How to Make a Great RPG Recap

Recaps are the unsung hero of tabletop roleplaying game adventures. They transition us from our reality into one of fantasy while connecting the stories playing out within. But many game masters gloss over this tool, defer to players, or skip it entirely. A few simple ideas can unlock the power of recaps in our games.

Start With a Ritual

If we begin every recap with the same introduction or music, it conditions our game group to be ready for the transition from social time to playing the game. It’s also fun and helps to set the tone for the adventure. A few examples:

• Queuing up a campaign theme song
• “Last time in the Heroes of Conquest…”
• “The Empire has fallen and the world gone dark. Our heroes…”

Write Recaps Ahead of Time

Recaps should be short and entertaining. Too long and we risk losing players’ limited attention. A few sentences to a short paragraph is enough. Too boring and we risk losing the players’ engagement. We should retell the important events as though we were writing a recap for a television series. Take the following example:

“You fought and defeated the beholder in the swamp. After that, you all met Baba Yaga and made a deal with her. In exchange for returning her trinket, she will grant you one Wish. But on the road back, you ran into trouble…”

This is a bit boring and sounds more like an event log than a recap. Here’s how it could be improved:

“Our heroes stood face to face with the Mother of All Witches: Baba Yaga. After a tense negotiation, she offered a great boon in exchange for the return of her lost trinket. But for the heroes, the danger was far from over…”

Writing the recap should be fun and only take a minute or two. Envision what it would sound like if your campaign was a television show. Would the recap engage you?

Prime the Session at Hand

A good recap includes past events that are important for the session at hand. It doesn’t cover everything that happened last session. If you watch a television recap, you can almost predict upcoming storylines based on what they include. In the same way, your recap can reach back more than one session to remind the players of events that are relevant to the upcoming session.

In the above example, I didn’t mention the beholder fight in the rewrite. It didn’t matter for the upcoming session. But if the cult of that beholder comes after the party later on, I might include the beholder fight in a future recap. Players have a hard enough time remembering what game masters hand out. Selectively choosing what to include in our recaps is a great way to prime the players with the information they need.

Recaps are often glossed over or stumbled through with little thought. But a good recap provides a strong way to kick off a game session. When we establish a ritual and prepare our recaps ahead of time, we can prime the players for a great RPG session.

Game on.