Keeping Track of Everything

I guess everyone that is into role playing games does it. I take copious notes on what is happening in every game session... where we are, who we see, how much I spend, what is in my pack. The list of information grows and grows. A lot of it is just bookkeeping, but some of it is random bits of information that our game master drops.

They seem unrelated, but in the days after our weekly get togethers I try to see if there is a developing pattern. Where do we most often encounter goblins, or orcs? Are there gargoyles, as reported, in the petrified forest? How many dragons are in the western mountains, and how big are they? Are there any other gates other than the two we know of? How can an ogre who never seems to leave his castle have so much influence over the entire island?

We have a great GM in my opinion. He lets us make our plans and then gets us to do what he had planned in the first place. That was obvious the other night. We've been picking at our spider problem (See my earlier post.) like one who presses around a really nasty pimple that you just don't want to pop yet. We were ready to travel away from that problem to explore other territory when our GM, I'll call him Joe, rolled for a random encounter. I don't know if he honestly rolled for a wandering knight or not, but that's what we got. Not just any knight either, but a hedge knight with an entourage of men-at-arms who was seeking glory by killing our giant spiders.

All well and good, but we started talking to him about being nice to our friend Ralph, the somewhat dim, but useful ogre. The knight's eyes gleam as he contemplates fighting him before dealing with the spiders. We like Ralph and don't want to see him hurt needlessly, so we turn around and return to the town, warn the ogre to lay low, and plot how we will use the knight to achieve our purpose in the battle of the spiders in the orchard.

At the end of the session we had vanquished a major monster, the magical Spider Queen, and her minions. There was no apparent monetary reward, but we have the gratitude of the town and the friendship of the new lord of the manor. We'll have to wait until next week to see what Joe decides that we want to do.