D&D session notes

Who the party met, and what they wanted. Names are the single most valuable thing in a session log, because they are what people search for later and the first thing everyone forgets.

What the party promised or owes. Debts, favours and threats are the threads that make a campaign feel continuous, and they are the ones that quietly disappear if nobody records them.

Where they went, and what changed there. A location that is different from last time is a plot hook you have already earned.

What is unresolved. A short list of open questions at the end of each log is the most useful thing a DM can hand their future self at the start of prep.

What the players believe. Not what is true — what they think is true. The gap between the two is where most of the interesting play happens, and it is worth tracking deliberately.

Dungeon Ledger ships a session log template so every entry starts with the same headings instead of a blank page. Consistent structure is what makes a run of thirty logs skimmable — you learn where to look, and writing becomes filling in a shape rather than composing from scratch.

Session notes are their own note type, and sessions themselves are scheduled objects with dates on a shared calendar, so the log stays attached to the session it belongs to rather than floating loose in a folder.

The editor is proper rich text — headings, bullet and task lists, tables, highlights, colours — so a log can carry a summary at the top and detail below it without turning into a wall of prose.

The most reliable way to get session notes written every week is to stop making it one person’s job. Because the campaign is shared and editing is set per note, a session log can be open for the whole table to add to — one player catches names, another tracks loot, and the DM adds the parts only they know.

Everything syncs live, so notes taken during play appear on every screen as they are typed. That also makes it viable to write the log as the session happens rather than reconstructing it afterwards, which is the point at which most groups give up.

Anything you write that the players shouldn’t see goes in the same log with its visibility set to DM-only, or as a secret note. Filtering happens server-side, so hidden content is never sent to a player’s browser.

This is one real shape, not a fill-in-the-blank form — copy the headings, not the specific words.

Session 14 — The harbour at night. Party: Kessa, Torvin, Bramm, Eshe (Vane absent). Met: Old Corrin (dockside moneylender, wary but not hostile — wants the party to "ask around" about a missing shipment before he’ll talk terms). Went: the Salted Rope tavern, then the harbour warehouses at night. Changed: warehouse 3 is now guarded by two extra hires since last visit — someone tipped them off. Promised/owed: party told Corrin they’d look into the shipment; nobody promised a timeline. Believed: the party thinks the harbourmaster is behind the theft — she is not, but they have no reason yet to doubt it. Unresolved: who tipped off warehouse 3? Next: party said they’d return in "a day or two."

That is roughly ninety seconds to write immediately after the session, while it is still one paragraph in your head rather than a memory you are reconstructing next week. Every proper noun in it — Corrin, the Salted Rope, warehouse 3, the harbourmaster — is worth linking with [[ the moment you type it, because that is what makes this log findable from the NPC’s own note six months later rather than only from itself.

Notice what it does not do: no blow-by-blow of combat, no verbatim dialogue, no attempt to capture everything that was said. The five categories above are a filter, and the filter is the point — a log that tried to capture everything would take longer to write than the session took to run, and nobody keeps doing that past session three.

Linking a session log to the NPCs and locations it mentions — type [[ and pick — means that six months later the note about a character carries its own history of every session they appeared in. That connection is what turns a pile of logs into a usable record.

There is also an in-campaign assistant that answers questions from the notes you are permitted to read, which is a faster way to recover "what did we agree with the harbourmaster?" than scrolling nine session logs.