It was time that I sat down and thought hard about this. Note, that everything I'm going to say might not work for you. Everybody is different. Do what works for you. This is not the solution but a solution. A solution that has to work for me.

What makes notes good?

It has to be legible, sure, but that's not the scope of this post. Training and improving your handwriting is a different beast.

Good notes, retain the necessary information quickly, consistently and can be easily retrieved from those notes.

Quick for me means, that taking notes should be simple enough that it doesn't hinder the flow of writing them down. If I have to get out a flow-chart to write down my notes, it wouldn't be good.

Consistent means, that the same things are noted down in a similar way. This means introducing some rules on how to write the notes (that should be quick to implement, as per above).

The resulting notes should then also be readable by other people and they should understand the notes without even necessarily needing to know the rules to write them.

The impossible made possible

There was an old advertisement in the 90s for Kinder Suprise that had the tagline: "3 things at the same time? Impossible." But then I found Lonelog, which almost looked like all I was searching for.

Conceived to take notes for solo sessions (there's a variant now for party notes as well, called Partylog), it provides a simple core notation.

So some notes might look like this.

@ Sneak past the guards
d: Stealth d6=2 vs TN 4 -> Fail
=> Something happens

? Do they see me?
-> No, but... (d6=3)
=> Something happens

Pretty simple and self-explanatory. There's a bit more to it but in its core, you would only work with these symbols and be done.

Some minor grievances

All in all, Lonelog was mostly the answer to my problems. But I had some minor issues with the notation. I feel that some of the symbols are either redundant or ambiguous. There are some optimizations in Partylog though.

For example, the oracle question could also be formatted as such:

? Do they see me?
d: d6=3 -> No, but
=> Something happens

There's also two "hidden" symbols not declared in the initial table: gen and tbl, which are basically d but with a fancier name. Most often it is clear from the context what roll is being made, so why bother having two new symbols for that.

Another thing is, that there's a bit of a heavy reliance on []. When writing quickly these will often turn into (). I don't like that.

Furthermore there's the following claim in Lonelog:

[The symbols] are carefully chosen to avoid conflicts with markdown formatting....

I don't know about you, but [] are a hard conflict with markdown formatting.

They are also heavily used for different purposes, kind of a catch-all. And if you add some extensions, they are also hidden behind brackets.

[Thread:Escape the City|Closed]
[PC:Elara|HP 15|Ammo 3|Status:Wounded]
[N:Jonah|friendly|injured]
[Clock:Ritual 5/12]
[Track:Escape 3/8]
[COMBAT]
...
[/COMBAT]

Adjusting to my needs

I took another quote from Lonelog to heart.

The system is fully modular: grab what works for you and leave the rest behind.

So I invented my own dialect, which I preliminary call Mythlog.

My core symbols are as follows:

They are very similar and mostly work the same way. So here would be the same example from above in my dialect.

@ Sneak past the guards
?(Stealth:TN 4) d6=2 -> Fail
! Something happens

?(Do they see me?) d6=3 -> No, but
! Something happens

This follows also the natural flow of play. Some actions are taken, there's an uncertainty and then there are consequences, that result in changes and effects on the world state.

You can also track for example Tension Pool with this notation:

!(Tension) 2 -> 3
?(Tension:Reckless) 3d6 = (1, 3, 5) -> Complication
?(Complication) d12 = 7 -> Setback
?(Setback:Random Encounter:tbl) -> 4 Giant Rats, close, angry

Again this should be pretty self-explanatory on what has happened here.

What you see also, that next to the symbol I include an optional context, that is within (). You can use them with all symbols to make it clearer. So you could also use it for @ to for example clarify who is doing a specific action.

I introduced also another symbol that is not present in Lonelog which lets me define stuff I can use later on in an easier fashion. If you are familiar with programming this would be a variable definition.

$(NPC:Jonah) friendly,injured
$(Clock:12) Ritual
!(Ritual) 4 -> 5
!(Jonah) injured -> healed

I also handle scene headers a bit different. I employ here a format stolen from screenplay writing: Slug Lines.

EXT. DARK ALLEY. - NIGHT

Problem solved?

Not entirely. I have used this notation now for some sessions as player and GM, but I'm not fully happy with it yet.

I'm trying to keep track of everything that happens. Especially as a GM that means, that I often have to "pause" the game to write things down. Of course I try to write things down as the players are conversing, but sometimes I have to take my 10-20 seconds to write things down, were everybody is waiting for me. I have to figure out, what is really important to write down and what not. This isn't necessarily a problem with the notation.

Especially with the scenes it takes a bit of time to write down the complete slug line. But it is really helpful to keep track of the current watch and position in the world for me. It is worth the effort. I also want to make it a bit better visible in the full text. Maybe I add some symbol in front of it, but I don't know yet what. I want it to be different to $ so I can easier spot scenes.

Where the slug line is a bit of a nuisance is inside of dungeons. There's a lot of redundancy.

INT. DUNGEON. ROOM 1 - MORNING
INT. DUNGEON. ROOM 2 - MORNING
...

I have to find a better notation for that.

Also unclear for me now is how to handle combat. Currently I just keep track of enemy health and that's it. I do not log every single hit and damage roll. Especially not when I GM.

So there are some things still left open.