I saw this earlier and thought it was rather fun.

What is a composition notebook, though? Do they have a particular size? I've got one which might be a composition notebook, but I'm not sure.

Graham

Love, love, love this, as per our previous discussions. Count me in.

Never touched a composition notebook, but I used to have pocket-sized ring binders in which I designed a lot of games. I loved them because I could move the pages around, which was handy because I always worked on two or three projects at a time. Weekends would find me in the most disastrous bars, dance clubs and coffee shops in the city (ones that prove truth is stranger than fiction), gleefully writing away.

Then the manufacturer stopped making them. I've tried books with fixed pages, but it just isn't the same. I've tried larger binders, but they're clumsy. Weekends find me in less interesting haunts. On the up side, my game designs are more hopeful in nature.

I like the sturdier journals, but it's a similar principle. Uncle Bear discusses it here and here. The second one discusses how I organize the campaign bible in order to improve the actual game. (Protip: Characters on every page, put things you need to remember to say in a box on the page, for me that's physical descriptions.)

They usually look like the Black 'n Red hardbound in terms of size and binding, though I have a lot of different designs. I like having a full 8 1/2 by 11 page, that way I can glue-stick envelopes onto certain pages to hold mini-character sheets, index cards, whatevah. The $9 price point for the Black 'n Red is also where I look, normally I can find them for $5-6 and recently a clearance bin had a massive pile for $2 (some with funky designer covers and cool-colored margins on the pages) and one of these trilogy journal sets for $10. I'm waiting for my next GIANT MULTICAMPAIGN EXTRAVAGAAAANZAAAAA before I use that one.

PS, same clearance bin had this for $3. Expand the image so you can see how great that is - the box is PRE-PRINTED.

That reminds me, I should find screenshots of composition notebooks in movies and TV. I wonder how often the insanity/compy connection is referenced in popular media.

Bah.

Spiral notebooks FTW.

Ben, that's exactly the kind of mod I'd love to feature on the blog, if I have your permission. Got any scans or pics that could be used as visual reference?

Side note: I just noticed this morning that danielsolis.com is down. I'm trying to get this fixed.

I used to swear by Mead composition books that I'd import from the US. Now I'm a moleskine user. But my requirements have changed over time.

Back in college I used these once or twice. I still have the composition notebook that I meticulously hand copied all the spells for Cold Iron from a computer printout when I first became interested in the game and the author didn't want the text file shared. I have some other notes from my first campaign in that book.

I think I did use a composition notebook once or twice for other games, but no longer have them.

We also made some use of bluebooks, the 8.5x11 or 8x10 16 or so page notebooks often used for exams in college. We used them for campaign notes, and even extended character records sometimes.

Frank

Oh, icons!! Fuck yeah! Great idea.

I tried in vain to use a single notebook.
I'm just not that organasized.
I've thought of getting a corkboard and pinning all my little notes onto that.

Posted By: vulpinoidWe don't really get books like that in Australia, and I worked in a major stationary retail chain for six years.

Plenty of spiral notebooks (harcover and softcover), numerous types of accounting ledger books (some with plain pages, lined pages, assorted numbers of pre-marked columns, some with numbered pages), and then the ring bound compendiums/portfolios of the description given above by madunkieg with dozens of types of page inserts (from plain, lined, gridded, dated, mapped, etc.)

Yeah, I use 128 page Tudor exercise books - the ones with a blue cover. I've been using them for over tean years, and while I don't go through nearly as many now as I used to (due to employment and better computer access), I always carry one with me.

I used many comp books of many sizes in my games, but none so much as the ones I used for my college Amber games.

I will see if I can scare them up and take some pics.

I would start the game with a fresh book and the first few pages were filled in during the auction, the Player interviews during PC creation, and then I would start logging and making notes while running. They became a very handy log of the games.

I am a serious stationary junkie (fortunately, one the cheaper end and not going to "A Paper Affair" and such...yet). I have started relaying more and more on clipboards and my laptop, so I have a record that can be backed up and saved and such.

I love, love, love composition notebooks, and my locally owned office supply store has a nice selection of colors and alternative graphics on the cover. Steal Away Jordan was written almost entirely in a compy with the cutest kittens that you ever did see on the cover.

For Malice I've gone old school and am using basic black and white. I have a purple one that I use for planning herbals, soap formulas, and knitting projects. When I went to Pureto Rico I got a smaller one that had a denim pattern on it to use as a travel journal. My 9 year old daughter has a couple that she keeps her poetry and short stories in.

They're better than spiral notebooks if you're left handed because left handed spiral notebooks cost twice as much. I have a spiral-at-the-top one that I use in a religion class I'm taking, because it had a nice hard back and was suitable for writing in while sitting on the floor. Otherwise, I'm all over the compies.

Julia, if you have pics of that Steal Away Jordan notebook, I'd love to see them! Thanks for leaving the first comment, btw. :)

Judd, I'd love to see those Amber notebook pics when you get a chance to take them, too!

I've posted the first writeup of what I hope will be a series about our notebooks and the stories behind them. You can find it here.

If you'd like to share your notebook, take a picture of the cover and some choice pages, then write a couple paragraphs. Doesn't matter if it's just chicken scratches or idle doodles as long as there's a story behind 'em. High-res pics are preferred, so we can see all the notes and stuff. :D

I walked in to a RiteAid yesterday and stumbled upon a "Buy 1 Get 3 FREE" compie sale. I immediately transcended and am writing this post from the great beyond. It may be worth checking your local RiteAid if you have one to see if they have a similar sale going on. Oh, also, six-packs of assorted color highlighters for $0.29 at Walgreens. 29 CENTS!

Um... paper... yeah... I think I recall it... must have used it at some point.

I've done 100% of my RPG design on a computer since 2000. I have a strong aversion to paper. Even for reading, but especially for writing.

I do print stuff out as necessary for play. But I'm looking forward to a day when I can just upload everybody's character to their laptop.

Just another data point.

Mike

Okay, so let's everyone gather around and talk about our compys again, and this time we have PICTURARES OR IT DINT HAPPAN

As I mentioned above, I'm a fan of hardbound Red & Black journals for putting campaigns in. It really keeps the notes in a "proper" way and helps me organize out of the scribble-scratch into something more intuitive. Well, there's recently been an excellent product that is similar, the "Pink & Black", which if you buy, Mead will send some money to breast cancer research. You can get it at Staples or maybe find it in the discount bin at OfficeMax. Or you can get it here.

Here are some pictures that will help you see how great my setup is. I'm currently working on a game set in the Marvel universe, in which the characters are the new incarnation of the Initiative (the US government program to ensure there's at least 2 superheroes in every state) for California, after the previous one fell apart under the corrosive pressure of celebrity culture, drugs and corruption. I'm using a Pink & Black journal to organize it


Here's what it looks like on the outside. I normally just scratch the name of the game into the laminate cover rough-style, though artisty people probably have a better method.


This is what the table of contents looks like. I try to keep it simple, though sometimes I will mark which side of a major conflict a character is on here. Tony Stark (for example) would get a "+" or a "h" to indicate he's a hero. Villains would get a "-" or a "v". Not sure if I'm going to do that or not. I mark each page in the upper right with a number. The margins can also be used for symbols (as others here suggested.)


This is the start of a character page for Tony Stark. At the lower right I've got a little mini-envelope I taped to contain the character sheet. (Characters in MURPG have very simple sheets.) Essentially this is just a colored piece of paper slightly wider than the sheet I want to put in. I also folded the sheet so that the name was visible. (You can fold character sheets in MURPG because when you're using them there are stones on them holding them flat.)


This is what the character sheet looks like unfolded.

Here are a couple of pictures of the latest versions of that Walgreens journal I was raving about, the PlanAhead Undated Jumbo Journal.



I'm not as thrilled with the yellow borders as I was with the earlier green and then maroonish borders, but it's still perforated ( <3 ) and still super thick ( <3 <3 ) and still around $6.50!

I thought I was the only person who read The Order. I miss that book.

Okay, so let's talk about paper.

Paper in most composition books is the same boring old filler paper that you find in most packets. It's lined, it even may still have a red line down the side even though in a composition book your ability to use the margins is minimal at best due to the size and the stitching making the paper bend sharply there.

There's lots of different reasons to like different kinds of paper in your campaign notebook.

First, let's talk about paper weight. Technically this is paper density. Wikipedia has an introductory article on the subject.

I tend to like paper at the extremes:

Super-thick bond-style paper is good because when you're using a fountain pen, you have plenty of "give" in order for the pen to get the ink flowing. A thin sheet, when you're getting those first few words out, is likely to tear.

Super-thin paper lets ink bleed through, which I very much like, to a degree. It is a cool artifact of writing with ink and it adds to the attractiveness of the following page, if not to an extreme. (If it bleeds through to an extreme, it's probably a problem with your pen.)

The one thing I don't like is super-smooth paper. When you use fountain or gel pens, super-smooth paper often won't take the ink and will smear. This is very very bad. It messes up prior pages and current pages and it's not, unlike a few bleed-through spots, decorous at all.

The opposite, super-rough paper, is really fun to use with all sorts of pens. Even ballpoint pens (my least favorite kind of pens) are fun to use on paper that's got flecks and stuff in it. Target has just launched a line of banana paper notebooks that are fun to try this with. There's a three-notebook set, one of graph paper, one of blank paper and one of lined paper, that you can get for $8. Banana paper is better for the environment too.

I love Levenger...there's some good knockoffs available in OfficeMax for $10 for a bundle of 3 (identical) pads.

Staples has introduced a line of sugarcane-based paper notebooks, I've been using a spiral binder to work on some Dresden Files stuff.

Honestly I normally don't use spiral binders, because tearing papers out is very bad and leaves all kinds of junk inside the spiral. However, the paper, very thin, with a good surface, and perforated (and three-hole-punched) was perfect for the trip I was going on and the pens I was bringing, so I figured I'd give it a shot. There's also a pocket in the front you can put the papers that you've "finalized" in.

Always leave the perforated margin in a notebook when you tear out the paper, it makes it a lot easier to tear out future sheets if there's a chunk of past margin sitting right on the perforation line.

All right, now let's talk about pens.

The kind of pen you want is absolutely constrained by the kind of paper you're using.

First, and most important, you want a strong contrast between the paper you're using and the color of ink in the pens.

For example, in the Pink & Black above, the lines are light blue (as they often are in composition notebooks too). Thus I am using a bold black ink pen. In the yellow notebook above, I can use dark blue or black. If the paper is dark/shaded/patterned, then you want an even darker pen.

Second, look at the type of paper you've got and pick a pen type accordingly.

For super-thin paper, a ballpoint pen is a lot of fun, especially a mega-bold ballpoint pen, as it will give the paper pleasing tactile texture. Razor or micro-point pens are likely to tear. However, on thicker paper, ballpoint pens are boring, don't use them, what, do you work in an office? Pff.

Gel pens are excellent, but be sure that your paper isn't too glossy to absorb the ink, otherwise it will smear.

Rollerball pens have the same principle.

The very best pens, of course, are fountain pens. Here are some tips to take care of your fountain pens:

1 - Always store them with the nib up. This way ink won't pool in the nib and dry there.

2 - If your nib is clogged, remove it and put it in a small cup of warm water for an hour or so. Rinse briefly, dry THOROUGHLY, including inserting a tissue into the threaded barrel end and letting it draw out the water. Then "write" for a while until the ink starts flowing again.

3 - Change the ink cartridge when the cartridge is empty, not when the pen stops writing. This especially creates a pleasing shift if you are introducing a color change!

4 - If you're having trouble getting the ink flowing, get a drop of water on your fingertip and touch it to the slit between the nib's tines. Let it soak in, then, as before, write a bit to get the "watery" ink out.

If you really must, there is a disposable fountain pen on the market, the Pilot Varsity, overpriced but reliable.

OfficeMax has a creditable $10 Divoga fountain pen with a purple checked cap that works well with good care.

Posted By: Paul T.I also love blank-page, thick-paper books that look like old diaries from a quirky film. But they're often so beautiful that I'm too afraid to write in them, so they just sit on my shelf.

That is precisely why I love humble composition notebooks. They can happily take a coffee stain or ink spill and you haven't taken a hit in your wallet.

Posted By: Paul T.At first I thought they were too small, too awkward to write in, but their size means they're so convenient to pull out of a pocket on a plane, or at a bus stop, or anywhere else, that I end up using them a LOT. The cover is very durable, and the little books are very thick, too, which is nice.

This is precisely why I've never been able to give composition books the love I've always felt they deserved. I buy them, they sit on my shelf looking at me reproachfully, asking me to fill them with interesting things, and I blank out.

But with a notebook or pad I can keep in my pocket and carry with me everywhere, I feel alright just writing whatever (though I still insist on organizing the notebook by topic - so I have a game design notebook, and a general notes one, and whatever). Moleskines would be better, but right now all I can get my hands on are the little 3x5 or so mead spiral notebooks. The paper isn't very pleasant, and they're not very durable, but they sure are portable and cheap!

Posted By: JDCorleyHey, compy/journal fans, Walgreens has a fucking awesome fat, perforated, bound journal for sale cheap in their back to school section. It's $6 (and likely to drop as they clear out closer to the school year starting). Right now the two designs I've seen are green and some kinda weird brown/red floweredy thing. It's not on Walgreens.com (yet?) so I can't give you a link but it's damn good.

It's finally on Walgreens.com.

I usually brainstorm on paper. I use a variaty of notebooks. (Composition), spiral, and even yellow legal pads (Which are strangely my preference.)

I think the logic is because its easier for me to write on legal pads being left handed, and a bit odd with my slow printing. (Rather than fancy cursive some people use.)

Although when getting it all together I prefer to type. I can type 80+ words a minute, without error, if I'm in the right frame of mind. (If not, you just need to skim my posts to see how my fingers can hate me at times.)

What's sad is that this thread has outlived that blog. I haven't posted anything new to it in a long while. :P