Some of the most furious notes making sessions I've had while playing a game was when I finally read up on Oblivion's leveling system. That prompted me to plan out my leveling precisely so that my stat bonuses would always work out to +5's. Unfortunately that very quickly became incredibly tiresome, because each time a skill increased by 1 I had to tick it off in the correct box (strength related / agility related etc...). Next time I'm playing Oblivion I'm not going to bother myself one bit with it.

Note making is also kind of necessary in Morrowind's base game. The journal becomes a nightmare to navigate fairly early on into the game.

Oh yes, and I had long lists of level password written down at one point for The Lost Vikings. I still remember one of them: "SMRT" which takes you to a factory level.

In highschool I had a friend who was totally enthralled with Diablo. He and a friend planned to take turns playing it on a computer, and as he was going 2nd, he decided to utilize his time watching his friend play by making detailed hand drawn maps of the world...

Oh those were the days. I rarely make notes nowadays as the games are so dumbed down - all automatic mapping quest logging, don't even have to save yourself. Back in the day though I had books, big chunks of paper. Mapped out the whole of the Ultima games. Used to map everything, keep notes, wlakthroughs etc. Still had them until recently, but I scanned and binned them recently.

I usually have a piece of paper that lives underneath my keyboard, and I write notes on it as needed. I will occasionally use a small legal pad instead for certain games. In Uplink, for instance, I'll always jot down everybody's account numbers and passwords if I've hacked a bank, and I'll also jot down IP addresses for the "trace a hacker" missions.

ALL THE TIME!

Sometimes I still draw maps.

If I'm starting a classic RPG, definitely. I still have a lot of notes on the Ultima games, for instance.

I also kept extensive notes while playing La Mulana. By the time you're done with that one, you practically have your own "grail diary".

Depends on the game actually.

I like RPGs to be non-linear, so pen and paper is a good way to keep track of things.
I 'm found of the X universe, and there too, a paper "map" is necessary
I like big strategy games, but modern strategy games usually have a wealth of tools that make notetaking unnessary.

Now, I grew with old games. I actually played Eye of the Beholder II or war in Russia when they were first published, and that's where I got that habit of taking notes I guess. Games over time added some ways to avoid taking note (notepad, in game listing of objectives ... ) .

When playing adventure games that involve solving puzzles and remembering clues I always keep a piece of paper at hand. I could slowly make a book from the amount of notes I took while playing such games.
Some games even require this. Like when a puzzle requires you to crack a coded message. Good luck doing that without pen and paper :P

And sometimes it comes in handy in other games as well. Even if my in-game journal remembers the password/passcode etc, it's usually just much faster to scribble it down on a paper next to me.

In RPGs I never draw maps. Unfortuately my orientation skills are nonexistant. If the game is very old, and uses grid-based movement, with no "smooth" turn animations, then it's a lost cause for me even with automap, let alone without one. Draw a map myself? Ugh... I seriously can't. Cartography skill lvl 0.
So no, I want my automap, thank you very much.
The only exception was Miasmata, but drawing the map was part of the game, so I actually really liked that.

Last time I used pen and paper was when playing Anachronox. I took notes on side quests and jotted down information learned from NPC:s that migth come handy later. It was fun and was very useful.

In Mount & Blade Warband I wrote down the profits different goods made over time so I could decide which business to open in a given city.

I also used pen and paper in Oblivion to track skill progression. Oh what a horrible leveling system. It was cool in theory but didn't really work in practice.

Not really. Most of the time, I just use my brain-pen to write on some brain-paper to usually brain-forget it after some time. :P

Its called creative. Your map wouldn't look the same as mine. Maps might have embelishments, capture details different to others. But sure, call automapping "smart", anything with removes the need for the user to do anything is great. What is: "Old school Elite gamers", I just remember mapping out Ultima 7 and having such great fun. Am playing through Kingdoms of Amular at the moment, may as well just sticky tape the buttons down and leave. But look at the sparkly shaders, and post my playthrough on Youlube and it is the rocking new world.

No. These days, if a games makes me do paperwork to play it, I probably won't play that game very much.

As a rule, I don't use pen and paper. However certain games may need it - I did use for Morrowind on my first playthrough for example. I have Her Story in my backlog to play and from what I've read pen and paper will be useful :)

I rarely used pen and paper. It was one reason I preferred running games in a window so I could type my notes. Did quite a bit of work to get Star Control 2 to work under OS/2 in a window.

When I went through a large chunk of the DOS games I missed or never beat, nothing annoyed me more than having to take notes. It just feels like homework if you don't want to do it but are kinda required to. Happens in a lot of older RPGs or Point-n-Clicks. When you could open the map in Ultima Underworld and jot down a note right there in the game, I thought that was one of the smartest things ever. I wanna play my game, not stop and jot shit down or draw things out. Rips me right out of the experience.

I understand why they did that sort of thing, just like I understand why some RPGs couldn't fit all their story in the game, so they just tell you to "flip to page 56 in the manual" or something similar. But I'm grateful we don't HAVE to do that anymore more. If I see something that's important, I commit it to memory or mark it in the in-game map then get right back to playing.