How do you do session notes?

IF YOU'RE A PLAYER IN MY GAME: clear off, you cheeky rapscallion - love you x

I have a bizarre fascination with session prep notes, and how they intersect with scenario and information design. This fascination means I'm constantly shifting how I prep - from stuff like one-page only, to a few hand-written notes in a notebook with drawings and colouring, to lately, where I've been trying out designed notes - decent information design, pretty comprehensive.

I don't know if you'd be up for it, but if you are, I'd be super interested: If you have any session notes you'd be willing to share, please do, with a blog post, or just sending me a DM on Discord. Maybe this will be an interesting little thing for everyone to share how they do things, or what they've been experimenting with.

Here's a few examples of some of my session notes from times gone by:

Session notes like this, handwritten, with drawings and little bits of colour, are my guilty pleasure. How functional they are I don't know - I'm still considering that.

From a 5e game - back when I was a filthy story-gamer, and thought the OSR was a bunch of neckbeards playing old, inferior D&D for nostalgia, and because us young, fragile snowflakes couldn't take save or die. Boy, was I wrong.

From the same game.

From a recent session in our loosely Wildemount + Saltmarsh, OSR swashbuckling campaign with Runaway Princesses. These were supplementary to the main scenario notes I had made.

 

These are my most recent session's notes, which as previously stated, are an experiment with more comprehensive and designed notes. Click the picture to see them. Please bear in mind, the scenario's are based on what the players tell me they want to do next at the end of each session, and I'm still learning how to design fun, robust OSR scenario's after three years or so of only having known 5e/PF and PtbA/Blades in the Dark.

Session notes are a personal thing, made for you, and for your players. Hopefully there isn't anything there which appears problematic out of context!