Elsewhere in the realms….
The cleric strode purposefully into the small house. He entered the dining room without fanfare or greetings. No one looked up as he pulled out a chair and sat down.

“You have a new mission.”

Now they looked up.

“The necromancer has been assassinated. You and your team are to find those responsible and demonstrate Shar’s displeasure.”

From under his cloak, he produced a map and unfolded it on the table.

“There are seven targets. Here, to the east is where they last gathered. Two live in this small town – both dwarves, both clerics. Kerrilla Gemstar is the leader of a dwarven hospital outside the town and Durregar is one of her healers. The leader has power equal to the necromancer. There are about 40 other lesser dwarves in residence there – clerics, friars and guards.”

“The other five are wandering hire-swords and they are headed north to Citadel Adbar. They may be carrying something of value or import back there. It isn’t known if they are from Adbar in the first place and came to this dungheap looking for the item or were lured there by stories of a recent discovery of gold. The five are thus: Mellissa – a human fighter who worships Tempus, Bayla – elven ranger, Brannor – dwarven fighter, Aevos – elf half-breed sorcerer and Jehlarin – an elven monk who worships Ilmater.”

He dropped a list of the names on the table. “Any questions?” he asked.

One of the others picked up the list, glanced at it. He looked around the table to see shaking heads, then looked at the cleric and shook his own.

The cleric rose and quickly left. The group finished dinner before starting their preparations. At dawn the next day, they rode forth.

Anything entry that says “Interlude” and “written by Darth Krzysztof” is the kind of thing I’m talking about. One of my players writes the episode summaries and the occasional interlude, but mine focus on the NPCs, as you’ll see.

Of course, in some cases, someone will come along and tell the PCs what they missed, which makes the interlude more an exercise in me figuring out exactly what it was they missed in the first place. : P

Sometimes I just use the story to establish something about the setting or world around them (I run a homebrew setting), and other times I tell them a scene between known or soon to be met NPC’s. I often foreshadow future events or tell them the consequences of what they’ve done, but they often don’t realize this, as many times they don’t know the name of the story’s main character, or the story is told from a different point of view than what they would expect.

I do find that this often helps to focus their attention on me in order to start the game, as well as getting them into the gaming mindset.

For those who do read them, though, they provide foreshadowing, as well as minor spoilers. This was a technique that my previous DM used in her game.

I also prefer to e-mail illustrations and big blocks of description to the players, but it’s a chat-based game, so they get those right away.

I should have mentioned early emailing, Tman, thanks!

The one issue I have with emailing between sessions is something Itliaf touched on. The focus of this series of articles is on gamers that don’t have a lot of time. Most of them can’t give much attention outside the game, and emails are likely to be buried or forgotten. If your players can’t remember what happened in session last Wednesday, they probably won’t remember your email from Friday.

That said, however, your suggestion is still a good one as at least some players will be up to speed and able to guide the others along (or you can get cracking with those players while the others catch up).

Walt

This allows me to break one of your suggestions – length. I have sent out stuff as short as 5 paragraphs and as long as 5 dense pages. But since it comes days in advance, that’s not a problem.

One of the best ways to use this is when the party is about to receive a lengthy audience with the King or something. The King gets to say his piece at length without the Monty Python jokes flying about, then when we sit down, the players can ask all the questions they have and get down to business. They have the whole speech in writing to refer to later. It really speeds up play at the table.

It really jazzes our mega-roleplay guys while leaving the combat heavy guys their time to shine while we’re at the table for combats. I heartily recommend it for groups where everyone communicates by email regularly.