Maintaining a Campaign Notebook

Wherein Dyo lays out some benefits of annotating your experiences...

When I first joined a RISE campaign, the GM bestowed upon me with great ceremony one of those old-fashioned marbled notebooks that you had to use when you did your fourth-grade rotation on marine ecology. I immediately felt fancy. It was a very promising start to a great campaign; now, I choose my own notebooks, but I retain a particular fondness for that first notebook as a gesture of warmth and welcome. I wrote my character's name in clunky letters at the top, vengefully sketched a picture of the boar that drew my character's first blood, and was hooked.

If you're not taking notes in a designated, campaign-specific notebook, I urge you to charge out to a stationer's office (i.e. log on to Amazon) and acquire one. Most of my buddies are fond of artificially aged, leathery beasts with creamy white pages and a cumbersome buckle or some such-- and it does add an element of gravity not conveyed by looseleaf wide-ruled paper. I have found, also, that the RISE notebook is a great place to deploy your long-dormant love of colored pencils, gel pens, markers-- but many swear by the simplicity of a pencil, because when was the last time you wrote something by hand that was more than a grocery list?

Alrighty--you've got your fancy notebook and your writing apparati-- but why bother? Isn't this going to distract from your gameplay? Let me elucidate a few incomparable benefits to you:

1. Keeping the journal during roleplay helps you pay more attention to what's going on, especially when your character's not directly involved. I'm sure none of you are churlish enough to surf your phone during lulls, but a notebook offers the opportunity to reflect on your character or add illustration as opportunity presents, and keeps your head in the game. Note that it is practically a requirement to imagine yourself as Bilbo Baggins writing A Hobbit's Tale, and therefore to practice writing in faux-Elvish at least a few times.

2. The illustrations you almost inevitably produce if you have any artistic bent at all will be very enjoyable and fun to look back on, especially if you draw monsters and other strange stuff. As a bonus, some GMs grant XP for illustrations/other signs of investment. If you feel that you can't play and log and illustrate all at one time, one of my artsy buddies skips every few pages and then fills in an illustration post-game, to beautiful effect. It's just one more way to connect with the game and invest in the experience!

3. Most pragmatically of all, you can use your journal to jog your memory before your next session. This is especially useful if you have the luck of a GM who offers XP for recaps of the past session. Philosophically, you then have to decide whether you will write your notebook with a sole focus on your character and what he does, or if you'll also make notes of the goings-on not directly involving your character at all. I prefer the latter, and I bracket any information that I, the gameplayer, now know but that my character should not know. Moreover, if you go for a comprehensive notebook, you can share your record with other players if they miss a session, and it will actually be relevant to them! Finally, the comprehensive approach reminds you that the story isn't just about you and encourages investment in other characters' stories.

4. The notebook acts as a record of achievements and reasons that your GM should grant XP. As the acknowledged queen of pandering for XP-- don't judge-- at the end of my last campaign I was the highest level character, not entirely due to the fact that I told my GM that I'd quit if he killed off my character*-- I know a bit about making my notebook work for me. Pro tip: After the session has completed, go back over your notes and write out a list of accomplishments for which you'd like XP-- this makes it easier for you to make clear to the GM those moments where you stayed in character, assisted another character, figured out a challenging situation, or otherwise gained experience that might be harder to recognize by reading your unmediated notes.

5. Here is a designated place to note your character's in-game goals, and your plans for investing points the next time you level up so that you don't just charge in, directionless, and fritter away the opportunity to progress purposefully. Write your goals/what to do next on a loose-leaf paper, and I guarantee you that you won't have it on hand when it's needed. If you want to really track character development and make the most of your roleplaying experience, having all the information in one place matters.

6. It's the gift that keeps on giving. While in the midst of a campaign, the notebook offers the five advantages I noted above-- but once a beloved campaign has closed, you have a beautiful souvenir of your adventures. And, like a high school yearbook, revisiting it will involve a bit of squirming about your comparative inexperience and poor choices, but also a good deal of pride in how far you came during the campaign, in dragons played and alliances forged. After all, the best stories are the ones that we actively invest in... so grab your notebook and let your RISE exploits echo through the ages.

*Am I justified in that treachery to sportsmanship by saying that I loved that character?