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I never used it, not even on those old games that did require it, like Ultima, or those old point and click adventures games that drove people insane.
I have a pen and paper handy, but that' just because I do the vast majority of gaming at my desk and I have a pen and paper there for other things too.

Rarely do I need to use it other than for some old games (around DOS era) that expected you to write things down. Also I used it for Oblivion because of the obtuse leveling system.
Yes, if the game requires it. I'm currently doing it for Risen. But I don't consider that "hardcore" or anything, in my book it's a serious drawback if a game like that, heavy on backtracking for secrets, and released in 2009, won't allow me to make my own notes in-game.
Currently, I'm playing UnderRail and yep, I keep notes; NPCs, points of interest, areas that I can't visit yet etc. I'm not drawing accurate maps but I usually make a bubble with a description of the area I'm in and then I write notes about it as well as it's connection with the surrounding areas-bubbles. UnderRail's journal isn't very helpful. Did I say journal? Ha, there's no journal* nor any type of map in UnderRail! :)

* OK, there is the N key that brings the Notes menu. "When you finish your objectives, return to xxxx". What? What objectives? ;)

ps. The smileys above may change in the future when I become totally frustrated haha! :P
Post edited July 11, 2016 by Vythonaut
Well, I don't intentionally prepare it when starting a game, but there's alaways something on my desk, and sometimes, though rarely, it comes in handy while playing. In RPGs for writing down some clues, or something that might be a clue, but I have no idea right now what it is, and in some point & click adventure games it's helpful to write don what I need to do, what some NPCs want, to sort of "map out" what I think I need to get, what to do with it, and what that will accomplish. It's especially helpful if I have to take a break from the game for a few days.

I do not, never did, and never will draw my own maps. I'm absolutely hopeless for stuff like that, both in real world and in games. I can easily get lost even with an auto map, survivng without one or making my own one is out of the question. My sense of direction is terrible. A bad map in a game can easily become my worst enemy, more so thant bad controls or camera or anything.
Post edited July 11, 2016 by Breja
There's always a pen and a notebook handy. My notes for Riven look like some scrawlings of a crazy person: copies of diagrams from in-game books, various symbols I encounter, and my trying to make sense of the game's numerical system. But the weirdest are those where I try to arrange the numbers, symbols and drawings in various ways in an attempt to discover something new hidden behind it all whenever I'm stuck.

Note taking isn't necessary in modern games. Oftentimes I'll jot down a piece of information or a password revealed to me, only to discover later that it's recorded in the journal or in my character's "memory" (used automatically).
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Breja: I do not, never did, and never will draw my own maps. I'm absolutely hopeless for stuff like that, both in real world and in games. I can easily get lost even with an auto map, survivng without one or making my own one is out of the question. My sense of direction is terrible. A bad map in a game can easily become my worst enemy, more so thant bad controls or camera or anything.
You look like you need (a monkey. - sorry, couldn't hold myself... ) Grimrock's "Old School Mode". :P
I always have pen and paper nearby. I suppose I often gravitate towards games that warrant note-taking; I've recently been playing System Shock 1 and Zero TIme Dilemma, both games that really want you to take notes.
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Vythonaut: You look like you need (a monkey. - sorry, couldn't hold myself... ) Grimrock's "Old School Mode". :P
I love both Grimrocks, but if "old school mode" was not optional I would probably never get past the first level of the first game. That's actually one of the things I like about it so much- you want it hardcore, with no map other than what you draw yourself? Here you go! You have the sense of direction of a deaf bat? Here, have the auto-map. It's a nice, sane approach of a developer who remembers it's all about having fun, not proving how hardcore you are.

Although the name "old school mode" is something of a cheat. Old games also had auto-map! Well, some of them at least. I never would have finished Lands of Lore otherwise. I mean look at this! This is just one level of one cave, in a huge world full of dungeons, caves, labyrinths and gods know what else.
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Post edited July 11, 2016 by Breja
Depends on the game. I think I've never written down some plan for leveling up as you did...but if a game requires you taking notes for riddles (and if there's no in-game function for it), I've done so.
Most recent example I can think of was Planescape Torment which I re-played a few months ago. There's a certain section (the Modron Maze) which is very confusing, with dozens of rooms...I ended up mapping the whole dungeon on the cardboard of a notepad.
Wow, hadn't thought about this in a LONG long time! I used to make many notes while playing adventure and RPG games. I mapped all of Buck Rogers Countdown back in the day, and still have reams of notes from that one. That's probably the last time I did that.

Somewhere back in the (90s?) I ran across a PC program called Tornado Notes. It was a DOS (ASCII text only) product for quickly creating and finding notes. It was kinda like creating "PostIt(tm) notes" on your computer, and you would create "stacks" of these notes. To find any previous old note, you type "G" for Get, and then start typing the word you looked for. As you typed more letters, the program would continually scan through the notes looking for that combination of letters in sequence, and show you "graphically" how many "hits" you had so far. At any point, with sufficiently few hits gathered, you could hit Enter and use the arrow keys to scroll through the results. It was kinda like the "predictive suggestions" you see in your browser when you search for something in Google, and it tries to "predict" what you're going to ask. Only this was like 25 years ago, but only for stuff you personally stored.

Anywho... I remember using Tornado Notes with Ultima 6 to take notes. In fact, I also remember another program I had called Software Carousel. SC was a "multitasking" program (really just a "manual task switcher") that at the touch of a keystroke would swap the current program out of RAM to disk, and swapping IN to RAM whatever the next program "on the carousel" was. I could switch between U6 and TN, back and forth, to take notes for the entire game! That's the only game I ever did that with, but I really loved that Tornado Notes DOS program. I believe the company was something like "InfoLogic" and they eventually created a windows version called "Info Select", and they may even be out of business by now (I'm guessing).

Of course, these days you only need to bring up ANY text editor in a window beside your game, or just Alt-Tab between programs with ease (sometimes). Or use a pen and paper! 8)
Post edited July 12, 2016 by tritone
Yes.
Yep.
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nightcraw1er.488: Its called creative. Your map wouldn't look the same as mine. Maps might have embelishments, capture details different to others.
It's called painting. It's an art form we have practiced for millennia. You can do it without video games. Try it.

As for me, any non-skill based process (and writing down notes and drawing maps is not skillful in any way, just time-consuming, well unless you're a complete tool) which gets automated in my games is a +. Oh and you can also ... You know, not use the map in games, many RPGs allow for disabling of objective markers / don't have such a feature in the first place and you can draw all you want. Good luck, I do hope you have some a decent amount of cartographic knowledge in order to precisely depict, say, Skyrim's landscape :-P
Post edited July 12, 2016 by Fenixp
Yep, unless it's a game I know really really well. And with so many digital manuals - which I hate - I feel like note-taking is a necessity. I write out the important stuff - keys, commands, major plot points, etc. - and for me it's a lot easier to look at my notes than search through a journal or pausing the game to access options and then have to check which key does what...

Sometimes, if it's a new game, I'll spend my whole evening taking notes during the tutorial, just so I don't have to do it again!
Post edited July 12, 2016 by DieRuhe
I always have some pen and paper handy whenever playing games. I never know when I might have to jot down some critical tidbit of info that will be needed to solve a puzzle or progress further. For some games on GoG, I would say not having a pencil/pen and paper handy for notes is suicidal. :P