In looking through the quick start, there’s something that I just assume my group will change. It’s fast and easy, and makes sense to me, so I haven’t thought to mention it.
The quickstart suggests doing experience for a session at the beginning of the next session. The most obvious reason not to do it that way is because even in a stable group you may not have the same people at every session. So you play, but you don’t get experience if you don’t show up the next time. Or, people who do show up for the first time (or missed last session) can’t participate in the discussion of what you did last time.
Also, time passes and people forget. Even a week later, they may not remember who did what last time. No, experience really needs to be handled at the end of the session.
I could see doing down time at the beginning of the next session.
Is there a crucial point I’m missing?
To me, it’s a fine way to recollect the last session. No one is discouraged from making notes for better remembrance and for a new player it’s a good introduction in the background of the group.
I dunno, it seems like you might not want the new player to know everything you did last time. Some rogues want to keep some things close to the chest, especially quiet missions that could lead to executions if word got out. The new guy doesn’t always get to know everything. This doesn’t seem like a game where everyone should be forthright about what they’ve done with people they recently meet.
I think of a recap as more like the “Previously, on Blades In The Dark”.
Better that the new player can hit the ground running even if their character doesn’t know this stuff.
Yeah, our group plays with a very open hand. I mean we’re co-GMing so all the players also take turns at GMing. There are no secrets. To do this obviously people at the table must be prepared to distinguish what they know from what their character knows. And for us that works fine. If a player misses a session we all fill them in on all the gritty details. Even their characters wouldn’t be in any of it. Keeping secrets between players doesn’t interest us at all. Of course, none of this affects how many secrets characters in the fiction keep.
I see nothing essential about when you do XP stuff. Doing at the start of the next session just means you only need to summarise play once. But that’s just a preference thing. But of course you can do it at the end of the session. Nothing hangs on when you do it.
Oliver Granger I feel what you lose if you do it in the following session is that you may not have everyone you had last time. People who could offer informed feedback on what you did can’t. Also, do you remember to do experience for someone who misses two sessions and then comes back?
It just seems a lot cleaner to deal with a session’s business with the session and not put it off. If you want to do a session recap next time, make that part of determining what to do during downtime.
If it works for some groups, then I guess what I’d like to see is a recommendation that there is more than one way to do it. As it is we’ll be varying from rules as written because that’s what would work better for my group.
Do it the way you prefer.
Sounds like good incentive to actually turn up to sessions, to me. 😉
Aren’t you marking xp on your sheet, anyway? The whole point of a character sheet is that you don’t have to rely on your memory. But, of course, it won’t really matter. I like having time to mull over how to spend my xp.
But his problem is when you tally things you did.