A DND Newbie's Notes

In October 2020, my friends and I started our first ever DND campaign together and for 2/4 of us, it was our first time ever playing DND! I always wanted to play and never thought I would; I assumed online roleplaying would be the closest I'd ever get to that...but alas! I grew up the borderline-concerning painfully shy wallflower so I never thought I'd be a DND player. But with the right people, anything is possible! Since I'm a newbie and we have many more DND adventures planned for the future, I wanted to compile my list of notes now that have helped me grow and become more comfortable with myself. 

These notes might already be common knowledge to most but if this post finds a fellow newbie, hopefully this helps!

Colour Coded Notes

My soul sings when I'm given the opportunity to make a list, even if it's a grocery list and for DND (just recently), I've started colour coding my notes and it has made the world a difference. Our current campaign is a glorious self-insert fanfic fantasy in the Star Wars sequels universe so there's a rough baseline of what to expect and where we'll go. Because of that, I make notes of what I'd like my character to say or do and assign them text colours for locations, where this would take place at those locations and who I'd say these things to. Not only does it ease my brain to see assigned colours for specific scenarios but it makes me feel less stressed when I'm frantically skimming through notes for that one line when the time comes. I cannot recommend this enough. Even if you don't know what to expect in your campaign maybe your notes could still be applied!

Low or No Jams

As much as I love listening to music during sessions, I find it more difficult to concentrate when I do. I find I can only listen to music for chase/fight scenes or intense moments, not for calmer/lowkey scenarios. I do listen to music when I'm warming up though, to get into character and get a teaser of that escapism. 

Decorate Your Space!

Transforming my environment has been so effective for me when it comes to getting into character and heightening my concentration, surprisingly. For me I close my door, turn off all the lights (except for my lamp so I can still read my character sheet), and turn on my star projector. Turning your space into a fantasy environment transports you and helps so much with the visual element of DND.

Phone Notes

Something else that I do with note-taking is I take them twice, like Santa. He checks his list twice but I write mine out twice. During the session I take every note possible so that I can read back on everything that happened in the session. Because I've adopted this role of stenographer for myself, I have to take fast notes. In our first campaign I wrote out my jot points and it took way too long and pulled me from the experience so I cannot recommend computer or phone note-taking enough. It's so much faster and the beauty of it is after the session is done, I go back and properly write out said notes in my journal and make them all clean and legible~

The Dice Dictionary

Right from the get-go I knew I wouldn't remember which die was which so I made a diagram, or as I like to call it, The Dice Dictionary! Just draw out each die, label them and keep it nearby during sessions for reference. I tape mine to my laptop so it's right in front of me so when our DM says, "roll a d8" I know exactly which die to go for. Also, isolate your d20! It may be the easiest one to find but it's the die most used so separate it from the rest so you're ready to go.

Inspiration Points

The day of our sessions, say an hour before the call starts, I'll watch half an hour of a campaign on YouTube to draw inspiration for my improv and quick-thinking. I just started watching Critical Role and draw the most inspiration from them, but I also watch Realm's Apart from time to time.

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And those are my most useful notes! Hopefully I learn some more too, like, how to keep my composure and...how to not glitch when a character flirts or spits an epic speech.