An interesting topic, and it's even more interesting to learn that some people here do actually take pen-and-paper notes while playing games. I have always thought that I'm the only person who does that!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Daniel E.
In general, I don't like to read FAQs to figure out things in my games.
I am always making notes about the things I play, often so I can use them on a second playthrough. I have several notebooks, all filled with passwords, quick maps, puzzles and riddles solutions, etc, etc.
Been doing this since forever and even now I still take notes whenever I feel I may forget about something.
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I go even further than that. I've been writing entire
journals of my gameplay experience since the early days of strategy games like Koei's venerable
Romance of the Three Kingdoms and
Nobunaga's Ambition. It wasn't until recently that I became consciously aware that I was actually writing stories based on what my characters/avatars/in-game personae do. In a way, I'm writing fan-fiction on the fly.
Like
Vexx, it's my way of becoming totally immersed in a game. Particularly for computer role-playing games, it can be a very lengthy process of me first trying to imagine who my character is — his or her back story, the motivations that drive him or her in the game world, what he or she wants to achieve — before I even
begin to play the game. I once told a friend that I see RPGs as a form of player-driven storytelling, not unlike the
Choose Your Own Adventure storybooks of the 1980s that have long since gone out of fashion.
She chided I was probably the only person who approaches games in that fashion. I believed her, and so decided that it's not worth bringing up this little obsession in public, because no one would really understand. Or worse, some may even find it creepy or weird.
Spoiler for an example of my character-creation process:
Case in point: I've never played an Elder Scrolls game before Skyrim. Still, I felt compelled to pore over various online reference sites to flesh out the character I had in mind before I started. Hence was born Sevrin Aventicus, a Cyrodiilian lordling of the Colovian Highlands, who fled his native province after setting free prisoners from his holdfast accused of Talos worship. In the west, Hammerfell was fighting its own war against the Thalmor. In the south, the Aldmeri Dominion was at its strongest. In the east, the Legion would almost certainly run him to ground in the Heartlands. So, the only option was to go north, into Skyrim. He was caught anyway at the border and would have been doomed to execution in Helgen.
The rest, as they say, is history.
And it
is an obsession that sometimes makes the gaming much more of a chore than it needs to be. And I almost never go back to these notes once I'm done with the game, which makes the process seem even more pointless.
Yet, when all is finally done and dusted, I'm left with the sheaf of notes that is the evidence of my having
experienced the game and not just played it. I may not refer to it ever again, but it pleases me that a character I had envisioned and "lived through" for a while continues to exist in some physical form, independent of my memories and imagination.
That, to me, is what makes a role-playing experience
complete. I don't know if I could play such games differently, even if I tried.