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"When we last left off . . . "
So begins just about any gaming session around here. Those five words start as either the beginning of the GM's recap, or an invitation for a player to recap (somehow, when it's recap time, everyone turns and looks at ME, but that's beside the point).
Recaps serve the very important function of reminding everyone of what happened last game and where exactly things had left off. While games played every couple of days will only need a quick recap, games with a week or two between sessions may need something a bit lengthier to get everyone back up to speed and into character. Recaps are especially important when one or more players missed the last game (although sometimes it's fun to skip the recap and force them to guess what they missed...).
There are a few basic ways to handle recaps:
- The GM can provide a recap. This makes sense, since the GM SHOULD have notes on the storyline, things that happened, etc, and he controls what information the characters have. GM recaps are usually pretty straight-forward and truthful. Some players have a habit of only focusing on what their character did last session, or of forgetting important details.
- A player can provide a recap. My husband Chris likes to joke about me being his "GM back-up memory" when he runs games, because I have a very good memory for things that happened and exactly where the game left off, down to exact dialog. If you have a player with a very good memory, or who takes good notes, you may want to allow them to handle recap duty.
- The characters can recap. In our Legend of the Five Rings (fun game, by the way) campaign, we had one player who was always about half an hour later than everyone else. Since we were all chomping at the bit to play, the GM would let us all do a brief in-character recap. So we'd each recap from our character's point of view, comically overestimating our own contributions to the various combats, or only focusing on what we thought important (Chris's character is obsessed with the Oriental board game Go, so his recaps were usually about his Go games). By the time we finished, the late player would be there and we could start.
- You can recap on-line. The GM of the Rolemaster game I'm in is planning on posting a brief synopsis of each gaming session on the game world's website. That allows absent players to see what they missed, and the GM to keep track of what we encountered each session. Of course, people would have to actually go to the website and LOOK at it, but that's not my problem.
- You can create a flash animation of the last gaming session, with all the characters represented by stick figures. The whole thing can be drawn in window paint, using only half a dozen colors and lots of crooked lines. Dialog can either be typed in, or you can provide goofy, annoying cartoon voices. Then, you can become a cult internet hit, despite your lack of animating talents.
That's it for this month. I've got a lot of irons in the fire, so to speak, so I'm keeping things short and sweet. Tune in next month for a less irrelevant column.
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