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GameMastery Guide / Player Characters / Starting Characters / After the Game

Creativity Between Sessions

Source GameMastery Guide pg. 62
Just because the session ends, that doesn’t mean the game can’t follow a player home. Many players make their most meaningful contributions to a game between sessions. Literary-minded or artistic players often keep some manner of in-character campaign journal or sketchbook, depicting the party’s exploits from their characters’ point of view. This might take the form of notes, an actual penand- ink diary, or posts to an online journal or forum, and can be anything from letters to another character, reports to a related organization, a scholarly work, or a bardic epic. Making such records accessible to the other players (or even the wider gaming community) allows others to share in the group’s adventures.

Although campaign journals serve as the most common creative activity between sessions, no GM should underestimate the imagination of her players. Artistic players might create sketches of their characters, portraits of their enemies, or illustrations of their exploits, while more craft-focused players might help the GM make maps or props of important items, or might fashion costumes or adornments based on their characters. If you have a player looking for such a project, consider bringing them in on one of the creative aspects you don’t have time for, whether it’s painting miniatures, making maps, or creating a playlist for the game’s soundtrack.

It’s not just artists and writers who can help the GM between sessions, either. If you have a trusted player who’s particularly adept with the rules (or maybe even GMs himself ), feel free to use him as a resource, perhaps vetting rules supplements proposed by other players and advising you on tricky balance issues, or educating other players in particularly confusing aspects of the game.

Archives of Nethys

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Creativity Between Sessions