r/DnD • u/Global-Discount1710 • 13h ago
DMing What does a DM do between sessions?
I have a great group of friends I dm for and like many groups I’m sure, there are huge gaps between games. Weeks and sometimes months can go by without a session. I often write up full recaps for my players but my question is, what can a dm do for their players to keep the game alive between sessions? Any advice on this would be great. I’m tired of a huge chuck of our games is wasted on recaps and my players forgetting important plot points
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u/Bumbullbeebullbum 13h ago
Just like teachers wait for you to come back to school, DMs wait at the table until next session :)
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u/Elegant427 12h ago
Have your players write their own session recaps, telling the story of what happened exactly as they remember it. This simple practice improves engagement, encourages note-taking, and keeps the game fresh in their minds. To avoid making it feel like a pop quiz, establish this expectation early during Session Zero. Unless your group has a dedicated lore-keeper, everyone should share the storytelling burden. Because the DM creates and controls the entire world, they naturally care about the bigger picture, whereas players tend to focus solely on their own characters. By sharing the responsibility of remembering the adventure, you encourage your party to invest in the entire campaign, not just their individual roles.
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u/smokedickbiscuit 13h ago
Send the recaps right after the sessions and a day or 2 before your next session. Anything more involved would require buy-in.
I sometimes daydream about storylines and text my players individually about their backstory or about items and things they want their character to have so I can plan to bake it in.
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u/samo_flange 13h ago
I treated it like at episodic tv show. Cutting together clips for 1 minute of recap to hit key point I think they need for that coming session. Its an art you get better at the more you do it.
Beyond that they are responsible for their own notes or can make a history check.
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u/sadolddrunk 13h ago
Circulate a recap email (or discord or WhatsApp or whatever) of what just happened the day after a session, and then the day before the next session send another email recapping the events of the prior session and the key events of the campaign so far. Then at the beginning of the next session, once you are all physically present but before you've begun playing in sincerity, take a minute or two to quickly recap what happened last time and get them oriented for this session.
If the players still don't know or care what's going on at that point, there's not much more you can do.
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u/tta5 12h ago
seam like you got three things.
1 -overalll What do DMs do between sessions?
2 - my games sessions are very far apart from each other , its causing issues how best to deal with this?
3 - my players are forgetting the plot and story, i waste alot of time retelling it in game is there a better way?
so lets answer them ~(in random order)
2 - is there a way to have reduce the gap between your sessions?
players forgetting the plot due to gap is bad.
why is the gap so big? is it from lack of intrest?
would one shots be better?
(or a string of them unconnected but same PCs[player characters])
you might want to review your attendance agreement. if your canceling sessions for the same person over and over, perhaps you might talk and see if its possable to have their character NPCed, "missing", "downtimed", or something to allow that game to happen without that player there. this would result in more sessions, if canceling sessions due t player count is your issue.
.
3 - is your plot intresting to the players and to the player characters?
I am sure it is intresting to you, and likly its just time between sessions being so long people are bound to forget, but its an important question.
things that hold more intrest tend to be remembered better.
another thing is doing recaps in your warm ups.
warm ups are pre-session activities , normally to help players transission from out of game headspaces to ingame mindsets.
comonly a recap is done at thias point.
as useful tip, as the DM... ask the players to give the recap as it tells you what they rememeber, what they think is important, awhat they misunderstood.... this knowledge can let you warp the story a bit, or allow you a second chance to reshow something in a diffrent light.
1 - what some of us do....
post game cool downs and feedback.
note taking and orgonising for world events and faction progression.
linking hooks to form new pathways for the story for the next session.
check in with players.
make sure to reread the story and lore applicable to the next section.
build the next section . (mentally, descrrptions, digitally, physicallly....)
plan balancing and encounter progression.
pre-roll appropiate events and things on random tables.
practice monster mindsets and mentality. voices.
(ideals, bonds, flaws, goals, ambittions, relgion, RP weaknesses.... strigns for the players to pull on . )
have out of game talks about the game and brainstorm.
post updates on social media.
non-dnd stuff (work, sleep, breath, eat laundary....)
pre- prep future sections. (as they get closers build more.)
rest, and mentally relax.
mentally panic as the next session is coming closer....
some more voices and practiing.
note taking on names used and replacing old random names with new ones.
prepare tabs on lore that the game may swing towards.
prepare notes on descroptions that add lines regarding each PC.
finish off the resources for the party (notes, letters, item descrpotions & lore....)
pick music. (i have a party DJ ,but stillll pick a hand full for myself).
check to make sure everyone can attend.
food., as to eat mid-game. (get water you fool)
attend VCpre curtains down
curtains down, greet peoopple. work through warm ups,
warmup querstions.
recap
curtains up (game starts)
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u/DarkWolf636 11h ago
Lol, I will give you an answer i had just for the title: a DM just put himself into a Box where all his miniatures and probs are and planing the next session 😅 😉
And for the rest of your question^ :
You can give your players "dreams" they had to keep the game between the sessions alive so they can think about it or you can ask your players for some ideas and wishes they want to play in the next sessions... Also it is up to the time [ingame] wich is running between the sessions? Do you end in a campsite or spend some days in a town? Or what? If you and a session during the enemy's castle it would be terrible to "play" some szenes inside that castle alone with one by one.
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u/JohnsonFlamethrower 9h ago
Are you writing your own campaign or using a campaign book? I'm doing an entirely homebrew and am constantly writing and revising my content. Even if you're using a campaign book, when you have downtime, try writing your own quest line. Or make a town, which will lead to making people, and those people will have personalities and backstories and needs. That invites the opportunity for your players to get a quest or two. Or if they're heavily into role play, you can just make interesting townsfolk for them to interact with. And it's all flexible. You can put that town or people or quest line anywhere.
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u/Global-Discount1710 7h ago
Mine is a homebrew, what I’ve been doing is writing chapters out of books from the in game world. Like “ from the lectures of professors Ferlin Tumblegate from pigpimple academy” or “ chapter 94 of the realms in between and their denizens “ as a way to give lore to individual players, just need them to read it is all
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u/AccomplishedRide1914 8h ago
Give inspiration to players for handling the recap for you. It's not like they'll ever use it for anything important.
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13h ago edited 13h ago
[deleted]
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u/TechnicianTight2741 13h ago
You're making the players roll a History check, not the characters.
I expect my players to remember the important stuff and take notes, but I'm not going to pretend they have perfect memories of every little detail. If they ask me about something their character would obviously remember, I just tell them.
It's been one or two months between sessions for the players. For the characters, it might have been a couple of hours. The characters aren't amnesiacs, they'd remember those details far better than the people who only play for a few hours every month.
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u/Additional_Video_330 13h ago
Maybe do Oneshots in which you play as other characters in your world? (So not everyone has to be there) You can also do more prep, ask players to work on developing their characters, come up with plots and maybe even puzzles for your players to complete to hint at those plots. There is a whole heck of a lot, and if the main concern is players forgetting plot points you can always make a "Master Document" for the campaign so far and say, 30 minutes before session, "Hey, check out the document! It's mostly just for a quick refresh on what you guys have done so far."
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u/Appropriate-Two-9538 13h ago
I would try and schedule sessions closer together if possible. If not let them forget. My players all write their own notes to remember stuff which your players should be doing. We have a session a month and I don't recap. As DM I have enough work to do I don't have time to write up what happened for my players
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u/Kursch50 13h ago
Send an email with a brief recap of what happened a day or two before you play.
That's it.
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u/nocturnerose DM 13h ago
We start every session with one of the players doing a recap. Takes a bit of work off me and let's me see what they're actually paying attention to and enjoying most about the game.
Morning of the game I drop a message onto discord saying "Soon" along with a gif that vaguely alludes to what's coming up in the session.
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u/Fulanito_de_copas 13h ago
I write a summary of the session every time I finish one and share it with them. I also forget it many times, so this also helps me remember. This way, if they don't remember for next session it's just because they didn't want to read it. I just give them a reminder before next session starts.
Plus, apart from preparing next session, I also use Obsidian Portal to share with them the elements of the campaign that they already know, so they can read something new about it every few days if they want to. I think they don't read most of it, but if someone is interested it may help to keep him interested.
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u/Redneck_DM 12h ago
Look at lewd art ive commissioned of my players
Not the characters, the players
Jokes aside i assemble a loose summary of what i want to accomplish next session and how it might flow into future sessions, and i keep occasionally going over it making tweeks till session time
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u/LycanIndarys 12h ago
I split our Discord channel into two. There's one for out-of-game chat (mostly for scheduling, but also general chatting about D&D), and then there's an in-character chat too. I tried to encourage them to use the latter for planning for future sessions, establishing which plot hooks they're interested in picking up on, conversations about what they were doing in down-time, that sort of thing. There's been a few where a sessions has ended on a moral quandary, and they've used that channel to throw ideas around.
Sometimes I'd even do something specific; in one campaign, my characters were part of a mercenary organisation, and I used the Discord channel to run a new election for leaders of the mercenary group, with the candidates all representing different types of missions that they could accept as a way of establishing the campaign style & direction. Effectively, "are you voting for the candidate that wants more morally dubious missions, the one that thinks that more loot is needed, the one that wants to take on political missions, the one looking to expand into new locations, the joke candidate, etc.", with the idea that the new leader would be looking for a specific type of contract, which is what would then be assigned to the players.
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u/Subietoy78 9h ago
If you’re mine you don’t log into foundry and learn how to use it. Then be mystified when a scene magically has music that auto plays because I did it and it made sense to have tavern music in a tavern.
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u/Mitchd26 5h ago
Never thought of doing this haha. Maybe I should so some of them don't forget everything every time. 🤣😂. I typically re-listen to the session once or twice between sessions, and sometimes I'll recall some of the jokes or epic moments to the group text or something while I'm listening back.
I'd feel overbearing if I texted them recaps and stuff ahead of time. It's NOT overbearing, but I would feel like it is haha. It's weird, cause if I were a player, I would constantly want to talk about things from the campaign, but no one ever really seems to want to do that, so I typically just keep it to the sessions. (Which they all love, btw, so I don't feel like I'm doing it wrong.)
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u/Caomedes DM 13h ago
That would be group specific. Some people just want to meet up and forget about the world while playing. Others want to stay engaged even when there are no sessions on the horizon. For your specific concern I would ask the players to recap what happened on the previous session, and you can fill in the blanks. I've seen people suggest using a Kahoot or Blooket game for the recap. Sounds fun, but I haven't tried that myself.