For the final article in this series I'm going to take a different perspective - looking at session and campaign notes from the perspective of a player rather than GM. Strictly speaking this isn't really prep, but it seems close enough that it's worth talking about.
As I mentioned in the overview, our regular weekly group recently started a game of Masks: A New Generation with someone else GMing. This is the first time in a long time that I've been on the PC side of the screen for more than a one shot, so it has been interesting.
Campaign Overview
Masks is a very narrative focused PBtA game. We've got 4 regular players, with a couple of old timers who came back to join us for a one off session1. The game has been really interesting, with the playbooks and rules really coming together to drive interesting story beats and character interactions. I feel like the group has done a great job of leaning into the theme and intended focus (teens dealing with "growing up" drama, and oh by the way they also have super powers). It is definitely not a tactical fighting game, but as long as everyone understands that and doesn't try to make it something it isn't, it all works. Our GM is doing a great job of keeping the plot moving and the focus is much less "can you beat up these bad guys?" and more "what choices are you going to make while beating up these bad guys?".
So far we're five sessions in and building towards a Season 1 finale. There have been numerous occasions where I've found myself thinking "well, the smart thing to do is X, but given these conditions on my character and the effects from my playbook, instead my character is going to charge into danger and then get mad at his friends when it all goes wrong". Those choices end up making a more interesting story, so all working as intended.
Tools
Given that I'm playing in this game but not running it, my focus is much more on what I use in the moment during the session rather than any prep beforehand.
Paper Notebook
This is the biggest one. Out of respect for the GM I deliberately want to minimize my use of technology during the session (though see below for some exceptions) in order to avoid distractions. I hate it when it seems like people are browsing Reddit or whatever instead of paying attention to a game, so as much as possible I try to be the kind of player I would like to have in my game.
Taking notes does give me something to focus on which helps with engagement. Having run a ton of games, the difference in mental energy between playing vs GMing is pretty apparent. As a GM you are basically "on" 100% of the time. Even when the PCs are planning or otherwise discussing amongst themselves, you're still thinking about whats coming next, adjusting on the fly, checking things you missed, etc. There are relatively few mental breaks.
As a player you're not the center of attention all the time (at least you shouldn't be if you're not a jerk). When the GM spotlight moves to other PCs or a scene you're not involved with, it is easy to zone out and stop paying attention. If I'm taking notes even a little bit helps it keeps my focus on the game and I'm more ready to go when things swing back my way.
There is also something about the physicality of writing that feels good. My handwriting is notoriously atrocious2 but I've got a decent quality notebook and a decent mechanical pencil which really do make the tactile sensation of writing feel nicer than using super cheap stuff. Paper lets me draw random lines, arrows, connections, etc. without being constrained by the format of a word processor or anything like that.
Rulebook PDF
Masks has an interesting "phone optimized" rulebook PDF. I was really excited when I first saw this, but in play it has been more of a mixed bag.
The PDF is very nicely formatted for reading on a phone screen - it is a single column layout that is easy to follow, with content seeming to be designed to fit onto a page at a time. It also includes navigation links, along with several linked tables of contents. The idea behind these is great - depending on what you're trying to do, there are different routes to quickly navigate to ultimately the same destination.
In practice this hasn't worked out as well as I hoped. It turned out that the things I wanted to be able to look up on the fly during the game were harder to find than I expected. I think the multi-level navigation actually contributes to this - the top level categories are a bit too vague to easily know where the thing I want will actually be, so I find myself jumping up and down the hierarchy trying to find the topic I'm searching for. Many times I fall back on just using the PDF search function to try to find a matching keyword. I admire the intent, but in the end this setup is one that just didn't quite work for me.
The rulebook is an exception to my attempts to avoid electronics at the table. While we have printouts of playbooks and basic moves, there are enough times that I need additional detail that isn't in the summaries that I do go ahead and look it up as needed. I definitely try my best to limit these to when someone else is doing something so that I'm not slowing the game down, and try to make sure that I don't switch out of the PDF viewer to any other apps on my phone so that my attention doesn't go wandering off.
Obsidian
I started off by creating a dedicated folder for this campaign in my main vault. I assumed I wouldn't need a whole vault since I wasn't GMing, but after Session 0 did a quick transfer of my paper notes into Obsidian.
Since then I haven't bothered for any of the following sessions. A big chunk of this is that our GM is doing a great job of adding session summaries to a shared Doc which makes doing my own writeup feel redundant. Even without that, though, I'm not convinced that doing a private transcription would be worth it for a campaign of this length (targeting 8ish sessions). Between the paper notes & the stuff that gets marked directly on my playbook, remembering what has been happening just hasn't been a problem. In a longer game, or more focused on mystery instead of drama, there might be more value in collecting and organizing notes across sessions.
What I would love (both for this game, and just in general) is some really easy flow from paper notes -> digital record. I haven't figured out exactly what this should look like, but some kind of setup where I could point my phone's camera at the notes and have them smoothly end up stored in the right spot, with an OCR extract, would be great. I may try experimenting with something in this area if I get some free time.
Conclusion
I typically end up taking 2-3 sparsely populated pages of notes each session. Doing so helps keep me focused and engaged, even if I rarely go back to the notes. I'm pretty convinced that the act of physically writing things down does help implant it into your brain.
It is clear to me that the focus as a PC is very different from a GM. I care about my character's stuff (powers, relationships, etc) and the big picture plot beats. Outside of that I can actually lean back and trust the GM and other PCs to handle their parts. I'm not trying to orchestrate multiple pieces coming together, so I don't need much structure.
If you've read this far, thank you! This has been an interesting journey, and I met my original goal of keeping a pretty consistent schedule for (now) 10 articles. In my project note (in Obsidian, of course) I had a few more potential article ideas that I wrote down when I first started brainstorming and outlining this. Looking at them now, I don't see much new ground that wasn't covered by the deep dives I've done so far. I'm ready for a bit of a break without the "have to publish" feeling hanging over my head. I'll see if my opinion changes on any of those ideas after a few weeks off, or if anything else inspires me.
Until then, good gaming, and never roll the GM's cursed dice!
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