Hello - relatively inexperienced GM here, running my second campaign now and I thought I'd share how I remind players to turn up and remind them to do their home work.

1) I set up a google group and invited all the players. I asked them to change their nickname in the group to their character name

2) I set up a drop Box account to put supporting player handouts in

3) I send in character emails & text messages 24 hours in advance that look like:

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+++ DATESTAMP 812.5.22.M41 +++
+++ By Order Of The Ordo Hereticus +++
+++ Instruction Level MAXIMUS +++
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Duty Order #3, You must report for duty at 7PM local time, XP will be fined at 1 per minute.

Is there anything else you guys do to keep players informed, and do it in any sort of fluff/character way?

cheers

I do what you do, though sometimes I send SMS in the same in-game style.

I sometimes write up a summary of events from past sessions if we take extended breaks in mid-campaign, to remind them of what happens. This I often do in the style of a diary of one (often unnamed) of the players.

An example from our current run through Tattered Fates (ACHTUNG! SPOILERS INCOMING):

+++ Status Report
+++ The following sections recovered from a torn and stained journal from a rented room in Xiparph.

Dear Diary,

+ Woke up today in a pit littered with the bones of dead people, together with some other unfortunates. Then the Spindle-maws were released to feed, and I barely escaped the slaughter that followed, thanks to the help of some mysterious fellow in a Heron mask. Alone and almost naked we then got lost in some hellish underground maze of bloodworks and incomprehensible machinery, and from there things just got worse. I remember a guy in a Jackal mask leading the people who must have brought me here (wherever here might be), and that they did … things … to me.

+ We found Inquisitor Sand. Or at least, what was left of him. Apparently the Heron Masked Man did some serious work on him. Guess he's not such a nice guy after all. Sand told us the Beast House were the people who brought us here, and that the Jackal mask is one of their slaver chiefs. Goes by the name of Marcus Vulpa. Death is his sentence, and it will be my pleasure to execute this duty! The Beast House are not the masters here, though, someone else is pulling strings. And this someone seems to be the Heron Mask and his people. He has some terrible plan, apparently, which somehow involves "the old blood, I think, to lure it out". And something about the Haarlocks. "Find him, and stop him". Yes, Sir! Oh, and the fate of the world is on the line, as usual. And the world is Quaddis. Nice place, apparently. Seems there is an ally out there too, some White Schollar bookworm working for Sand. "Ask him…ask him what can be found in the ninth stack on Prol. He will answer, “emptiness” if it is he". 'course he will.

+ Burned Sand, killed some Beast House slavers, escaped through a Carmageddon Arena, and arrived in Xiparph. Picked up a priest along the way who doesn't appear to be a total ****. Makes for a nice change.

+ Xiparph's nice. Lots of friendly and festive people, and the wine flows freely. Apparently they like their bloodsports here. That's good, we know a little about bloodshed. Bossman has an idea to win some money on the fights. The Fates Wheel is the place to go, or so they say …

+ Well that went well. Our attempts to give ourselves an "edge" didn't sit too well with the locals idea of "a fair fight", something fundamental to "honour duels", they say. They had a little witch, too. Seems our resident warp-head didn't much care for him. He now has a shiny new headxploder around his neck to remind him of the fact, too. On the plus side we got to know the owner of the Wheel, a certain somebody in the underworld here, it would seem. Goes by the unlikely name of Papa Grist, and he wants us to kill his rival in Crimformation, a certain Spider Bride, resident of the Twilight Gardens. Sounds fun. We get paid, too! 1000 Thrones each, and an invitation to the party at Gabriel Chase at the time of the Passing of the Shadow. Unmissable, or so they say.

+ Seems there is a mythical beast called The Widower, a fiend of a thousand faces, that goes around killing people in really horrible ways. Been around forever, apparently. The local boogeyman mothers scare their kids with. Come kills you when you sleep. Or when you're awake. And armed. And ready, with an army at your back. Sounds like a nasty piece of work.

+ Today we met a local street preacher, a solid looking fellow by the name of Obadiah Psalter. An agitator, rabble-rouser, and devout puritan of the Imperial faith, Psalter was on a pilgrimage barge that was diverted to Xicarph at the whim of its noble master. He has found the city to be an anathema and has founded himself a small congregation among the poor and destitute in the Collapsed Palaces. But several days ago, he lost his fledgling following to the honeyed tongue and twisted promises of another voice, a preacher calling himself the Beloved who first came to them wearing a Heron Mask.

We rapidly agreed to pay a visit to this Beloved, and to reclaim the chapel, and to kick some heretic butt in the process.

+++
+++ The Beast House

The Beast House is a quasi-legal group that hides its true evils behind a mask of tradition and violent entertainment.It is comprised of beast slavers, hunters, smugglers, and purveyors of bloody sport and savagery whose influence reaches scores of worlds throughout the Calixis Sector, and who have become deeply embedded in the sector’s underworld over centuries of activity. Each regional “Beast House” is run largely independently—mercenary and beholden only to its own masters and connected to others of its kind through a shadowy network of contacts and contracts, and ultimately to a mysterious figure known as Solkarn Senk, said to be the Beast House’s founder.

+++ The ToDo-List
+ Find the White Schollar. See if he knows something.
+ Find Marcus Vulpa, and kill him
+ Learn what the Heron Masks plan are. Stop them. Kill him.
+ Find a way off this planet. Or maybe not, it seems nice here, if we could only get some serious cash. Nobody knows we are here… There are worse places to retire.