Recap Raven

Introduction

Dungeon Masters often struggle to remember details across long campaigns, spend hours writing session notes, and miss valuable feedback from players. Recap Raven is a Discord bot that records voice sessions, transcribes them, and generates player-safe recaps, private GM notes, and a searchable campaign memory—all while citing answers to the original transcript. This review explores its features, workflow, pricing, and real-world value for TTRPG groups.

Key Features

• Automated Recording and Transcription: The bot sits in Discord voice channels and captures the entire session, separating speakers by voice recognition. Transcription maps speech to character names, producing a clean textual record. Raw audio is deleted within minutes after processing, ensuring privacy.
• Player-Safe Recap Generation: Using the transcript, the AI drafts a narrative summary of key events, decisions, and character moments. This recap is designed to be safe for players—GM-only secrets, private notes, and speculative details are strictly excluded. The recap is automatically posted to the campaign's text channel, so everyone gets a clear summary without the DM having to write one.
• Private GM Analytics and Feedback: DMs receive a private dashboard with session scores, participation metrics, and energy levels by scene. The system measures “spotlight balance” across players and identifies which “pillars of play” (exploration, social, combat) dominated the session. This data provides constructive, data-driven coaching without requiring players to fill out feedback forms.
• Campaign Memory with Cited Answers: The “Ask” feature enables natural-language queries across the entire campaign history. For example, a player can ask about an NPC’s whereabouts, and the bot will return an answer with the exact transcript excerpt and session ID as evidence. This built-in citation mechanism builds trust and prevents hallucination.
• Hooks and Open Threads: The bot automatically detects unresolved story threads, such as quests, promises, and mysteries. It tracks them across sessions, flags when one appears resolved, and provides a visual timeline for the DM to review. This prevents dropped plotlines and supports coherent long-term storytelling.
• Campaign World Wiki: Recap Raven creates an editable wiki of people, places, items, and lore, populated automatically from session transcripts. Entries include aliases and interaction history, and can be filtered to separate GM-only notes from player-facing information. The wiki updates as the campaign progresses, eliminating manual data entry.
• Next-Session Prep Recommendations: Based on open threads and recent table focus, the bot generates practical prep prompts. These are suggestions—not rigid scripts—giving the DM ideas for likely directions the party might take.
• Multi-Language Processing: The system supports English, Italian, Spanish, French, German, and Brazilian Portuguese for both transcription and recap generation. This makes it viable for non-English speaking tables without losing nuance.
• Data Ownership and Deletion: Users can export transcripts, recaps, and account data at any time, or wipe everything permanently. The company states it never trains AI models on user content, and recording is always announced to the channel.

How It Works

Start by inviting the bot to a Discord server, then create a campaign through the web app. When the game begins, everyone joins a voice channel and a player or DM types /session start. The bot announces the recording and plays a voice cue, ensuring everyone is aware. The bot captures audio from the channel, using user settings to map voices to character names. After the session ends, either through a command or automatically, the audio is sent to Recap Raven’s transcription backend. Raw audio is deleted immediately after transcription, and the text is processed to generate the recap, GM notes, and memory updates. Typically, the output is ready within 10 minutes, though longer sessions may take a bit longer.

Players see the player-safe recap in their Discord channel, while the DM gets a private link to the full GM dashboard. From there, they can ask questions about the campaign, review hook statuses, edit the world wiki, and prepare for the next session. The entire cycle is designed to be hands-off for the players, with the bot doing the heavy lifting in the background.

Use Cases

• Long-Running Campaigns: For groups that have played for years, the campaign memory becomes an essential archive. The ability to ask about an event from session 120 and get a cited answer is invaluable for maintaining continuity.
• Newly Formed Groups: New players and DMs benefit from the automatic recaps and GM feedback, helping them gauge table dynamics and spot engagement issues early.
• Multilingual Tables: Since the bot can process several languages, it’s suitable for groups who prefer to play in their native tongue, or for tables that mix languages.
• Busy DMs Who Wear Many Hats: DMs who don’t have time to write detailed notes can rely on Recap Raven for consistent documentation and prep assistance.
• Online Communities and One-Shots: Even for one-shot adventures, the free first session provides a full recap and analytics package, making it easy to test the service without commitment.

Pricing & Value

Recap Raven uses a freemium pricing model. The free tier includes one complete session with all core features, including a trial of the campaign memory. The “Recap Only” plan costs $7.99 per month and covers 5 sessions monthly across up to 5 campaigns—sufficient for a weekly game. For groups needing more, the “Campaign Memory” plan starts at $11.99/month, offering 5 to 20 sessions per month, unlimited campaigns (within tier), campaign-wide analytics, and full access to the Ask feature. All plans include recording, transcription, player-safe recaps, and GM notes. Given the AI processing and the value of the generated insights, the pricing is competitive compared to other AI note-taking services. A free trial means no upfront risk. For a detailed breakdown, see the pricing page.

Final Verdict

Recap Raven stands out as a specialized AI assistant for tabletop RPGs. Its strength lies in combining accurate transcription with a citation-backed campaign memory, while strictly separating GM-only information from player-facing content. The interface is intuitive, and the Discord-native workflow eliminates extra steps. However, it is tied to Discord voice, so groups using other platforms (like Roll20 or Foundry) won’t benefit unless they also use Discord. Session limits on cheaper plans might be restrictive for very active groups, and the reliance on consent could be a hurdle for public games. Nevertheless, for dedicated D&D tables that already use Discord, Recap Raven provides an excellent return on investment. The GM guides offer valuable context on how to get the most out of the tool.