles suspiciously . . .) The odd thing is that piqued actually means to make angry. Weird semantic mangling from the french. I am a fan of the concept of living and ever changing language, but it does have to be reigned in. Thanks! Your offical no-prize is in the mail.

By: Swordgleam

Swordgleam — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 16:48:37 +0000

My current campaign centers around a particular town, so I made up a list of a bunch of NPCs, some important, and some just colorful. Each entry had about a paragraph of information, as well as age (important in this game) and race. One player sent me back a sheet with all the names listed, and his character's relationship to each. The rest glanced at it, then didn't look at it again until they had something important to do in town involving the elders, at which point they all fought over the two copies of the list that were at the table. On an unimportant note, it's "interest will be piqued," not peaked. A lot of people get that one wrong, or think it's peeked.

By: Patrick Benson

Patrick Benson — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 16:38:55 +0000

I am going to start creating NPC cards for the players thanks to this post. Sort of like baseball cards, on the box of an index card I'm going to put a picture of the NPC and beneath it the NPC's name and title/role. The players can keep the card to put notes on and to refer to when they forget a name (happens all of the time in my games). The secret will be to make sure that NPCs who are not important to the plot get cards too. That way the players won't start taking the approach of "No card? This NPC isn't important."

By: John Arcadian

John Arcadian — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 16:30:35 +0000

@ target: That sounds awesome! I would in fact, like to know more. I know I've seen some starship troopers fonts out there, as well as a program ( a long long time ago) that let you make your own heads up display with text for news options.

By: John Arcadian

John Arcadian — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 16:26:02 +0000

@ Scott Martin: You're right. Too detailed our outlined of notes and players think they are moving in a pre-ordained fashion. I'm not sure if this is any different from running a pre-made adventure though. It all depends on how the GM plays it. Personally I'll deviate from notes if a player presents a more interesting option. My notes, however, are rarely so organized as to indicate any sort of pre-ordainment of plot. @ Zen Corners: I had an online journal just for gaming stuff. I gave out XP if the players wrote up their recounts. It often came out ith 3 or 4 different takes on the same story. Really interesting stuff. Glad to see I'm not the only one who does that. @nblade: I've never tried it in a spy oriented game. Done that in a vampire oriented game once. I gave them some innocuous piece of paper with Lorem Ipsum on it and sanitized the whole thing except for one "the" somewhere. The paper was more of a prop though, as I had used lemon juice to write a secret message on it. I told them that all the information they needed was on it, they just had to look hard enough. Someone immediately got out a lighter and found the message. Shocked the hell out of me that he figured it out so fast.

By: Target

Target — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 16:21:50 +0000

I plan to use News Headlines and Official Orders in my Starship Troopers campaign to help the PCs keep track of what's going on inside and outside the military view.