Remembering all of this during Session
Post-it notes. I’m not going to bury the secret here. It’s post it notes. Write yourself a note and stick it to your character sheet so that you can better remember. Make sure to pick two items to write down, a rule and an RP element. If you want specifics of what to write down, why the character sheet is better than your book, how to structure the note, that’s what we’ll get into here.
Remembering is hard
The table is a distracting place. You are constantly being asked to look up rules, to reference your statistics, and to plan out what you are going to do. Outside of those game distractions, you are around the table cracking jokes with your friends who you may not have seen for a week or more. That means that remembering your +2 bonus on grapple checks from a new item you just got last week might be hard. It is hard for everyone, and so having a consistent system for remembering the new stuff is important.
All this goes doubly for RP interactions, when you might feel pressured to “put on an accent” or to speak in real time to an NPC. (Its not like we expect that from 6-second rounds of combat) On top of the rules pressure of diplomacy and deception, now we’ve got the social pressure of performance and timing. Ripe for forgetfulness.
Pick Two
Don’t go overboard trying to remember every rule at the table, and don’t try to plan out every possible RP interaction. The rulebooks for these games are hundreds of pages long, and no one will remember everything. Pick one of each category and focus just on those. If you’ve done the 5 minute pre-session prep or the between-session RP prep sheet, choosing these items should be easy. Grab an answer to one of the questions about RP and one about a combat, and then:
write it down
Writing down the rule or RP moment you want to remember is important for multiple reasons. Naturally, writing down the rule forces us to move the information from the short term storage part of our brain to the language part of the brain. Explaining something to another person helps us as humans remember, even when that “person” is a post it note. It reinforces what we want to remember, we put it in our own words, and we have control over what the important bits are.
In addition, writing the reminders down removes the burden of always remembering everything. When we put the pressure on ourselves to be perfect, we ignore the fact that we have tons of tools at our disposal. Pressure on a mind is just one more distraction that makes remembering these new rules or RP moments even harder. Move the pressure to a piece of paper, so that it can remind you. But, be careful where you put it:
put your note on your character sheet
The character sheet is one of the most common places you will look every session. You will look at it when your DM asks you for your skill values, when you need to update your health in combat, when you need to make a saving throw. Use this natural location to give yourself a reminder. Use the note to cover the statistic you expect to be using when the rule may be applicable, so that you will have to physically move your reminder in order to take the action that the reminder is for. That should give you a bit of a nudge when the situation comes up.
And remember, your note has both combat and RP reminders on it, so no matter when you see the reminder, there will always be something useful for you. This helps to train yourself that you should pay attention to the notes, because there will always be something to reference. When I first tried writing myself notes, I only wrote down notes for RP purposes and then I taught myself to ignore the notes for hours at a time during combat. Then when we got back to RP I had ignored the note for so long that I didnt remember to even check the note. Now, if I make a note for both situations, it is always “useful” for me to check my note, and I am much more likely to do it.
but i’m allergic to paper!
Fair enough. I know a number of digital-only TTRPG players who never pull out physical character sheets anymore. They may have a tablet, or in some extreme cases, they just use their phone. It is harder to put a post it note on your phone. In these cases, I go into my clock app, and I add a vibrate-only alarm to go off 1 hour after session starts and 2 hours after session starts, and I name the alarm my reminder text. So in the middle of session, my “phone rings”, I pull it out, silence the alarm, and am forced to acknowledge my reminder at least twice during session. This isn’t as frequent of a reminder as the post-its, but it may be more intense.
When do I do this?
I like to do this literally at the start of session. Review my notes, write a couple reminders, and then get on with the game. I don’t need to take care of this between sessions, since we always sit around and talk for 20 minutes before we begin playing anyways. That is way more than enough time to set an alarm or scribble a post-it note.
Get to playing!
Trying to remember to check your note sheet will be hard at first. This one will require some time to get used to. Covering my health bubble was the easiest way I started remembering to reference it. If you want your own printable pdf, here’s my template for reminder notes. Best of luck, and allow time for the habit to form.