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Any GM or player worth their salt knows the importance of
making/taking notes on important aspects of the game. This can include
everything from how many siblings your character has to the name of the
missing child the characters are searching for. Its also a good idea to
make these notes legible, otherwise when you get back to a game you
havent played for months, youre going to stare at the paper and say
"what does it all mean?".
Notes are especially important for the GM making their own world.
When starting a new game, keep a piece of paper handy so you can jot
down the names of cities, gods, and important people. You may give
them a memorable name and tell them "Ill remember later", but believe
me, you will forget. Few things are more embarrassing than forgetting the
name of an important NPC, or worse, a country! So, the question
becomes... what do you when you LOSE the notes that youve put so
much work into?
You sit yourself down and have a real good cry.
This is a dilemma I currently find myself in. When I got married and
moved out of my parents house, my bedroom was a mess... I took only
the important things and said I would come get all the stray junk later. I
never did. Some of the "stray junk" turned out to be role playing notes
that had fallen off of my desk or out of my notebook. Gone for good is
my map of Erthe, the world that is like a child to me. Completely missing
are all of the notes on my character Esthrinde, including what powers
mages and clerics of her kind have. Absent are notes on storylines I ran
on-line for some of my favorite characters, including such important facts
as the names of a few countries and all of the necromancers in the world
and their apprentices. Oh, and thats just the stuff that I KNOW is
missing, because Ive needed it for some reason or another.
Seriously, if you find yourself in a situation where youre running
a game and you lose all of your world notes, there are a few things you can
do to try to recover.
- Check every possible place you might have made minor notes.
Sure, the notebook totally dedicated to your world is gone, but a few
important facts might be hidden in character backgrounds, logs on your
computer, or random storyline notes.
- Ask your players for help. They probably have a few things
written down, names they thought might be important but which they
wouldnt remember between game sessions. Who knows, if you just
misplaced your notes, they might even know where they are.
- Think about anything else but what youre trying to remember,
and the answer will come to you. You wont recall the name of the god of
plants while youre gaming, but two days later when youre getting the
mail youll say "Oh yeah! His name was Medoven."
- Recreate the world from the Swiss cheese that you and your
players have put together from memory. Fill in the gaps however you
wish . . . Remember, its just a game, if you dont get it exactly right, it
doesnt matter. Unless the characters all have a high Sense Reality Warp
skill . . . Then you might have trouble.
- Screw it all! Tell your players that the world was destroyed by a
giant meteor and they need to make new characters.*
I dont recommend keeping your notes in half a dozen different
places. It might mean that you never lose all of your notes in one fell
swoop, but a single sheet of paper is a lot easier to misplace than an
entire notebook. Not only that, but it can be very frustrating checking a
half dozen different notebooks, computer files, and stray sheets of paper
whenever you need to know some obscure fact about your world
(especially if you play at someone elses house!).
I DO recommend backing your notes up on disk and/or another
computer if theyre all computerized. Having had computer problems at
the beginning of this month which made it look like my computer was
totally dead (it wasnt, thank goodness!), I would like to spare everyone
else the panic of saying "Oh my God, ALL of my RP notes were on my
hard drive and I havent backed them up in a YEAR!!! Im dead!". It
wasnt pretty, believe me.
And remember... Losing your RP notes isnt the end of the world...
Well, maybe it is for your characters *wink*.
*The author will not be held responsible for any damages done by angry
players upset over their 20th level paladin being vaporized in a world-
wide catastrophe.
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