ONENOTE for RPGs

Post by **Breakdaddy** » Fri Apr 02, 2010 5:51 pm

I am currently in the process of transferring all of my existing digitized documents from my various adventures and campaigns into Microsoft Onenote. This software is simply amazing. Realtime document changes, text, voice and video notes (fully SEARCHABLE phonetically), and multiple tabs for different systems, settings, and adventures. If you have access to this software, I suggest giving it a spin and seeing for yourself the awesomeness that it provides the organization-minded GM.

serleran · Post by **serleran** » Fri Apr 02, 2010 6:01 pm

Find me something not made my Microsoft, and I'd consider it. Heh. Playing. Looks neat, I guess. My method is more Post-It Note and deadwood.
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Dagger · Post by **Dagger** » Fri Apr 02, 2010 8:35 pm

I'm a software product manager and I rely heavily on OneNote for keeping all my ideas, other people's feedback, etc. all in one place.
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Post by **Breakdaddy** » Fri Apr 02, 2010 8:53 pm

Dagger wrote:
I'm a software product manager and I rely heavily on OneNote for keeping all my ideas, other people's feedback, etc. all in one place.

I havent been using it at work much, but that's about to change now that Ive become familiar with the product.

Piperdog · Post by **Piperdog** » Fri Apr 02, 2010 8:57 pm

BD,

that looks awesome dude. I need to look into this.
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Post by **Breakdaddy** » Fri Apr 02, 2010 9:26 pm

Piperdog wrote:
BD,

that looks awesome dude. I need to look into this.

Yeah chieftain, its rawkin so far. Ill be using the hell outta this for all of my adventure-makin' needs. Ive even popped some of my favorite tables from CITIES and ULTIMATE TOOLBOX into it so I can one-click over to them as needed.

Sir Osis of Liver · Post by **Sir Osis of Liver** » Fri Apr 02, 2010 11:19 pm

I'm using NBOS's The Keep v1.0 for my stuff. Similar idea that I can tell, where you can do tabbed browsing of all your topics, but the program is compatible with Fractal Mapper and the NBOS Character Sheet creator. You can link between the programs, as well as PDFs etc. Good stuff.

double-c · Post by **double-c** » Sat Apr 03, 2010 1:15 pm

Best thing microsoft ever made next to windows 7. I've been using it to manage my game notes since 2005.

AGNKim · Post by **AGNKim** » Sat Apr 03, 2010 2:52 pm

I played in that adventure in the example. Wish we could have continued it, it was a great deal of fun...

As far as OneNote, I have it (bundled w/ Office 2010), but have no idea how to use it. Seems like a sloppy Word with tabs and such. I know I'm missing something, but I'll be damed if I "get it". Preach it to me, BD.
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koralas · Post by **koralas** » Sat Apr 03, 2010 11:27 pm

OneNote 2010 is a huge improvement over earlier versions, and synching to a network source (we use SharePoint) makes it easy to share notebooks.

An open source application called Tomboy works very similarly to the older versions of OneNote. Tomboy has a synch feature built in as well. The rich text editor is also not very robust, and doesn't paste formatting into it, though you can format the text, and when copying out of it, it works fine.

A better open source application is called Keynote, and it has a much better editor, and more robust interface. Development was stalled for a long time as the original developer stopped work on the project, but in Nov. 2009 a new version was release after a new programmer started to work on it. It is a bit of a cludge to install, the best way is to go to the original web site http://www.tranglos.com/free/keynote.html and download the full installer, run it then download the current version, and extract it, copying the files over the originals. The current version is found here http://code.google.com/p/keynote-nf/, this is the home page, read it over, and then go to the download page. Still not as good as the latest OneNote, and the whole document spell checker relies on Word, so if you do not have MS Word (the original site mentions Word 97 or 2000 not sure if other versions work with it) installed, and you aren't sure of the spelling of a word, you will have to select it then use the menu option - Insert - WordWeb, or hit Ctrl-F11. This is pretty cool though as you can select a word and also use this as a thesaurus.

One last note... uh, er... comment... Evernote which is free or pay is another solution, but your data is stored on their servers. They have some great features, and you can get to your notes from just about any device, pc, phone, or any web enabled device. http://evernote.com

Tomboy works on Linux and Windows, where Keynote will run on Windows only, well maybe on Linux with WINE. Now if OpenOffice.Org will add similar functionality, I will be very happy!

koralas · Post by **koralas** » Sat Apr 03, 2010 11:34 pm

AGNKim wrote:
I played in that adventure in the example. Wish we could have continued it, it was a great deal of fun...

As far as OneNote, I have it (bundled w/ Office 2010), but have no idea how to use it. Seems like a sloppy Word with tabs and such. I know I'm missing something, but I'll be damed if I "get it". Preach it to me, BD.

OneNote is a way to organize your notes, and really can do much more with the new features. You can use it to basically organize, collect, and make search-able documents for a task, project, or anything you can think of. THis can be documents, notes in the scaled down editor, images, audio and video. With all features (and some I think require sharepoint), you can even search the audio that was recorded. OneNote 2010 has quickly become a staple for our IT department, and we use it to keep minutes for all of our meetings, as well as notes for projects.

From a gaming standpoint, I can see it being used to organize a campaign, store documentation, and keep notes for GM's and Players alike. Sharing some of those notebooks is a great way to make sure everyone has all of the up to date information they need. In fact, aside from taking notes at the table, the GM could pre-load all kinds of information into notebooks, NPC's, stat blocks, whole adventures, and even use it for their campaign management tool.

Post by **Breakdaddy** » Sun Apr 04, 2010 12:51 am

Kim, if you wanna know, ask me next time we talk on the phone. As fpr the 2010 version mentioned, I downloaded the beta version from our departmental Technet subscription but the outlook 2010 started acting very squirrelly and was unreliable enough that I had to back up to 2007. We will have a full site license for 2010 Final, so I will run it and see how the new features live up to the hype. We use sharepoint at work but since my primary stuff has been done on linux lately, I havent been able to mess with sharepoint or onenote much for work. I will do it for our next major deployment and likely be glad that I did. Thanks for the heads up Koralas.

AGNKim · Post by **AGNKim** » Sun Apr 04, 2010 1:30 am

Breakdaddy wrote:
Kim, if you wanna know, ask me next time we talk on the phone.

Cool, I will. ...

Breakdaddy wrote:
but the outlook 2010 started acting very squirrelly and was unreliable enough that I had to back up to 2007.

Did the same for me. Just FYI, go to "File", "Options", "Add-ins", at the bottom "Manage: COM Add-ins -> Go" and turn them all OFF. It has been stable since for me. Sorry to derail.
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Post by **Breakdaddy** » Sun Apr 04, 2010 1:44 am

AGNKim wrote:
Cool, I will. ...

Did the same for me. Just FYI, go to "File", "Options", "Add-ins", at the bottom "Manage: COM Add-ins -> Go" and turn them all OFF. It has been stable since for me. Sorry to derail.

Wordages.