The Rutter

The Rutter is the record of what the party has done. It is kept at the table, written by the players, and accumulated session by session into a document that belongs to the campaign. The idea is not new — ship’s logs, campaign diaries, and after-action records have been part of how people track consequential events for as long as people have done consequential things. The Rutter applies that habit to play.

At the end of each session, one player — the Keeper of the Rutter for that session — records what happened. The record is the essential thing: what was attempted, what was resolved, what changed, what remains open. The game narrative — the colour, the voice, the detail in which events are described — is welcome but optional. A Rutter entry that reads as a dry log is as valid as one written as a journal. What is not optional is that the record exists.

The Rutter is an open document. Every player has access to it. It is not the GM’s private account, and it is not owned by whoever happened to be writing that session. It is the table’s shared record of the campaign — a resource all parties can consult, correct, and build on.

Character advancement in Oath-Bound is assessed at the Session Journal — the end-of-session review at which XP is awarded collaboratively. The Rutter is the evidence base for that conversation. What a character has done, demonstrated, and developed over the course of play is visible in the record. Advancement follows from that visibility. A campaign without a Rutter is a campaign without a record, and advancement without a record is advancement without a foundation.

For the full procedural treatment, see The Rutter — in detail.