How Players Can Help

Here are a few ways in which you can help the game go more smoothly.
Mapping: Someone should keep a map of places you explorer so that
you know where you’ve been and where you have yet to explore. The
responsibility for mapping can be rotated from person to person, if more
than one player likes to do this sort of thing, but as a rule the same
person should be the mapper through a single playing session.
A map is most useful and most important when the characters are in
a dungeon setting—an environment with lots of corridors, doors, and
rooms that would be almost impossible to navigate through without a
record of what parts the characters have already explored.
To make a map, you start with a blank sheet of paper (graph paper is
best) and draw the floor plan of the dungeon as you and your group
discover it and the Dungeon Master describes what you’re seeing. For
example, when the characters come to a new, empty room, the DM
might say, “The door you have opened leads east into a room 23 feet
wide and 30 feet deep. The door is in the middle of the room’s west wall,
and you can see two other doors: one in the north wall near the corner
with the east wall, and one in the east wall about 5 feet south of the
middle.” Or, if it’s easier for you to visualize, the DM might express the
information this way: “From the north edge of the door, the wall goes
two squares north, six squares east, five squares south, six squares west,
and then north back to the door. There’s a door on the sixth square of
the north wall and on the fourth square of the east wall.”
Party Notes: It often pays to keep notes: names of NPCs the heroes
have met, treasure the group has won, secrets the characters have
learned, and so forth. The Dungeon Master might keep track of all this
information for his or her own benefit, but even so it can be handy for
you to jot down facts that might be needed later—at the least, doing this
prevents you from having to ask the Dungeon Master, “What was the
name of that old man we met in the woods last week?”
Character Notes: You should keep track of hit points, spells, and other
characteristics about your character that change during an adventure on
scratch paper. Between playing sessions, you might decide to write some
of this information directly on your character sheet—but don’t worry
about updating the sheet constantly. For instance, it would be tedious
(and could make a mess of the sheet) if you erased your character’s
current hit points and wrote in a new number every time he or she took
damage.