Game Master Notes Solved! How To Take Better Notes as a GM

i'll be with you in a second i'm just trying to find the notes that i made on the name of the npc um you know what let's does anyone else have the name of the npc anyone yes you no okay i'll find it i'll find it just wait just wait it's here you know we should we're going to change the name of the npc that's what we're going to do all right okay so um oh wait wait wait wait wait got it no no no i don't have it do your notes look like this random rubbish everywhere yeah yeah they probably do how can we take better notes well maybe this is how hello and welcome to this week's episode of how to be a great cheer and we're talking about that thing that really sticks for all of us and that's note taking now i've done videos before on note taking and you know you try and put those things into practice and as you see my book there i've tried to do that and you know we've got uh partners like world anvil which allow you to create your whole world and organize everything along with it but there is a biggest big problem i find anyway a big disconnect and that is whether i am sitting frantically trying to type stuff out on on on computer which quite frankly i don't find works very well not for me anyway because i've got the other screens open and i'm you know it's all that kind of stuff or you're trying to keep notes on your on your paper you then have 20 pages of gobbledygook that doesn't make any sense whatsoever you've got to page through it and look for notes and things now there is an advantage to that by the way which i think digital doesn't have so bear this in mind there is an advantage to that whilst paging through all of these cryptic notes and things you come across something you go oh i forgot all about that okay well yes and then you get other pages that are just filled with junk as you worked out hit points or whatever so we're going to be looking at some solutions here in terms of how to organize our lives better and the reason for it is that a company got hold of us the other day and said that they're producing this new product now it's not new on the market it has been around for quite some time but what it does is it merges note-taking plus the digital environment and brings it all together into one easily manageable space which i think is going to really help us moving forward it's not going to help us though if we don't know what kind of notes we should be taking so we're going to talk about that particular product at the end of the video they were the sponsors for this week's show as well full disclosure um but i think you will agree that they are on to something rather interesting so if note-taking is a thing for you it could be something to look out for okay let's just jump straight into it now so when we talking about notes what kind of notes should we be taking well firstly as far as i'm concerned if you want to get truly organized and my book that i keep looking at because it's glaring at me is not organized but if you want to get organized you need to break your note taking down into sections manageable sections that you can keep track of so when you are taking notes you don't just write down an npc's name and then just move on you need to write down certain pieces of information to help you remember just who the hell or what that name actually refers to so let's start with npc so with npcs what do we need to know what are the bare basics that we need to know in terms of our npcs well as far as i'm concerned the npc needs to have a name and if you're like me that npc also needs to have a quirk or a speech pattern or and this is something that i've been using recently which i found particularly useful as a kind of shorthand to get back into the character is not only do i go their name plus their accent but i also then go their attitude and in a long long running game that i have been playing now i have some perma npcs that are following the group around but they're not around every time every every session they might come in every third or fourth session and all i did was next to them i wrote their name i wrote their accent and then i wrote their attitude and that attitude could be inquisitive it could be excited it could be dour it could be skeptical it could be aggressive so that i know that when i'm then doing that npc if it says aggressive next to it it might be in some kind of accent i mean the accent doesn't have to come from this planet by the way we don't have to use access from this planet so when people say oh is that a sort of a chinese australian and i go yes but it was neither chinese nor australian that's what my elves sound like bear that in mind by the way anyway so so an aggressive character might be yeah what do you want i haven't got any time for this come on let it what is it i'm busy don't bother me with your trifles that's an aggressive whereas a passive might be um did i do something wrong i hope i didn't if i did i i really take it back i don't want to offend you how can i make this better what can i do to help you so by just jotting that down it helps sum up i think anyway a whole bunch of of techniques uh that will help you just to re impersonate that npc but what you don't want to do and this is the important thing in my opinion is that you don't want to muddle up the npc's sort of attitudes and and and that sort of thing with with additional information if the npc is on a quest or the npc has given the quest for the player that should be a note which says quest and then give it a a basic name or give it a reference so the red gem or the gemstone statue of a bird just something like that and that leads us into our next then entry which is your hooks so you're going to be throwing out lots of plot hooks but you shouldn't muddle those plot hooks in and amongst your npc information because otherwise you're going to be going back to npcs going oh i wish i remember what this plot was no so you should have another category called plot hooks and in plot hooks that's then when you would write the name of the npc bigglesworth bigglesworth the red statue but what do we need to talk about in terms of plots well ultimately i think we need to talk about the big information and then so let's say the red statue will hunt dragons when activated correctly missing three components during the session you don't have to know what those components are by the way you can make that up after the players have started to investigate and check and do all this kind of stuff but you don't need to write down that information just yet if you don't have it if you do well you can jot it down but that's going to be a lot of writing that you're doing in game so that's something something else that i'm really advocating is that this should all be done during the session whilst you are running the session you're just making notes very quickly there is nothing wrong with running the game and letting the players talk amongst themselves whilst you're just making a few notes or if the players say okay well we move on you go just give me a second here shot okay let's go and you've written down a few key words now something else you want to write down when you're talking about plot hooks is the name of the npc obviously so you can refer back to which npc that was what the quest is about and where the plot hook leads old lady in southern town might know and then you just underline the old lady in southern town might know she isn't yet an npc because you haven't created her as an entry and that people the players haven't encountered her yet so you don't know what she's going to be but you now know that when it's underlined that there is a potential option there and of course you me the town name would be really useful so you want to have a location of your plot hook you want to have a basic what is the plot hook and you want to have where does it lead those are the three things really that you want to have the npc who gave it it might be useful but that's not necessarily important unless they're going to go back to the npc all right so we've so far got npcs and then we have plot hooks the next entry that you're going to have or would should have by my opinion is the law entry what law are you adding to your world as you're going on i am a great explorer of my own worlds and by great explorer i mean that's what i love to do because i don't make it up beforehand now if you've been watching my special four-part series on campaign creation you'll see that there's been very little actual campaign creation and it's more just been about getting the rule systems in place so that we can start exploring this world together now this wednesday as of this episode's launch date uh is the final one we'll be talking about the monsters that we're going to add into this world that's as far as we're going to go and then we're just going to explore and see where we're going so i explore my world and develop my law as i go now this is contrary to what a lot of world builders will tell you and that you should have all this in place beforehand to avoid inconsistencies i say inconsistencies are what makes the world feel real as opposed to being inconsistencies so the notion that you have an entry in your book somewhere a tabbed page or just a page labeled law or a different color page or however you want to create your your page layouts and things is entirely up to you but you would add in law that you've added in flowering trees with purple flowers called the dogeros tree underline so again what is the law what's important about the law is a date if you've thrown out a date an important name and then the actual little snippet of law now of course if your players bump into a librarian and he says oh the degeros trio it's hunted by the tukari people as well as the madaran the chewbai the uh qq and then of course it is predated upon by and you list 15 monsters you don't need to write that down you really don't need to write that down the pcs are not going to write that down and this is where we start to then need to remember that the players are exploring this world as well they might write down the dejari tree and that's about it they won't go much further than that they might write down the first name of the tribe but if you're giving them miles and miles and miles of information they're not going to write that down so they will take down some salient points and that's what you should be doing as well if you come back to the da jara tree later on then you can fill in that information absolutely and expand upon it and add to your notes but don't over tax yourself in terms of okay guys you come across the dora tree give me 20 minutes whilst i write 15 pages of law you don't need to do that in terms of um helping make your world feel real five senses if you really must what are the color of the leaves the flowers does it have flowers does it have branches is it a straight up and down tree you know does it smell does it not smell what does it feel like just works for the five senses if you absolutely have to my suggestion would be to give them two senses it's a tall tree that towers over you bathing you in cool shade and smells vaguely of jasmine on a summer's breeze that's all you need they will remember that tree for quite some time the faint smell of jasmine wafts past your nose as the sun sets oh the dejari tree must be around yeah absolutely there we go good right so law in the bag few details the minimalist amount of details as possible to make that law entry make sense for you and again this is something that's absolutely important you have to do that it has to make sense for you i remember writing egg because this egg was going to do something and i didn't have time to describe it and then i couldn't remember what was in my head for that plan that's something that's very important complete segue from what else we're going to have in our book but what's very important is to when you write down something and you write down egg if if the players just find an egg and they don't explore it any further they don't pursue it they don't look into it they just it's egg right they put in their backpack and six months later they go oh pull out that egg and you go oh crikey what did that egg do well that egg is now going to fall into law or it's going to fall into the next category which we're talking about which is magic items and their abilities if your game has magic items in its abilities or if it has technology that has got some cool kind of effect you want to make a note of this you really do want to make a note of it you want to drop that down and say okay well egg gives the consumer the ability to turn into a dragon once every month and fly whatever i mean you design your magical item if you're doing it on the fly make sure that you keep it cryptic and ancient artifact which defies certain magical identification spells so that you can evolve it over time but you want to have an entry for magical items or technology that you can drop in and just keep track so if you talk about the flying ships of the city of elkura flying ships in alkura charge 15 gold pieces per trip takes one hour to travel from point a to point b basic basic information and just add that in because once we've finished doing all of these entries we're not yet finished there's a few little things left but they're not big once we've done with all of these entries you then have a fairly good working catalog of material so when you are entering your entries it is important that you do flip to the right space do not get lazy and put it all on one page that's how we ended up in this disastrous place in the first place okay so then all that we need to finally add in in terms of our books are player character notes what notes are we making on the player characters this is something that i think a lot of gm's fail to do is whilst the players are doing something if the player insults an npc does that entry go into the npc section or does it go into the player section well it kind of could sit in either or if the npc insults the player and calls the player a coward well that then might go in the npc information where they are perhaps loudmouthed or aggressive or angry on the other hand if the if the pc kills the npc's husband or wife or sister or whatever that would go into the pc's history okay because once you've got these little notes in pc history before you start your next session go to the pc histories and have a look and let me rephrase not next session next adventure because your session is is running and it's going and it's all good you don't want to muck around with that but before you start your next adventure you go to what the pcs have done and you go oh there was that one illiterate that they cut the tentacle off of and then let them go i could do an adventure where he comes back so it's not a plot hook a plateau is what you have done what you have created what you have thrown out there the pc information is what the pcs have done and what the pcs intend to do just little notes that you can just jot down and add in so that you then have the ability to come back and make this amazing adventure happen and the pcs go wow we did that like months ago and now they've come back for revenge or you know we stole this a while ago and now they've come back for revenge or they've sent bounty hunters off to us it's an amazing library or deposit of information that you can go through so by having all of these different categories you suddenly start to have a much better way of controlling your note taking it might sound tedious but if you get a book just something like this and you page up you text all the number text you um you can either you know put in little page dividers or whatever you like i mean stationery is not something that i particularly am interested in as you can see my note-taking is not is not fantastic i have lots of blank pages and then i have lots of pages covered with arrows and diagrams and and just rubbish and like here springtime springtime i think that's the time period in which the players are operating that would either sit under law or it could go under the plot hook for example springtime why would it go under plot hook spring festival thank you very much that sounds like a lot of fun to to to have it could go into law where we add in the spring festival it could we we we can choose where we drop stuff depending on how we want to use it as well that's the other important thing okay so that's my advice in terms of how to improve your note taking um i think that this is from what i have tried and what i have practiced possibly the best way to do it now if you think that this is going to help you in terms of your note taking hit that like button or the subscribe button it makes the marketing goblin so happy and the little dance that she does when she gets another subscriber is just to die for it really is i'm going to put that into my law section that the goblins do a little dance whenever there is a subscriber or a like now i would love to know what your thoughts are in terms of note keeping now like i said we've done visitors videos on this before but it's never harmful to see what other people do i know a lot of people they have a laptop next to them and they type it out i can't do that it's too disruptive for me um i think it's just too shiny i need to go back to basics and the note-taking works for me so uh leave us your thoughts down below the sponsor for today is rocket book and there's a reason why i wanted to bring up rocket book in this particular video on note taking because they're going to allow us to do exactly what i've just been talking about but instead of going through books and books and books and books you can now bring it all together where it's a book but it's also digital but it's also a book but it's also digital and it will never be messy again check this out so rocketbook has sent me a few of their rocker books they come in different colors red color black color which is quite nice and what i like about rocketbook is that you can take the book and you just write in it you make regular notes as you normally would as you can see my awful handwriting but and this is where they change so for example you get different color pens and they use a specific type of pen the friction pen which you can get from any online they come in different colors so what you can do is you can make a drawing so let's uh let's uh make a note here of our npc our npc here is named is brian okay and let's say that we have brian and then we're going to go to our next page which we have decided to call our law so we go to the next page this is law so let me just write here on law law i'm going to underline it and draw some notes around it and during the game i might because i'm an idiot i'm going to write down the hit points uh of a monster that i'm keeping track of and then i'm going to cross those out so it's awful it's un it's a neat and then i go oh yeah okay cool great session everybody so i've got three or four pages of notes that i now do what with well under normal circumstances i would just leave them in this ugly format but due to the way that rocketbook works is let's go back to some notes that i made before where um this was some some role-playing notes of of something it's a bit messy i take a little bottle of water i'm using a spritzer because of the demonstration spritz i take a cloth and oh my goodness it wipes away and leaves it completely blank now that this by the way this um piece here that i'm erasing has been on here for about two and a half weeks or so give or take now obviously you wouldn't be holding the book up whilst wiping stuff down you would keep the book flat to make life easier for got your yourself back or and this is the part that i particularly like let's go back to this page where we've got imagine here lots of text but this nonsense of the hit points well i just spritz it and erase it and off we go i now have writing space however these books are particularly thin and light and i'm going to be once all of the covid is done traveling around going to different venues so a light little notebook is great but it's going to fill up really quickly yes no because at the bottom of every page within this particular book there is a qr code and more importantly and you cannot see them here so i'm going to bring up some slides for you there are little icons at the bottom what do these mean i hear you ask well that's what i asked a couple times over and in the front of the book you can actually list what they actually mean there you can see the actual icons they're in green they normally sit at the bottom of the page you write your page and now you know how to write it properly you then take your good old-fashioned cellular telephone and you take a photograph of that using the rocketbook app which is free and it automatically uploads it to a drive of your choice now because of those little icons if you set each icon to plot hook npc law pc notes etc it will automatically send the file to that particular folder so if you created all of those folders on your drive you could double click on the npc folder and see every npc that you've ever created available to you to then transpose into a document now if that isn't the ultimate workflow in terms of preserving your notes of saving the environment of traveling light and of being able to not have stacks and stacks of books with cryptic notes i don't know what so they are currently running a kickstarter for a particular type of rocket book that they are now manufacturing and in the near future they're going to be then manufacturing a role-playing specific book with different categories that i had the advantage of helping to advise them on what should be included so you want to watch out for that now this latest kickstarter is a series of different pages some are squared some are lines some are it doesn't matter go and check them out this is a long promo because it's a technical promo and i feel like it's a real benefit i by the way this is what um how to be a great gma users all the web goblin the marketing government myself we use these for keeping notes and things during meetings now check out the kickstarter go and back them link down below so i think that these books just one of them i have two of them because well we got sent two of them to use one of them i already owned the other one was sent by the company for the promotional video thing whatever um i have two of them they are really really handy so their kickstarter is currently running you want to go and check that out and get in on the action on these really really remarkable books that um i think are going to really change how your note-taking uh actually occurs so thank you to them for sponsoring this video thank you to our patreons for making this entire youtube channel possible and thank you for you for watching all the way until the end until next time i wish you and yours the happiest of gaming

Channel: How to be a Great GM

Views: 101,907

Keywords: creating the campaign, campaign creator, how to be a great game master, how to gm, great gm, campaign creation, dnd campaign, dnd campaign design, dnd campaign ideas, rpg campaign design, rpg campaign ideas, rpg campaign, role playing campaign, campaign design, fantasy campaign, running the game, game master guide, dungeon master guide, gm tips, dm tips, rocketbook, note taking, note taking tips, rpg notes, rpg notebook, game master notes, dungeon master notes

Id: 9wNCTu-M0Ko

Length: 24min 42sec (1482 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 26 2021