I pulled these notebooks out and flipped through to see what I had written down, I was not disappointed. Massive nostalgia wave for sure.
The first notebook, which was also the smallest happened to be the oldest. I recognized information in there about the original Everquest online game, which came out in 1999 and became super popular through the middle of the early 2000s. Also within this notebook, I found:
- Notes pertaining to an AD&D 2e campaign I had planned, surrounding a small town called Eastlit and a larger city which I called Morningstar.
- Ability stats for a Dwarven Cleric
- A list of favorite character names, which I still use to this day
- Some notes jotted down for the original Sovereign Stone RPG by Larry Elmore, Don Perrin, and Margaret Weis, which we never played
- Homebrew rules for AD&D 2e, determining random encounters by having players and DM roll a d6, each, and if any of the dice rolled by players match the DM, an encounter occurs.
- A short blurb/introduction for a campaign idea called The Last Horizon
- Information for a campaign-based website (back before blogs became the fad)
- DM notes on player character stats for 4 of players of our old group (including Ancalagon)
- DM notes on player actions which earned the group XP
- DM notes for monster encounters
- Notes on an idea I had for an adventure surrounding a cursed magic item called, Mion's Rose
- Player notes for a Bard character, when I played in someone else's game
Inside this notebook was the following:
- The very first page had notes on a campaign I had planned to develop called, "Starfall"
- Several of the pages after were filled out with information on one of my favorite self-designed adventures, Bandits in Blackwillow, which I ran with either AD&D 2e or Hackmaster, I don't recall exactly
- Some notes where I tried to created an RPG based on the Ultima fantasy series of computer games
- A list of mechanics and aspects which I had planned to poll on Dragonsfoot in an effort to homebrew my "perfect" edition of AD&D 2e
- Notes for a winter themed adventure
- A list of valid classes and kits for AD&D 2e
- Several pages with ideas for designing my own fantasy RPG
- The title for something called Midnight Crusade but no further info
- Several pages of notes for, again, designing my own fantasy RPG, mostly inspired by AD&D from what I can tell
- A small double-sided pocket which contain: 2 pieces of paper with geographic landmasses drawn; one of which has the words "Horns of the North" and an arrow pointing at two semi-circular peninsulas in what I assume was the northern part of the continent. There are also three sheets of graph paper with hand drawn maps of various areas/dungeons from my Bandits in Blackwillow adventure.
- Notes for running a hybrid game using Hackmaste and AD&D2e
- More hand drawn maps with side notes for the Blackwillow adventure
- Some notes and stats from a group of PCs from an AD&D based game
- And finally one page of stats for what looks like a character from TSR's Marvel Superheroes
This appears to the be the last time I was using notebooks to keep track of hobby related and similar information. Looking back on it now, I should have never quit. Yeah, a digital device is nice, especially for PDFs of RPGs and things, but taking notes on a device just doesn't hold the same weight or sentiment as hand writing things down in notebook.
I think it's time for me to pick this habit back up. However this go round, I may try to do more than just write down gaming and hobby related information. I might take a shot at just writing down day to day thoughts or experiences, something that I can pull out in another 20 years and look back on, fondly.
