I do not want to write this shit.

Today’s topic is taking good game notes It’s something lots of you have asked me to write and something I refused to write for years. Well, I’m just desperate enough to get this year over with and get back on track and I’m sick of saying no, so here it is.

Why don’t I want to write on such a seemingly innocuous topic as this?

First, because note-taking’s a really personal thing. It’s about learning how to work with yourself. To work with your own brain. And that ain’t something I can help you do.

Second — and I admit this is totally at odds with what I just said — second, there are actually objectively, provably good ways to take notes and objectively, provably bad ways to do it. And there’s a giant body of research on the subject. People don’t like when I quote research and tell them things ain’t subjective and personal. Especially when I’m telling them they’re wrong in the same breath.

Third, I kinda suck at note-taking. I barely do it. I have a really good memory for gaming shit. And I tend to rely on that more than notes. So I don’t feel like I’m qualified to tell you how to take good notes.

So why am I writing this now? Because I had this whole note-taking thing wrong. And so do you. The fact that I have an excellent memory and take few good notes is precisely because of how I take notes. Which I discovered by researching the subject in detail. And the personal part — how you format your notes — is actually the least important part of the whole process.

So, this ain’t really an unwritable article and I am totally qualified to write it. But I’m still in for some fights. Oh well.

Note Taking for Gaming Fun and Profit

“Angry,” you keep whining, even after I punch you, “how can I, as a Game Master, take better game notes.” At long last — the reasons for the delay are outlined in the Long, Rambling Introduction™ — at long last, I’m gonna answer. But you ain’t gonna be happy.

See, I’m not going to tell you how to organize your notes and whether to use charts or outlines or the… uh… some bullshit called the Cornell Method or anything like that. I don’t care how you lay your notes out. There are plenty of resources about note-taking methods and formats online and finding the right one for you is a matter of shopping around. That shit’s your problem. And it doesn’t much matter.

It turns out, your actual note-taking system — how you format and arrange your notes — matters way less than why and how you take them. And that’s what I’m gonna cover today. Because most Game Masters don’t really know why they’re taking notes. And, consequently, they focus on the wrong aspects of note-taking, and they end up wrecking their own brains.

Seriously. Because how you take notes determines whether or not you need to take notes at all. And if you take notes the right way, you don’t need the notes. And that is the real goal.

The Best Notes are the Ones You Never Need

Most Game Masters say they need to take notes because there’s too much shit to remember. They’ve got to write everything down so they can reference it later. Is that how you think Note-Taking works? Well, you’re wrong.

The point of taking notes is to help you remember shit. If you do it properly, you rarely — if ever — have to refer back to the notes themselves. And the notes themselves serve as little more than quick reminders to jog your memory. In the language of the research, the goal of note-taking isn’t recording, it’s retention. Taking good notes helps you remember things.

Why is this important? It’s important because if you think the point of note-taking is to build a nicely organized reference notebook wherein you can always find what you’re looking for, you’ll burn vast wodges of time and energy worrying about how you organize and format that shit. Moreover, if your brain thinks the notes are there to keep you from having to remember shit, it won’t try to remember anything. And that’s bad because there’s just too much shit to write down. Your memory is actually way better at recalling details than you are at writing them down for later reference.

Did you get that? Memory is more reliable than notes. So you take notes to aid your memory. Everyone thinks it’s the other way around. And that’s how they fuck this up.

So, primarily, note-taking is about improving retention. It’s about helping your brain remember shit without needing the notes.

Secondarily, note-taking is about having little reminders that help your brain remember things it thinks it has forgotten.

From a Game Mastering perspective, though — which is, of course, the only perspective I’m ever offering — from a Game Mastering perspective, there is a tertiary point to note-taking. And that’s to build a list of things you need to act on later. If the party offends a shopkeeper or if they unwittingly give a spy information, you need to have that information stored away in a vault for later use.

That’s it. That’s the point of taking game notes. It’s to build your retention, provide reminders to aid your retention, and to keep a to-do list of future game events. If you’re trying to do any more than that, you’re doing it wrong. And you’re probably frying yourself. Hell, if you’re even trying to do it right too hard, you’re also probably frying yourself.

Down the Memory Hole

You’re going to forget shit. And no amount of note-taking can prevent that. Because notes are less perfect and less reliable than your memory and your memory ain’t very reliable to begin it. It happens. It’s not a big deal. Game Masters have these ridiculous expectations of perfect recall or perfect note-taking. They think they’ve got to remember or record everything. That ain’t possible and chasing that ideal only burns you out and wrecks your memory.

It’s okay to forget the party offended a shopkeeper. It’s okay to forget you named a shopkeeper and gave them a personality trait. Most players don’t remember most of this crap anyway, so it doesn’t much matter. And if a player does matter, you can say, “Oh, that’s right, I forgot. His name is Dabner. Sorry.”

Problem solved.

Don’t fry yourself trying to take the best-damned notes possible and remember everything in perfect detail. Yes, I know how important consistency is, but it’s less important than bogging down your game and frying your brain. Trust me.

What Matters and What Doesn’t

Note-taking is about retention and recall. It ain’t about building a reference book, it’s about keeping information in your head. But what information do you need to keep? What’s actually important to retain? And what is therefore important enough to be note-worthy? Well, I’m going to tell you. And the list is probably way shorter than you think it is.

First, you’ve got to retain the game’s plot. You have to remember what actually happened in your game. At least, you have to remember the major events. The events that affect the game’s ongoing narrative.

Now, too many Game Masters take this shit too far. They can’t tell major events from non-events. And they recap way too much too. It doesn’t matter that the party fought first five kobold guards, then three kobold skirmishers, and then a kobold kennel master and his pet drakes; what matters is that the party fought their way through the kobold guards to get to the dragon. At most game sessions, there are rarely more than one or two events worth actually retaining. And recapping.

Second, you must retain the players’ current goals and their plans for achieving those goals. You’ve got to know what the party’s trying to accomplish and what direction they’re going. And you’ll probably notice that this, too, is something I’ve told you to recap at the start of every session. That ain’t an accident. Recapping doesn’t just help the players retain things, it helps you too. Thus the majority of your note-taking efforts are just about making sure you can start each session with a good recap.

Third, you must retain the names of characters and locations the party has interacted with if it is likely the party will interact with them again.

Note two key facets of that statement. First, note that I said you must retain the names of characters and locations. That ain’t a mistake or an omission. Too many Game Masters fill pages and pages with details about every non-player character and location that’s ever appeared on screen. But those Game Masters don’t realize how much their brains do recall about their non-player characters and also how little it matters how perfectly consistent non-player characters actually are. Second, note that it’s only worth recording the names of characters and locations if the party is very likely to interact with them again.

If you try to go beyond recording the identities of major characters and locations, you’re wasting your effort and you’re diminishing your ability to retain and recall information.

Fourth, you must remember the potential future consequences of the player-character’s actions. If the party let an NPC or failed to accomplish a goal or offended someone or got cursed or let information slip to an enemy, you must recall that shit later so you can act on it when it’s appropriate. And, in the same vein…

Fifth, you must remember your own future plans. If you dropped a location name or adventure hook you intend the party to follow up on in a few weeks, you’ve got to remember that.

That’s it. That’s the list of shit a Game Master has to retain about their game. Anything not on that list is safe to forget. Yes, I am saying you can totally forget a key NPC’s major personality traits as long as you remember their name. Trust me. I do it all the time. Except I don’t. And you won’t either. The more you trust your memory, the better it gets. Especially if you help it by taking notes properly and by not overdoing the note-taking thing.

How to Take Notes… For Use in Pretend Elf Games Only

So how do you take good notes? The trick is first to recognize that note-taking isn’t about having good notes to refer back to. That’s just a side benefit. Taking notes is about improving your retention so that you rarely need to look back at your notes. And when you do refer back to them, all it takes is a glance to bring a wealth of information flooding back.

If you think of note-taking as a memory tool and not a way to build a big, honkin’ campaign bible, you’ll see that a Game Master is kind of like a student. Each game session is a lecture and you’re trying to retain as much information as possible so you can pass the next session’s test. Fortunately, there’s a huge body of research on note-taking and retention and all that crap. I ain’t gonna quote it all here; I’m just going to cite the two biggest and most important findings about note-taking.

And you ain’t gonna like them.

First, retention is vastly, greatly, tremendously higher among students who handwrite their notes. Students who type their notes forget everything. Want to remember something? Write it by hand. In handwriting.

Second, retention is vastly, greatly, tremendously higher among students who revise, organize, and rewrite their notes immediately after each lesson. By hand. In handwriting.

Now, I ain’t saying you have to use a piece of paper and pen here. It ain’t the tools that matter, it’s the action of handwriting and how it engages your brain. If you’ve got a fancy tablet and a stylus, they work fine too. But absolutely do not take notes by typing shit on a keyboard. There’s a time for typing and that’s later.

Once you’ve revised, rewritten, and organized your notes by hand in handwriting, you’re welcome to transcribe and store them however you want in whatever medium suits you. Want to keep everything in a OneNote or a CherryTree? Go to town. Want crisp, clean PDFs to share with your players. Good for you; have at it. But you build that shit after the two-step process that is taking notes by hand.

Ugly Session Scrawls

Proper note-taking — for Game Masters — is a two-step process. The first step takes place during your game sessions. That’s when you jot down anything you know you need to remember but that you’re afraid you won’t. This step is easy. Just have a piece of paper and a pencil handy while you run games and quickly write shit as you have to.

At first, you won’t know what notes to take so you probably need to take note of everything. At least everything on that List of Things to Remember I rattled off above. How you do it is up to you, but to get started, try this approach.

First, keep a running timeline of game events down one edge of your page. Things like “met King Wilfenburger of Vulcroft” and “killed red dragon.” You’ll only be able to record a few words for each event; just focus on the plot point. And if times and dates are important in your campaign, jot those down as well. In time and with practice, you’ll develop a shorthand. But for now, just get used to recording events.

Second, down the opposite edge of your page, record the names of characters and locations you need to remember. Again, you can only write a few words down for each item, so focus on getting used to recording the key ideas. Things like, “Ardry, Bartender, the Tarnished Ingot” and “Temple of Ulaa and Pelor at Ironwall.”

Third, at the bottom of your page, record the future plans or action consequences you will need to act on later. Again, you’ve got just a few words for each thing so just grok the key ideas. Ideas like, “offended Marshall of Amberall” or “treasure in Ironroot Hills.”

That simple scheme’s enough to get you started, but it’s not strictly necessary to keep your session notes organized. And, as time goes on, you’ll also learn what you need to record and what you don’t. My ugly session notes are a page of random words and phrases scrawled across a page. And I don’t write down plot events because I know I never forget those. It’s just shit like, “Brightness Vellus at Hillsfoot Town” and “Minstrel wrote the Swordswoman of Redshore”.

Honestly, it doesn’t matter just how ugly your ugly session scrawls are. That’s what cleanup’s for.

Cleaning Up Your Notes

As soon as possible after your session’s done, you’ll need to revise, rewrite, clean up, flesh out, and organize your ugly session scrawl. I usually try to do it the day after I run a session, but the keyword there is try. Because I suck at this and often totally forget this step. Nowadays anyway. But you’re to do as I say, not as I do, until you learn what you can get away with.

Your goal is to take your ugly session scrawl and get three things out of it. First, you want a timeline of the session’s in-game events. Second, you want a list of names and places you must remember. And third, you want a to-do list of stuff to act on in the future. And if you already organized your ugly session scrawl along those lines, then things are probably pretty well-organized.

That said, how you recopy and organize your notes is really personal. I can’t tell you how best to do it. You might prefer to use an outline format with the game’s events as the main points and then the locations and characters as detail points below each event. Maybe you’ll want three different pages or a three-column chart or a flowchart. The key is to engage with, organize, and rewrite your notes. By hand. In handwriting.

I can’t stress enough that this rewriting of the notes is part of the note-taking process. And a vital part. Even if all you’re doing is copying your ugly session scrawl onto a different piece of paper with a few added words for clarity, it’s still important to do it. And it’s important to do it before you do anything else with the information. This isn’t writing a session recap. This isn’t updating a campaign bible. This is just the second step in the note-taking process. And only after it’s done can you do anything else.

The Rest is Up to You

Keep in mind that all I’m teaching you is how to take notes to maximize recall and retention. And how to take notes that you can refer back to later to remind yourself of anything you don’t recall. This two-step process will help you remember all the important shit that happened at the game table. Even the shit you didn’t write down. What you do with what you remember is totally up to you.

You can use your notes to write a prose recap of your game session either to read aloud or send to your players between sessions. You can use your notes to update your ridiculously over-detailed and unnecessary campaign bible. You can use your notes to plan your next session. Or as you recap your last session. That’s down to your needs and the needs of your game.

The dark and dirty secret is that the notes, themselves, don’t matter. If you diligently follow a two-step, by-hand, note-taking process, you’ll find everything else you want to do with your game information that much easier. You won’t need to do much more than glance back at your notes to write your recaps or record character details in your campaign bible. These days, I don’t do anything with my notes — such as they are — and I don’t even bother writing prose recaps or keeping a campaign bible. Through practice and by scrawling game notes, my retention of game shit is so good that I don’t need any of it. I’m not saying that’s the way you should go, but it might surprise you to discover that you can go that way even if you think your memory is crappy. Especially with diligent practice.

Most people don’t realize just how powerful their memories are until they are. They think written notes are superior to memories, but they’re really not. Your brain doesn’t just store facts and bullet points, it stores associations and connections between ideas. And triggering any one idea also triggers everything connected to it. In my brain, the name Ardry is connected to the idea of tavern keepers and a tavern called the Tarnished with is in Ironwall Keep, and also the idea of one-armed people and injured miners and paternalistic people and guilt and all sorts of shit like that. And every time any one of those ideas lights up, every connection to it gets reinforced.

That’s actually why handwriting, rewriting, and organizing are so powerful. They get a lot of different parts of your brain involved with the information you’re trying to remember and associate and connect up, which strengthens all the connections. And handwriting is a much more intricate and involved process than typing and transcribing. And because you’re trying to get all these connections joined up, it’s important to do this shit as soon as possible. While the memories are still fresh.

But I ain’t a neurodoctorologist and I ain’t writing a college thesis. I’m just telling you how to take good notes about your pretend elf games. Except I’m not even doing that. What I’m really doing is answering your real question. Because you don’t really care about taking good notes. You just want to know how not to forget the shit you need to remember.

Preferably with as little work as possible.