How to record, transcribe and remember your D&D sessions
Practical, tool-agnostic advice on recording your sessions, keeping notes that survive the week, and remembering what happened last time — written for people running Dungeons & Dragons and other tabletop RPGs.
Recording at the table
Getting a clean recording of an in-person game is mostly about where the phone sits and what the room does to the sound — and about having asked everyone first. These two cover the physical setup and the conversation to have before pressing record.
How to record your D&D session — in person or online — so the audio is actually usable
Where to put the mic at a real table, how to record Discord and Zoom games, cheap gear that helps, and what good enough session audio actually means.
· 11 min read
Recording your game: consent, the law, and the conversation to have first
Do you need everyone’s permission to record your D&D game, and why does an online table make it harder? The law in brief, and how to ask your players.
· 3 min read
Recording online games
Online play changes the capture problem completely: the audio already exists as a stream, and the job is getting your platform to hand it to you — ideally one track per player. One guide per platform, plus the bot most Discord tables use.
How to Record and Transcribe a D&D Session on Discord
Recording an online D&D game on Discord end to end: which bot or capture method to use, per-speaker tracks, and turning four hours into a transcript.
· 13 min read
Recording your D&D game with Craig, the Discord bot that gives you one file per player
How to record a D&D session with Craig: the /join and /stop flow, which export format to pick, what the per-speaker files are, and the consent talk first.
· 12 min read
Recording a D&D session on Zoom, including the per-player audio trick
Zoom can hand you one audio file per player, but only on local recordings and only if you turn it on first. Set it up before session one.
· 5 min read
Recording a Foundry VTT session when Foundry does not record
Foundry has built-in voice chat but no recording. Here is what its A/V actually is, and the three ways tables capture audio around it.
· 4 min read
Recording a D&D session on Roll20, which has no record button
Roll20 has no built-in recording — not even of its own voice chat. The two setups that actually work (Discord + a bot, or OBS), and the mistakes to skip.
· 3 min read
Turning audio into text: tools and costs
Four hours of six people talking is a genuinely hard transcription job, and the tools that handle a meeting well mostly do not handle it at all. What the real options are, what each one costs for a weekly game, and what running it yourself actually involves.
Using Whisper to transcribe a D&D session, and where it falls down
Whisper is free, open source and good at speech. It is bad at invented names and does not label speakers. What to do about both.
· 4 min read
What it actually costs to transcribe a four-hour D&D session
Rev, Otter, Notta, Fireflies, OpenAI Whisper and DM Scribe priced for one four-hour session and a weekly campaign — real math, sourced and dated.
· 4 min read
The best way to transcribe a D&D session depends on who you are
Every real way to turn a four-hour, six-voice session into text, ranked by use case — publishing, meetings, DIY Whisper, human-grade. We make one of them.
· 4 min read
Choosing an AI note taker for D&D: Discord bot, upload, or neither
What an AI note taker for D&D does, why meeting tools fail at the table, and the Discord-bot-or-upload choice. Which kind fits how your table plays?
· 10 min read
Notes, recaps and campaign memory
The record only matters if it comes back when you need it: before the session, when a player asks what the duke promised, when someone missed a week, or when the campaign ends and you want to keep it. Systems for capturing play and putting it back to work.
How to Take Notes During a D&D Session Without Wrecking the Game
A working note system for DMs: what to capture mid-session, what can wait, the one-line-per-beat method, player scribes, and the 10-minute post-game dump.
· 12 min read
How to Take Notes as a D&D Player: The Four Things Worth Writing Down
D&D player notes that stay useful: names and who they are to you, promises, loot, your own threads, three lines a scene. What can you stop writing?
· 12 min read
D&D session and campaign notes templates: the in-session sheet, the player scribe page, the session log and the campaign notes page
Four copyable D&D notes templates: a DM in-session sheet, a player scribe page, a post-session log and a campaign notes page. Which do you need first?
· 10 min read
A D&D NPC tracker for continuity: who they are, what they know, and what was promised
A copyable D&D NPC tracker built for continuity: aliases, voice, what each NPC knows, promises both ways. What does the official sheet leave out?
· 9 min read
How to Write a D&D Session Recap Your Players Will Actually Read
A short, practical method for D&D session recaps: previously-on framing, what to cut, how to hide reveals, a worked example, and a skeleton you can copy.
· 13 min read
How to Remember What Happened Last Session (and Rebuild a Campaign You've Lost the Thread Of)
Forgot what happened last session? A practical system for D&D campaign memory: what to record, how to rebuild lost context, how to restart after a break.
· 11 min read
How to Catch Up a Player Who Missed a Session (and What to Do With Their Character While They're Gone)
A player missed D&D night: what happens to their character, how tables handle XP and loot, what to send them, and the three-minute catch-up ritual.
· 12 min read
How to Run a Play-by-Post D&D Game: Cadence, Combat and Keeping the Record
How to run a play-by-post D&D game on Discord or a forum: a posting cadence players keep, combat without initiative, and a record you can still search.
· 13 min read
Using NotebookLM for D&D: a campaign notebook that answers from your own sessions
NotebookLM, now Gemini Notebook, answers from your own D&D sessions with citations, free. How far can one campaign notebook stretch?
· 10 min read
Turning your D&D campaign into a novel, when what you have is a transcript, not a plot
Your campaign is a transcript, not a plot. What to cut, what to invent, what your players must agree to, and what Wizards actually lets you publish.
· 9 min read
Prep and the job of running the game
Prep that fits the time you actually have, and what to do when running the game has started to feel like a chore rather than the best part of the week.
How long should D&D prep take, and where the time actually goes
Surveyed DMs split almost evenly between an hour and three-plus per session. The useful question is not how long, but what the hour buys.
· 6 min read
DM burnout: what causes it, how to deal with it, and which half a tool can take
What DM burnout is, the causes no app can fix — thankless work, scheduling, table friction — and the one that grows every session. Which one is yours?
· 11 min read
Where to go next
- DM Scribe compared to the other campaign tools
World Anvil, Kanka, LegendKeeper, Obsidian, Otter and the direct competitors, with current prices and the date we checked them.
- What DM Scribe actually does
Transcription, recaps, the campaign wiki, the relationship graph and asking questions of your own campaign.
- Whether it fits how you play
Actual-play shows, paid DMs, west-marches tables, Daggerheart, Pathfinder 2e, Call of Cthulhu and Vampire: The Masquerade.
- Pricing
Three plans, what each hour limit really buys, and what stays free.