Free resource
Session recap template
The read-in-a-minute recap, as a fill-in-the-blanks form. Five slots, about 150 words, written in second person so players read a memory instead of a report.
How to use it
- Keep it to ~150 words. Short enough to read on a phone in under a minute. If you pass 300, you are writing minutes, not a recap.
- Second person. "You forced Verrin to speak the old name" beats "the party spoke to Verrin."
- End on the hook. The open question is what pulls players back to the table.
- Name a player. Credit one specific character’s choice. That player will read every recap you ever send.
# Previously, in [Campaign] — Session [N]
**Where we stood.** [One sentence of orientation — place and moment.]
**What mattered.** [Three beats the next session will lean on. Second person.]
**What changed.** [One consequence the party caused that is now true about the world.]
**The open question.** [The hook — the thing nobody knows yet.]
**Spotlight.** [One sentence crediting a specific character’s choice.]A worked example
Where we stood: Coldhollow harbor, the morning after the fence turned up dead. What mattered: you traced the stolen reliquary to a ship that sailed at dawn, turned the harbor clerk with a mix of coin and mercy, and learned the buyer’s name. What changed: the harbormaster now counts you as trouble, and Sera’s promise to the witness has a price attached. The open question: the buyer knows you are coming — he has not decided what to do about it. Spotlight: Sera talked a frightened clerk out from under a forger’s thumb without drawing steel.