Session Summaries?

[modred11]

I just wrote a 6,000 page writeup, an epilogue to a D&D campaign I did for about a year awhile ago, anyway, I was just reading through it quickly and found my favorite phrase

"a gigantinormic dragon called the Lurque who can SWALLOW PLANES OF EXISTANCE WHOLE was set free. And he did, he swallowed planes, he swallowed deities, he even ate toads." it's phrases like this that make summaries fun.

Do most people write summaries of their campaigns as they play them?

I find it incredibly difficult to remember details of the various adventures even writing down what I remember right after getting home from the session. I try to always write a summary. The necessity became ludicrously apparent when I realized one of my campaigns had more then 100 major NPCs in it who were all alive and pertinent. I think that was just counting the ones that had been introduced, not any behind-the-scenes or too-big-for-the-PCs-to-know-about-yet.

Way too many details. My campaign planning now is focusing around how to make individual sessions more episodic while still having continuity enough not to feel episodic. Even though I've always called my sessions "Episodes" ever since I moved to GURPS.

[misterecho]

A really cool and memorable Player Character died last night, I was considering writing an obituary and posting it on my blog. Then I realised nobody cares about the death of Professor Theopolis Bloom.

[Munkerz]

I'm constantly writing notes as we go along, or doodling a lil comic of the events. I'm actually considering making a short web comic based on the Star Wars game I'm running now.

[koipond]

Am I the only one who cringes when that gets bandied about?

I'm all for session summaries and any cool creative stuff, but as soon as someone goes "I'm going to write story X about my group session Y and post it for the world" I shake my head. If you want to base it on things, that's awesome but there are tonnes of problems if you want to faithfully reproduce a game in another format.

The first one is that most of the time, it's not actually that interesting. There are moments that are great in gaming, but they don't always translate well to a different medium.

Gyah, I should stop before I go off on a huge rant on that.

[Munkerz]

Maybe, but as with just about everything I'm taking the "each to their own" approach. Don't like the idea of it, I'm not gonna try and force it on you.
Hell if I did do it I'd probably start doing them based on notes so far, stick them on a Deviant Art account, and end up with just the players from that campaign looking through them. Essentially turning it into a graphic recap.

[misterecho]

Games are very long. However if there is a good plot being followed, That can be condensed and used just like any other narrative.