How to Take Notes During a DnD Session as a DM (with data!)
TL;DR
Take just a few notes during your session and leave most of your notetaking until after the session.
Set up categories in advance such as NPCs, locations, and quests so you can quickly jot notes down.
Get your players to help!
How DM’s suggest to take notes during a session
Dungeon Masters juggle tons of tasks while running a session. Since notetaking is a high priority task, I looked at 337 comments from 24 reddit posts on r/DMAcademy and r/DungeonMasters (DnD subreddits made specifically for DM’s) about taking notes as a DM during the session. I categorized each comment into one or more strategies and ranked them based on how much the commenter emphasized each approach. I found 12 broad categories that DM's suggest.
Record the session | Use an AI note-taker |
Track major game states | Ask the players to help |
Write notes after session | Few in-session notes |
Use shorthand | Capture improvisations |
Organize by topic | Track important actions |
Prep scenes beforehand | Pause to write notes |
Now the question is, which ones are the best?
Note: If you want to see the categories and their explanations, you can read them at the bottom of this page!
How often each notetaking strategy was suggested
No single strategy dominates. Writing detailed notes after the session and organizing notes by topic lead by volume, followed by asking players to help and keeping minimal notes in-session. The spread shows that good note-taking isn't one trick, it can be a combination of many things.
This chart is a good start, but it's missing something. It doesn't show which suggestions each DM cares about most. Someone might list five things they do, but one of those might be their favorite. That's what rankings show us.
Main notetaking strategies vs. supporting ones
I ranked each suggestion on how core the suggestion seemed to be in the commenter's strategy. 1 = highest priority.
This one splits strategies by how they're used. Some are almost always a DM's primary approach. Others show up mostly as supporting practices. This gives us a slightly different picture.
Organize by topic is split pretty evenly between a primary tactic and a supporting one. This means that it's likely a good strategy to implement no matter what.
Record the session is almost entirely ranked #1 (42 of 49 mentions). It's all-or-nothing: DM's either build their whole approach around recording, or don't use it at all.
Write detailed notes after the session is mostly ranked #2 or #3. It's what you do in addition to your main strategy, not instead of it.
Track major game state (time, loot, rests) is almost never #1. It's another supporting strategy.
What each top strategy means
Now let's break down what the DM's said about each of the top strategies so we can understand the nuance to them, too.
Write notes after the session
The most-mentioned strategy across the 337 comments (93 mentions). The pattern is consistent: during the session, do the minimum. Right after, while memory is fresh, write the full recap. One commenter (26 upvotes) put it cleanly:
"During the session, I take very sparse notes. Typically just names, numbers and keywords. Mostly when players are talking between themselves. My priority is not to disrupt the flow. I find it more important to devote some time right after each session to take more extensive notes."
The trap is trying to do the full write-up during the session. That's the thing everyone says doesn't work.Use pre-set categories to speed up note-taking
Almost tied for most-mentioned (88 mentions). The move: before the campaign starts, split your notes into a few categories such as NPCs, locations, quests, factions. During the session, when something comes up, you already know where it goes or if it’s even worth writing down.
Ask the players to help
Third most-mentioned. This 44-upvote comment puts it bluntly:
"You prepped. They can do session summaries. That's one of MANY things our group offloads to the players to even the workload. Everyone at the table's equally responsible for the fun."
Most tables have at least one person who likes (or at least tolerates) writing.Write fewer notes during the session
This is the overall strategy that makes the top 3 possible. You’re using 99% of your brainpower to run the session well. That last 1% isn’t enough to take notes, so you really just can’t take many notes during the session.
Record as a backup
Many DM’s record their sessions and listen back to parts of the recording later while writing detailed notes to fill in gaps. Don’t listen to the whole thing (unless you want). There’s many ways you can get a recording. If you use Discord, you can use Craigbot or SeaVoice to do a live recording.
Putting It All Together: Your DM notetaking system
Now we can make a realistic system for taking notes during DnD sessions based on the data:
Before the session: Set up note categories (NPCs, locations, quests, factions) so you have a place for each note you write.
Before each session: Prep the scenes you think players will hit. Light notes on likely beats.
During the session: Write just a little down during the session. Using a shorthand may be even better! On top of that, ask one of your players to take notes for the party.
Right after the session: Write the real recap within 24 hours. File pieces into your category notes.
As insurance: Record the audio. You'll rarely listen back, but it's there when you need it.
This will still take some time and coordination, and this is where AI notetakers come in. They didn't show up much in the data, but they are the one tool that handles notetaking entirely for you. If you run your D&D games on Discord, I built Crit Scribbler just for this. It records your session on Discord and completely handles taking notes for everyone. Worth a look if the other strategies still don’t quite work for you.
Methodology
Comments were gathered from 24 threads on r/DMAcademy and r/DungeonMasters. My categorization is completely subjective. I tried my best to summarize the strategies, but the real data has more nuance. The broad rankings held up across multiple passes, but treat exact numbers as approximate. All obvious self-promotion, off-topic, jokes, and other unrelated comments were not included in the dataset. You can, of course, try doing this yourself and I’d be interested to see what data you get!
Categories
Write notes after session: Do detailed note-taking after the game, when your memory is fresh but the pressure is off.
Organize by topic: Keep separate notes for recurring elements like NPCs, locations, factions, or quests.
Ask the players: Have one or more players take notes or write recaps you can lean on.
Few in-session notes: Jot down only the bare minimum during play to stay focused on running the game.
Prep scenes beforehand: Plan likely scenes, encounters, or beats in advance so less needs to be captured live.
Record the session: Capture audio or video of the session to reference or transcribe later.
Track game states: Note major states like in-game time, rests, loot, big spells, etc.
Capture improvisations: Write down things you made up on the fly that need to stay canon later.
Track important actions: Record the player decisions, promises, or outcomes that will matter in future sessions.
Use shorthand: Use abbreviated notes as quick memory triggers instead of full sentences.
Use AI note-taker: Use an AI or transcription tool to automatically generate session notes.
Pause to write notes: Intentionally slow or break the session to give yourself time to capture notes.