Pen, Paper, Index Cards and a Cellphone?

About a month ago the folks at Gnome Stew had an interesting post entitled I Love My Tiny Notebook which talked about the fact that as a gamer (particular those of us that GM) we frequently have ideas pop into our heads and by having a notebook with us we can write them down for future use.

Now there were quite a few comments to the post and a fairly good rundown of the different moleskin notebooks out there as they seem to be the tool of choice. Personally I’ve never owned one and don’t plan to buy one as I prefer to use index cards.

I know, I know, I’ve mentioned a number of uses for index cards before but let’s face it they’re cheap (I can get 250 for $1US), fit in your pocket (I typically carry a couple of dozen held by a binder clip) and come in a variety of colors if you choose to color code your notes. For me when I use them, I write down my note and when I transcribe it into my campaign or session planning notes I toss the card out – one less piece of paper and since I’m moving towards an all electronic gaming setup I only have one central repository of information to glean from.

So you have the pen to write with, the paper or index card to write on, so what’s up with the cell phone?

Recently I’ve started using an online service called Jott which allows me to dictate and send myself an email for reminders of action items that I need to accomplish at work, or when I log back online when I get home but then it dawned on me (cue the climatic music) why not use it for gaming notes?

Jott isn’t really intended for long notes but for a short, couple sentence in length, note about a new campaign idea, character personality to play, location to develop, or anything else it’s great. I dial up the service, tell it who I want to Jott, dictate and the email arrives shortly after. Quick, easy, safe for use while driving and best of all it’s already on the computer where I’m going to end up putting it anyway.

You can use the service to send emails to other members of your group, individually or as a group (you can post to your Yahoo group if you use that service as well) which makes it easy to get the word out to everyone of changes of venue or cancellations.

On the whole it’s a pretty useful tool that’s available for free (yes, you read that right, free) and may just get you to “jott” down those notes that you say you’ll remember later but then never do.

Take Jott for a test drive, I’d be interested to know what you think.

May your dice roll well.

Update: Jott has become a subscription service, if and when I come across something that will accomplish the same function and is also free I’ll pass it along.