Recording your game: consent, the law, and the conversation to have first

This is not legal advice

Stating that up front because the rest of the page is more useful if you know what it is. We build transcription software; we are not lawyers, recording law varies by jurisdiction and changes, and your table may span several jurisdictions at once. What follows is the shape of the problem and the practical steps, not a ruling.

If you need certainty — you are recording to publish, monetise, or for anything other than your own group’s notes — check your own jurisdiction properly. The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press maintains a state-by-state recording guide that is a reasonable starting point for US groups.

One-party and all-party consent, in one paragraph

US recording law splits roughly two ways. Under one-party consent, a recording is lawful if at least one person in the conversation agrees — and if you are the one recording, that person is you. Under all-party consent, everyone in the conversation has to agree. Federal law and most states follow the one-party rule; roughly a dozen states require all-party consent, with California, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Washington among the clearest examples.

A few states split the difference depending on whether the conversation is in person or over a phone line, which is exactly the kind of detail that makes second-hand summaries unreliable. Check rather than assume.

Why an online game is the harder case

Here is the part most recording-law explainers do not cover, and it is the part that matters most for a D&D group: when the people in a conversation are in different states, the strictest applicable law tends to control. Your in-person table is probably all in one jurisdiction. Your Discord game routinely is not.

The practical consequence is simple. If even one player is somewhere that requires all-party consent, the safe assumption for the whole table is all-party consent. That is not a burden — it collapses to "ask everyone", which you were going to do anyway.

The conversation itself

Have it out loud, before the first session you record, not in a text channel afterwards. It takes about ninety seconds and it is the whole of your obligation in practice.

What people actually object to is finding out later. Almost nobody objects to "I want to write better recaps and I keep forgetting NPC names" — that is a reason they benefit from.

• Say what you are recording and why
• Say where the audio goes and who can access it
• Say how long you keep it, and then actually delete it when you said you would
• Say what happens to out-of-character conversation — tables talk about real life
• Give a real way to say no, and mean it

If someone says no

Take it at face value and do not negotiate. Someone may have a reason they do not want to explain to five friends, and a DM who pushes has changed the game from the one they agreed to play in.

There is usually a middle option worth offering: record, but the audio never leaves your machine and only you read the transcript. That addresses most concerns, which are about audience rather than about the recording existing.

Tools that make it visible

Worth preferring, because covert recording is the failure mode. Craig, the usual Discord recording bot, renames itself to add "[RECORDING]" to its nickname while it is running and refuses to record at all if it cannot do so — so a player joining late sees the state in the member list. Its own documentation puts it bluntly: it is both immoral and illegal to record anyone without their permission.

If you record in person with a phone on the table, the phone is the disclosure, provided you said what it was for. See how to record your session for the setup, and the Craig guide for the Discord route.