[Gauging opinions] Easier note keeping? What would you need?

Hey guys, I want to try and gauge everyone’s thoughts here. I want to try and encourage my players to make more notes and keep track of things more. As a player, if there was an extension that could be made, what would make it easier? What would encourage you to take more notes?

Example solution: a box that is always on your screen in which you could drop text and links into that will be added to a single note record

Example solution: a button the gm presses that signals to the players they should probably be taking notes

May want to look at this. May do what you want

https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forum...ency-Extension

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Originally Posted by Beemanpat

May want to look at this. May do what you want

https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forum...ency-Extension

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Got it, they don’t use it either

Player Agency I think is pretty convient to use. Sounds like they need a reason to take notes. If they miss details because their memories don't recall them you may have to pull a......"I've altered the deal, pray I don't alter it further." -Lord Vader. Encourage them get things down in writing.

Good luck! In my experience a player is either a note-taker, or the are not. I don't see an extension changing this. But I could be wrong.

In the player's defense, often for them it's weeks or months between they were told something and when it comes into play again. For their character, it may be mere hours, or even minutes in some cases (though the other way is certainly possible, as well). I usually allow an Intelligence check for the character to remember something. If they fail, it's their own darn fault when they get screwed over for not recording it... :)

While I agree, that some players just don't like to take notes, one can certainly try to give them some incentive to do so.
Really handy would be a tool that uses some kind of auto completion for eg shared entities/entries/images with automated linking. This would take away the pressure to quickly search, find and drag'n drop them into ones notes, all the while listening to what's going on. Unfortunately as far as I understood, FG is not (yet?) capable of such a thing. FoundryVTT for example is ways ahead in this regard.

Dreaming aside, I have made very good experiences with pre-formatted handouts that are easy to use and give the players some kind of guidance on what information is worth to write down. Maybe you could look into providing your players something like this.
I'm thinking of several entry fields, that sort the input into a preformatted layout on confirmation.

My Players know that I won't help them out with hints (even if it breaks what I had planned) if they were to lazy to take notes. I only allow character specific rolls like "Would I know something about this? I'm a Paladin after all and must have studied this" - "Yeah sure, roll either on Religion or History". But if your players don't feel the need to write anything down, because they know you might hint at what's missing anyway, you can certainly give them a good wake-up call with a more unforgiving approach.

I also reward players that wrote down information by giving them reminders, mostly ingame, that they made a note about this.

"As you come to rest, you are finally able to focus your mind. Yes, that's it, something like this happened 3 days ago". My players have learned, that this means they wrote something down that is of help to them. Keep in mind, that this requires you to read you players notes and remember what they wrote down.
Inside FG this could mean some kind of functionality that lets the GM see what players wrote down, just like the Player Agency extension does.

In conclusion: Taking notes is necessary, especially if each session is weeks or months apart. But the GM has to make taking notes worthwhile.

I think that my players have gotten out of the habit of taking good notes because they didnt have great tools to do it with.
Im trying to get them used to using them again.