How to Write a D&D Session Recap Your Players Will Actually Read

A good session recap is short, written in the past tense, tells what the party did in the order they did it, and leaves out everything the players don’t know yet. It goes where your table already talks, usually the group’s Discord, a day or two after the game. That’s the whole formula. Most recaps fail by breaking one of those rules: too long, too vague, posted in a place nobody checks, or quietly full of spoilers.

Here’s how to write one that gets read, plus a sample you can copy.

Why recaps are worth ten minutes

A recap does three jobs at once:

It catches the table up. Weekly games have a week of real life between sessions. Biweekly games have two. A recap means you don’t spend the first twenty minutes reconstructing where everyone was.
It records what the players think happened. Your notes say what you planned. The recap says what the party experienced. When players reply “wait, I thought we gave him the seal,” you’ve caught a misunderstanding before it shapes a whole session.
It keeps absent players in the game. Someone always misses a session. A recap lets them walk back in knowing why the bard is wanted for arson.

The format that works

A bold first line. “Previously, in Tides of Saltmere…” It signals what this is, and it’s fun.
120 to 250 words of what happened, in order. Past tense. Use the player characters’ names. Players skim anything longer.
Bold names the first time they appear. People, places, items. It makes the recap scannable, and it quietly teaches the table your NPCs’ names.
One closing line on where things stand. Where the party is and what they’re about to do. Don’t predict what happens next.
Nothing they don’t know. More on this below, because it’s where recaps go wrong.

Here’s what that looks like:

Previously, in Tides of Saltmere…

At low tide, Old Wren rowed the party out to the Drowned Chapel, a half-sunken shrine off the point. Inside, Tamsin, Brother Odo, and Kestrel found an altar to the Drowned Choir, the cult behind the missing fishermen. Four cultists attacked. In the fight a harpoon struck Wren, and despite Odo’s prayers she died in the boat. The cult’s leader escaped through a flooded tunnel with the Sunken Crown. The party freed two of the missing fishermen. Four are still missing.

The party is back in Saltmere, with Wren’s body and a lot of questions.

Notice what’s missing: the wax seal Kestrel pocketed. The player knows, but the character hasn’t shown anyone, so it stays out of the shared recap. Also missing: anything about the mayor. In the GM’s notes, Mayor Hollis Brand is secretly with the cult. In the recap, he doesn’t appear at all, because nothing the party saw this session involved him.

The spoiler problem

This is the trap. You write the recap from your notes, and your notes are full of things the players don’t know: what NPCs really want, what happens behind the scenes, the twist you’re saving for session 9. Recaps leak secrets in small ways:

Naming the real identity. “The cult leader, Brother Silas, escaped.” The players never learned his name.
Telling the motive. “The mayor hired them to keep them busy.” That’s your note to yourself, not something the party saw.
Foreshadowing. “Little did they know the seal would matter.” Now they know it matters.

The rule: describe only what the players saw, heard, and did at the table. When you’re unsure whether they know something, leave it out. A recap that’s a little thin is fine. A recap that spoils your best twist can’t be undone.

A practical habit: keep a short list of active secrets, and before you post, read the recap once with only that list in mind.

Where and when to post

Post it where your table already talks, which for most groups is Discord. Discord messages cap at 2,000 characters, which is a useful forcing function: if your recap doesn’t fit in one message, it’s too long. Post within a day or two, while memories are fresh enough for players to correct you. Pin it, or keep a dedicated recap channel, so new and returning players can scroll back through the campaign.

Getting help with it

You can write all of this by hand in ten minutes. If ten minutes after a long session is the part you never get to, StoryGuard drafts it for you. It reads your session notes, writes a recap in this format, and leaves out everything you’ve marked secret. If a secret slips through anyway, you get a warning naming it before you copy the recap to Discord. You edit it, then paste it.

Recaps also pull double duty for you: reading last session’s recap is the first step of good prep. (The full routine is in how to keep track of your D&D campaign.) And if a player’s reply to the recap reveals you contradicted yourself, here’s how to retcon gracefully.