Updated September 2026. Built for tables that write their own recaps by hand.
A session recap has one job in the first few minutes of next session: get read aloud and land the table back at the question they left on. Later, months in, it has a second job: be the place a player can find out when they met someone or whether a debt ever got paid. In between those two jobs sits voice, and the only rule for voice is that it has to be whichever one actually keeps your table reading.
What follows is what has worked at a lot of tables, not a rule book. Take the parts that fit yours.
A good floor: five lines, five minutes, the night you play, read aloud instead of posted.
A good floor, not a ceiling, and it doubles as a session notes example if that's all you came for. Five lines, five minutes, written the night you play:
Read it aloud at the start of next session instead of posting it. Read aloud, it clears in under 90 seconds, which is short enough that nobody's phone comes out before you're done.
If you're the bottleneck two sessions running, hand it to the player who already takes notes anyway. And run the actual test on it once in a while: ask the table, straight out, "does anyone read what I post." A shrug usually means switch to reading it aloud. Continued silence and phones-out at that point means cut it to three lines, or stop writing it. A habit that dies quietly costs you nothing. The guilt of forcing it is the only real cost.
Hook first, open question last. Everything in between is ordered by what mattered, not by when it happened.
Same five minutes bought you the floor. This buys you a record. Header first: session number, the real date, the in-world date if your campaign tracks one, and who was there, players and characters both.
The hook. One unresolved thing, present tense, 15 to 25 words. This is what the table walks in remembering, so it goes first, not last.
What changed. One to three beats, ordered by what mattered, not by when it happened at the table. An hour-long fight that changed nothing loses to five minutes of conversation that changed everything. Each beat names the choice inside it, not just the outcome.
Decisions that mattered. A short list, one line each, naming the character who chose. Not "the party decided." This is the part that makes a choice feel like it landed.
New this session. One line each for anyone or anywhere new: a name met, a place found, a faction introduced. Pick the name's exact form once, the first time it appears, and use that same form every time after. That's the naming rule, and it's what keeps the record searchable later.
Quests touched. One line per named quest that actually moved this session. Skip the ones that didn't.
One line worth keeping. Something someone actually said. Not paraphrased.
The ledger. One dense line: what the party carries now that they didn't before. No dice math.
Open threads, last. What's still unanswered, as a short list, always the closer, ending on the one question next session actually answers by playing. That's the line the table should be able to point to and say "that's why we're here tonight."
As a rule of thumb, the full form read aloud should clear two minutes; if it's running long, it has drifted from recap into narration. Written honestly, with real notes to work from, it tends to take twenty-five to thirty minutes, not the five the floor version might tempt you into believing is normal.
Voice may invent phrasing, never events. The GM corrects facts, never style.
A journal, a letter home, a bard's telling, a rotating scribe writing as themselves: four recap ideas that all work, and none of them is more correct than the others. Pick one and keep it for the campaign, or at least for a long stretch of it.
One rule tends to hold every frame together: voice may invent phrasing, never events. A journal entry can be moody, a bard's telling can be florid, a letter home can leave things out to spare the recipient. None of that gets to invent a choice that wasn't made or erase one that was. The GM reads every recap once, and corrects facts only, never style. Correcting someone's voice is how a table stops volunteering to write.
If you rotate the job, rotate it for real. Pass it by seating order or by a die roll, and give the person taking the turn something they can point to: an inspiration die, first pick of the haul, an NPC's favor, said out loud so everyone hears it land. A missed turn passes to the next person in line. It never boomerangs back to whoever's reliable, or the reliable one ends up writing every recap for the rest of the campaign.
Notice what leads: the unresolved thing, not the first thing that happened.
Session 14. September 6, 2026. In-world: the 3rd of Harvestmoon. Priya (Mira Voss, rogue), Jamie (Corwin Ashe, cleric), Sam (Dez, barbarian), Alex (Yuna Petrel, wizard).
A spiral is carved into a stone under a smuggler's warehouse. It's the same mark that was on Corwin's dead mentor's amulet, and nobody at the table knows why yet.
Getting there cost something. Mira got the harbormaster's ledger by threatening to hand her to the town guard instead of turning her in outright, and that tipped off an ambush from the Tallow Company, the outfit that actually runs the marsh routes. It nearly went bad until Corwin healed their enforcer instead of letting Dez finish him, which turned a fight into a truce. Getting out cost something too: Dez told the rival smuggler who'd helped them, Bo Rennick, who they really are, trading anonymity for an ally who now expects to be paid back.
Same opening beat, in Corwin's voice, as a contrast: "Ilsa's ledger changed hands under a threat quieter than a blade, which she'll tell herself was mercy. The docks nearly ran red before I made Dez a liar about who was walking away today. Dez paid me back for it sideways, telling that smuggler exactly who we are, so the marsh has someone who owes us a debt instead of a grudge. The mark on that warehouse stone is the same one my mentor wore for thirty years. I don't know yet why it's under a dock. I intend to."
Decisions that mattered. Mira chose blackmail over reporting Ilsa to the guard. Corwin chose to heal the Tallow enforcer instead of letting Dez kill him. Dez chose to give up their real names to Bo Rennick.
New this session. Ilsa Kread, harbormaster, now a blackmailed ally. Bo Rennick, rival smuggler, now owed something unnamed. The Tallow Company, the faction running the marsh routes. The Drowned Exchange, the black-market warehouse under the docks.
Quests touched. The Ledger's Debt: active, waiting on whatever favor Bo Rennick asks for before the party presses Ilsa any further.
One line worth keeping. Dez, to the enforcer bleeding on the dock floor: "I've hit smarter things than you."
The ledger. 30 gp, a forged harbor pass, one strongbox still locked, one favor owed to Bo Rennick.
Open threads. What else is in Ilsa's ledger. What favor Bo Rennick is going to ask for. Why a symbol from Corwin's mentor is carved into a smuggler's warehouse, which is the one the table answers by playing.
SESSION [number] DATE: [real date] IN-WORLD DATE: [if tracked] PRESENT: [player (character), player (character), ...] ## The hook [15 to 25 words. The one thing still unresolved. Present tense.] ## What changed 1. [beat, names the choice] 2. [beat, names the choice] (1 to 3 beats, ordered by weight, not by when it happened) ## Decisions that mattered - [Character] chose to [what], instead of [what they didn't do] - [Character] chose to [what] ## New this session - [Name]: [one line, who or what they are; use this exact name every time after] - [Name]: [one line] ## Quests touched - [Quest name]: [status], [one line on what moved] ## One line worth keeping "[something someone actually said]" ## The ledger [one dense line: what the party carries now. No dice math.] ## Open threads - [unanswered question] - [the one question next session answers by playing]
Writing this inside Threadfall by hand, a few habits carry over from the AI chapters. Lines starting with ## become the beat subtitles, so give each one a short title. Whatever you write before the first ## becomes the chapter's short lead. Names that match a Codex entry turn into links automatically once the chapter renders. And you don't have to cram everything into the write-up itself: loot goes on the session's Spoils tab, quests on the Quests tab, and factions, people, and places belong in the Codex, so the recap can stay this short.
If the habit didn't survive a real week, that's not a verdict on you: Threadfall writes the same five things this page asks for, straight from what was actually said at the table, whether or not anyone remembers to. The first two full sessions are free, and tracking a campaign by hand like this stays free forever.
Fix it forward in the campaign's record. The old recap stays what the table believed that night.
Session 19 reveals Ilsa was lying. A name turns out to be spelled wrong. A quest you marked active actually closed two sessions ago and nobody updated it. None of that is a reason to go back and rewrite session 14's recap. Fix it forward: update the campaign's record, the codex or the campaign tracker if you keep one by hand. Let the old recap stand as what the table believed, the night they played it. A recap's job was never to stay right forever. It was to be accurate to that night.
Measured in spoken time, not word count, is the rule of thumb that holds up. The five-line version should clear in under 90 seconds read aloud. The full form, prose plus lists, should clear two minutes. Past that, it has drifted from recap into narration.
After, for most tables. Keep a few scratch notes while you play, what changed, who decided what, and turn them into the real recap once the table's broken for the night, or the next day while it's still fresh. Writing it live means someone stops playing to do it.
Write the five-line version late instead of skipping it entirely. A rough five lines the morning after beats a polished recap that never gets written, and two blank weeks in a row is usually where a table starts losing the thread of its own story.
Same write-up, two words. The useful test isn't which word you use, it's whether it reads the same backwards as forwards. A summary does: a bulleted inventory of what happened, in any order. A recap doesn't: it reads forward only, hook to open question, because it's built to be read aloud, not filed.
Whoever's willing, rotated so it isn't always the GM. Passing it by seating order or a die roll, giving the person taking the turn something real, and saying why aloud is what keeps the rotation alive. A missed turn passes to the next person, never back to whoever's reliable.
Ask the table directly: does anyone read what I post. A shrug usually means switch to reading it aloud instead. Continued phones-out silence at that point means cut it to three lines, or stop posting it. A habit that dies quietly costs nothing.
More: what makes a good session recap · the session zero checklist · the honest tools roundup · What is Threadfall? · all Threadfall guides