Character Journals

Does your character have a journal? How often do they write in it and what do they write about (besides the main plotline)? Have any other players stolen your character's journal to read it? If so, what happened?

DMs, do you enforce player journals?

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shameful self bump

>"Dear, diary; I am still a werewolf. I have managed to avoid hurting my friends by the power of silk underwear. The pain leaves me too crippled during my transformations to do much more than cry for my manhood and the wedgie to end all wedgies."

I love this sort of thing. I mostly GM, but when I play a character, i try to have a journal for both plot relevant things, and just character relevant things. Person views on NPC's feelings about places, character goals, that sort of thing. I usually write in it when we're doing a group rest or when the pace of the game is slow, or if somebody else is hogging the spotlight. Helps me to keep in character while i'm not "doing" anything. Also, making physical prop jounrals is pretty easy, I actually talk about doing it a little bit (and why I absolutely love it as a prop) on one of my blog posts, i'll go ahead and link it in case anyone is interested.
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You flip flop freely between "character" and "player" to the point that I can't tell what you are asking.

>Does your character have a journal?
Depends on the character.

My dwarven fighter couldn't care less about journals. He's still working on gaining glory and telling tales of his victories in person.

My grunge elf thief is illiterate. He occasionally dictates letters full of embellishments and lies to send back to his twin sister in the hopes she doesn't worry about him.

My halfelven assassin is a paranoiac and obsessive compulsive about security. He would never write down anything that could be used against him. He pretends to be a simple traveller or if really pressed a priest of the church of chance.

My elven moonknight cleric isn't the brightest, but he's literate enough to write down simple musings accomplishments and events to present to his order if and when his higher ups wish to raise him up to higher positions and responsibilities. He writes whenever there's something interesting happening, so occasionally every night or more likely every week.

>Have any other players stolen your character's journal to read it? If so, what happened?
Nope.

>DMs, do you enforce player journals?
I only run one game, and reward players who write up journal entries with extra xp and honor, and if it's really lengthy or great, a free mulligan on any die roll. Most of my players don't take me up on it though.

My character keeps a rather detailed journal. I like having it because it lets me look back at old sessions to remember things I might have forgotten. It's written in character, so includes personal musings of the character and how she feels about certain people.

She's currently under an assumed identity so she keeps her journal in the secret compartment of a false-bottomed chest along with any other items that would identify her (unsent letters and family wax seals). The chest has the best lock money can buy (DC 40 Disable Device) and the only key is in a pocket sewn on the inside of the breast of her dress.

I've very proud of her journal and I'm almost hoping the other characters find some way to steal it just so someone else can read it and appreciate the work I've put into it other than my GM.

My character uses invisible ink. ñ

Had a dragonborn paladin who kept a pretty prolific set of journals. Mostly it was drawings and observations about local plants and wildlife, occasionally a page or two of him musing about his companions and their situation. Mostly just whatever came to mind whenever they were setting up camp.

Make the character female, and the journal so in-depth it's insane, and you have my husband's character at my game.

>dwarf
>not keeping a personal record of grudges.

Sorry, this one's going in the book.

>putting off work
>writing down your grudges
>not settling them right then and there

Shit dwarf detected.

My soldier has a log book of every planet he's traveled to, every person of note he's met, and every fight he has participated in. My party is aware that he has a journal, but since they think he isn't the the most intelligent of the group, they think that most of the details are essentially

>Day 14 on planet whatever. Boring, smelly, and only minimal hostiles trying to kill me
>Day 16. These guys are idiots, and I can't wait until they get themselves killed in their next escapade.

The GM, however, is fully aware of the fact that my event logs are more detailed than his, and has on more than one occasion used my notes to catch himself up on events, or when the party face asked about an old or obscure contact. But then again, it was his idea for me to be a mole

>Request a handout on roll20 for journal, diary or dataslate depending on setting
>Begin by writing backstory in it, continue for 2-3 sessions
>Eventually realize nobody wants to read it or is even vaguely interested
>Do this several times realize over a few games
>Realize nobody cares
>Gradually stop

I hope this doesn't happen to me but I feel like it might.

It probably will, I truly want nothing more than to find a good group of players that aren't sexually, socially or mentally retarded.

Can you link it to us?

My character is illiterate.

Last one I had was deleted because the roll20 menu was getting too cluttered.

damn, that's a bummer. I'm keeping mine in Google docs so I can use fonts to make it look like handwriting and I can insert images of sketches my character does.

Yeah I keep a journal. On my dick LOL

That's depressing. If I wasn't already happy with my players, I'd offer you a metaphorical seat.