Anyone have advice on how to write up a Play Report or Action Report? I’ve read a few, but I can’t quite figure out what makes the good ones good.
What I do know
– Edit, trim, repeat.
What I know that don’t know
– The ideal wait period between the session and the write up
– What notes I need to take during the session
– Places to find consistently good examples
Mostly the author and potential GMs. Even if both of those happen to be me.
I just assumed that players would be bored to tears by play reports. Heck, when I primarily played RPGS, I usually skipped them when I read.
Mostly the author and potential GMs. Even if both of those happen to be me.
I just assumed that players would be bored to tears by play reports. Heck, when I primarily played RPGS, I usually skipped them when I read.
For all the campaigns I was in, and for some of the one-shots, the play reports were an integral part. We did E-Mail before we knew what a wiki was.
They kept the game consistent, helped the GM with preparation, and reading up on the last session helped get in the mood for the next one. They became necessary once jobs and family got in the way of scheduling and playing by memory alone.
I found that taking notes is most important about names (characters and locations) and plot points / hooks for later. This is where it becomes useful for the GM, and for the characters’ development.
We keep it interesting by writing in-character and with some literary innuendo that is a running commentary on the game, kind of like the confessionals in a reality tv show.
In my own 10-year-campaign I encouraged the players to keep in-character journals, and gave extra XP to the play reporter, but had mixed results. Some got bored and quit, and some got so carried away they wrote them in their own invented code script so I couldn’t read them (kind of missing the point).
Some of the play reports I wrote are better than I remember the actual session to be, but your mileage may vary.
Advice I can share:
– Make it part of the game, not a chore.
– Have everyone do it, not just you. (Maybe rotate, or collaborate)
– To me, the characters’ perspective is key, not the GM’s point of view.
– The game report is what is still there when your memory of the game becomes clouded, so make it fun to read. And short. And opinionated. No “been there, done that.”
I’d point you to our wiki for some awesome and some terrible play reports, but they’re in German so no use. Interested in your use of them and your use for them, though. Any examples you’d want to share?
For all the campaigns I was in, and for some of the one-shots, the play reports were an integral part. We did E-Mail before we knew what a wiki was.
They kept the game consistent, helped the GM with preparation, and reading up on the last session helped get in the mood for the next one. They became necessary once jobs and family got in the way of scheduling and playing by memory alone.
I found that taking notes is most important about names (characters and locations) and plot points / hooks for later. This is where it becomes useful for the GM, and for the characters’ development.
We keep it interesting by writing in-character and with some literary innuendo that is a running commentary on the game, kind of like the confessionals in a reality tv show.
In my own 10-year-campaign I encouraged the players to keep in-character journals, and gave extra XP to the play reporter, but had mixed results. Some got bored and quit, and some got so carried away they wrote them in their own invented code script so I couldn’t read them (kind of missing the point).
Some of the play reports I wrote are better than I remember the actual session to be, but your mileage may vary.
Advice I can share:
– Make it part of the game, not a chore.
– Have everyone do it, not just you. (Maybe rotate, or collaborate)
– To me, the characters’ perspective is key, not the GM’s point of view.
– The game report is what is still there when your memory of the game becomes clouded, so make it fun to read. And short. And opinionated. No “been there, done that.”
I’d point you to our wiki for some awesome and some terrible play reports, but they’re in German so no use. Interested in your use of them and your use for them, though. Any examples you’d want to share?
Keep it short and punchy. Somewhere between a tweet and a paragraph is good for me.
Keep it short and punchy. Somewhere between a tweet and a paragraph is good for me.
Our crew tends to be pretty gonzo. I’ll see if I can distill this night’s session of Lasers and Feelings.
Our crew tends to be pretty gonzo. I’ll see if I can distill this night’s session of Lasers and Feelings.
It took me almost as long to write a rough of the action report as it did to play the session. Yikes. Right now, it’s a chore to read (and I was a player in the session). I’ll see what I can do to make it exportable.
Part of the problem might be that we did some non-standard stuff. We all wanted to play aliens, so the DM said, “Ok, it’s an all alien crew. Pick another attribute”. It was cool, we got very evocative characters, but they were all so very strange.
It took me almost as long to write a rough of the action report as it did to play the session. Yikes. Right now, it’s a chore to read (and I was a player in the session). I’ll see what I can do to make it exportable.
Part of the problem might be that we did some non-standard stuff. We all wanted to play aliens, so the DM said, “Ok, it’s an all alien crew. Pick another attribute”. It was cool, we got very evocative characters, but they were all so very strange.