Scribe Notes - An Explanation

DM-ing is a lot of work. At any given moment, the DM is expected to track combat mechanics, play the parts of multiple (often dozens of) NPCs and Monsters, translate player actions into rules, keep track of where players are within a story, make on the fly adjustments to planned events, cross-reference data across at least three rule books, read prepared descriptions, tell a story that's being made up in real time, and much more; all while keeping the atmosphere fun, engaging, and exciting for the PCs. It takes years of practice to truly master, and I've been out of the game for longer than I was in, so I'm still finding my grove again.

As part of my attempt to lighten my workload so I can focus on keeping the story going, I offer my players a small (5%) experience bonus to track some of the game mechanics for me. Specifically, I have one player track initiative, another track treasure and experience, and another keep notes on the general events of a game session, so we can refresh everyone's memory on what happened last time at the start of each new session. This last job provided me with an unexpected surprise, when I found that the player taking the role of party scribe (Val) wrote all his notes in first person perspective, the way one would write a journal.

His notes beautifully tell the story of my campaign from a character's perspective, and are infused with delightful little quips that shed light on Val's personality. I look forward to hearing these scribe notes every week, and I love the idea of doing something with them, so I've decided that I'll present them here for you to enjoy.

My general method for posting on this blog from week to week will be to wait until the PCs complete a given adventure, then post the materials I created to run it, along with my comments on what I liked, or what I would have done differently. I'll then post the Scribe Notes for the adventure. This will allow any DMs using this blog to get the core mechanics of an adventure, a DMs take on what worked and what didn't, and a player's perspective on how the story unfolded. And as an added bonus, any curious reader could start at the beginning, read only the Player Character descriptions and Scribe Notes posts, and have a solid understanding of the entire story of our campaign.

It's worth noting that these notes are written quickly, and were never designed to be proper works of fiction. And while I may do a little light copy editing (mostly to correct spellings and improve readability), these stories are not my work, and are not being submitted for creative or stylistic critique; they're just a lot of fun to read.

So with that by way of an introduction, please enjoy the backlog of Scribe Notes that we've taken so far.