Writing Every Day 17: Campaign Journals and Story Arcs

As I previously mentioned, a campaign journal is a useful tool for Game Masters who want to run games with connected events worked into the story.

A journal can take almost any form. The majority of mine amount to hastily sketched out crib notes in my binder of graph paper. Every session I prepare an initiative tracker with the names of all the participants and slots to check off as they take their turns which takes up about a third of the page. The remainder is given over to sloppy columns of NPC damage tracks, quick reminders about the specific items I've sold to PCs at what cost, and tons of quick notes on the names of people and place the PCs encounter during the session.

I didn't set out to create a journal at first; these notes just proved useful for me while I ran that night's game. Taken together though, they provide me with a clear map of where the game has gone over its course, the kinds of encounters the PCs have run into, and NPCs that have caught their attention enough to require names and traits.

In the past year or so, I've started keeping an unobtrusive tablet at the table next to my notebook. It serves as a handy resource for looking up information on the fly, generating random loot or ship names, and a host of other tasks. But it also serves as a secondary campaign journal for me. I try to sit down in the aftermath of a session and write out a handful of quick topics that came up during the game in a Word doc.

I clean these notes up and post it to all the players in our shared Facebook group. That way, players who missed a game can get up to speed before the next session, players who participated get a reminder of where the game left off, and I don't forget details that seemed to be important during the session.

I have to admit that I use both sides of my hybrid campaign journal in a sneaky, secondary way. See, I like it when a campaign has a satisfying arc to it, like the story arcs of traditional entertainment like books and movies. I'll use my campaign journal as a way of tracking where the campaign would be in a traditional arc and use that when planning what comes next. See my post about callbacks for a more specific example of this.

I don't force myself to adhere strictly to the three act structure with its pinch-points and such, but figuring out where in the arc our game stands lets me know when it would be satisfying for the main antagonist to escalate his scheme, or for there to be a major setback the players have to overcome. I do my best to not let this structure dictate the options the players have in the game. Instead, I use it to guide myself on how the world around them needs to change. Done right, it lends a dramatic and familiar sense to the story. Done wrong, it comes across as forceful and trite. If you want to explore this technique I suggest taking a light hand at first. If the players are into it, they'll let you know. They'll also let you know if they're not.