Anyone using Onenote?

[JohnnFour]

Just tried OneNote for the first time this month and agree it's great. Gonna switch to it for next session's game management.

A cool feature is Tags. I tag sentences or blocks as To Do through my notes, and then I can look at all my To Dos at one time (Show All Tagged Notes). This means I don't have to duplicate items in a to do list somewhere, and every to do item can stay in context.

I have just started tagging items as Definitions to create a dynamic glossary. And, copying links to specific paragraphs and tables is making my notes easier to cross-reference.

Hope to see more tips as folks try this software out!

 

[Sytonis]

I have just started tagging items as Definitions to create a dynamic glossary. And, copying links to specific paragraphs and tables is making my notes easier to cross-reference.

Can you explain this in layman's terms?


Sytonis

 

[Psion]

For those who are using Googledocs, you should also check out google notebook.

It does not do what onenote does, but it does help to fill the gap between what docs and note.

I've been using google notebook for some time. It has the advantage of being pretty much system independent, and lets me share my notebooks.

For example, here's my little GM techniques notebook:
GMing Techniques

 

[Sytonis]

Can you explain this in layman's terms?


Sytonis

Shameless bump, as I think this could be really useful to my game.

 

[Merkuri]

Can you explain this in layman's terms?

To tag things, put your cursor on the paragraph you want to tag, then go to Inset -> Tags, and pick the tag you want. Then later you can go to Insert -> Tags -> Show All Tagged Notes to see the items you tagged. That's the basics of tags.

To create a hyperlink to a specific paragraph, right-click on that paragraph and select Copy Hyperlink to this Paragraph. Then go somewhere else, highlight some text, right-click and select Hyperlink, then hit Ctrl-V to paste in the hyperlink text. Click OK, then if you click on that text it'll bring you to the original paragraph.

 

[armorclass10]

Between the 4th ED simplicity and OneNote, DMing games is a breeze and we have more time to game. This is an awesome product for almost anyone not just gamers.

 

[Sytonis]

Thanks Merkuri, that's very helpful. I think I will start tag important items from now on. I may even split adventures up into subpages and have 1 page with hyperlink to save scrolling which will save time in actual game play.

So far I have just been using the search function and while that is very helpful, I've found especially in session logs that I have to try various spellings to find all the entries. "Where did character X first appear?" etc.

More things to mull over.


Sytonis

 

[Blizzardb]

I'd like to thank the people in this thread for introducing me to OneNote. I had it installed, as part of the Office, but I had no idea it is such a great DM tool.

If anyone hasn't tried it yet, I strongly recommend it!

 

[Merkuri]

I may even split adventures up into subpages and have 1 page with hyperlink to save scrolling which will save time in actual game play.

Note that you can use hyperlinks on the same page, as well. They don't have to go to different pages.

So at the top of your page you can have a table of contents and fill it with links to further down the page. And maybe if you have a list of rooms in your adventure where you'd normally say, "this door opens to room A4, and this door opens to room A17," you can actually hyperlink to the paragraphs that describe those rooms.

 

[KB9JMQ]

After reading this thread a couple of days ago I downloaded the trial version.
Wow it is great. I will be purchasing this for sure.