Campaign Logs

[hazardchris]

I was wondering if anyone else keeps a log of sorts that Players can refer to for past events, NPCs, and so on. I'm using a wordpress blog for my next game (we're reviving our old game from 4 years ago, although one of the main three players is now in China).

Here's my Campaign log if anyone wants to take a look at it.

http://dawnofthejedi.wordpress.com/

The campaign is set in a universe where Han died on Endor and Luke didn't make it off the second Death Star. The Sith returned to the galaxy (in a way that's not dissimilar to a mix of the current Star Wars novel line and the basic plot of The Old Republic MMO) and the PCs ended up on the front lines of the war against them. We're picking up two years after the war ended and running something that I've pitched to them as "kinda like the Jedi Academy Novels."
_________________
"Don't you have to have mini-clorinies in your blood or something to be a jedi?"
"Oh no, that's just something we used to tell people."

Let me make you a picture!

[masque]

[Yak Face]

My group keeps a basic log. Mine actually needs it for working out some long-term game mechanics. They have a crew to manage, so at the end of each month we tally up the successes and failures they've experienced and evaluate the kinds of deeds they've done, and then roll on a chart I devised to determine the affect on the faceless NPC crew. Their morale and morality are affected by the outcome.

So, for us the development of the story requires at least a basic log. I also keep an electronic record of the adventure notes/flow info that I prepare in advance, which is helpful if we have to look back on past events.

I like your approach of using a blog for that purpose. Do your players use it?
_________________
However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results. -Sir Winston Churchill

[mdlake]

We do; it's part of a wiki including house rules, character profiles, a quote log, and whatever else the GM or players might find useful. wikidot.com offers a free, perfectly functional if not overly sophisticated platform for such a wiki.

[Ankhanu]

I used to maintain a website for my campaigns in which I would maintain a character record, keep useful resources for reference, and maintain a game log, providing a synopsis of each gaming session in a narrative style. This basically served as a chronicle of the characters' adventures, maintaining important events for each of them along with the broad arc of the story. For one of the campaigns I'd also add a little "What we have learned this game:" quip based on some major success or failure the characters encountered; usually something humorous (or simply presented humorously) One of the, for example was something like "Transparisteel has the word 'steel' in it for a reason" following one character's brilliant idea to crash through a transparisteel window for an escape resulting in smashing into the pane and crumpling into a heap beneath the fully intact window.

Sadly, my backups have gone missing and the server that housed the site died... the game synopses are lost to the ages

[ifurin]

in one of the games i play in our GM recaps all of our games in story form and e-mails them to us. we have about 2 years of games collected now. one of the other players is compiling them into a book. several of us even started character diaries, their pretty much the same thing, recapping the games from our characters personal point of view.

[hazardchris]

[Redmenace]

We used to make a printed 1-4 page session log of each adventure. At the time it started as a 1 page recap of the last adventure to remind players of clues and leads left hanging.

Slowly we added additional detail about concurent events in the galaxy, a rebel base being wiped out, new Moff stationed after the last displeased someone higher in the Empire than themselves, etc.

The odd thing about it was that gm and players got two different things out of it. I, the gm, could keep my players on track with the game, the players really got more out of reading about their own exploits. They loved that,