First, second or third person?

Pok

Pok

I've noticed most campaigns using the third person viewpoint for their adventure logs, even some using second person.

I've not seen many like

Charsen

In "Sins of the Father":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/60 I try to have a regular 3rd person log and then individual 1st person logs for each game. So there's a personal view in their journals and then a more objective view in the storyline. The only problem is that the players have to actually write their logs, and that can be hard for the busy (less enthusiastic?) players or the ones that don't like to write much...

I found that when I originally began writing up logs, I did them entirely in 1st person, but it turned out that my character was excluded from certain events for RP reasons and so the whole picture wasn't quite clear. That's why I ended up doing both... however it takes more work and to be blunt, the other players in my game don't take as much interest in writing up their character's thoughts, so it may have been a mistake on my part. I'm not quite sure yet.

bevinflannery

My log for "The Weight of Rubies":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/rubies is written in third-person mostly because it was imported from a running summary kept in Word. Each week, I would do a write-up of what happened, so that (a) I could give it to anyone who missed a session, to give them "previouslies on..." and (b) to remind myself of what happened/what NPCs appeared, etc. It was just easier to maintain an all-seeing eye approach through a third-person narrative. It wasn't a conscious narrative choice.

We're currently on break while another DM runs; my players will be free to do their own write-ups, which could be first or third person, depending on whatever they want. But not everyone will even have the inclination to do it, and at least one of us doesn't have on-line access.

IceBob

Most of the updates in my game are made by the players, who pick for themselves (mostly third), and I just go with whatever they're doing.

darkliquid

Since none of my games have actually started yet, I haven't written any write ups, though I'll be doing them in third person.

However, when writing up from a specific characters point of view, I prefer a first-person journal-style approach, as my character Joe Talls did in my friends "Savage Tides":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/669 game.

Micah

I often live-blog our sessions (when I'm a player, not GM), so the posts come out sort of stream-of-consciousness. It's messy as hell, but I assume that only myself and the other players are reading, so I don't worry too much. There are other, better campaigns to read around here than mine ;)

However, if you haven't started yet, I would try to standardize on a few things beforehand, especially if it's a cooperative effort involving the players.

* 1st or 3rd person
* present or past tense
* use of OOC vs IC terms (ie. "the PCs" vs "the heroes")
* description of OOC banter (which I heavily encourage!, see the "notable quotes section":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/arkanopolis/adventure-log/the-sentient-warship)

FemmeLegion

My narratives are always in third person, but with a serious tweak toward the perspective of my character (since I can not only tell you what happened to her, but what she thought about it - something I can't often offer for the others).

One of the other players posts updates of his character's visions, and since those are usually cut-and-paste from email conversations, there's a lot of second person in them. It makes me twitch a little, but I really don't want to step on his toes since I'm happy he's using the site.

Pok

I'm finding my posts tend to go towards an all-seeing, anonymous first person narrator.

IE, each character will get mentioned in third person, but when referring to the group I use 'we' or 'our'.

"Read up a post,":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/tondora/adventure-log/heading-to-turk and tell me if it works.

IceBob

I think it works well, and provides a cohesive narrative.

DarthKrzysztof

The decision to go with past or present tense is also a factor...