I have a pile of papers from my last Pathfinder character sheets, earlier DnD character level sheets, and some old bank mail sheets that I’ve jotted down notes and doodled on. It lives on the left edge of my computer desk. And of course, it lives atop other things I intended to take care of, over a month ago. Hahaha.
edit: Just found another piece of paper that had a bunch of things going on. A section where I was working out a framework and wording for a birthday message. A hell of a lot of practice cursive signatures so I can have “a cool stylized yet simple” signature. Doodles of all sorts of things. Most are playing with space (or volume if you may) and layout. Some are works on semitry. Then I spent time looking and crafting two names for a fantasy setting story I’m “working on.”
edit2: grammar
Oh yeah - Myst required lots of notes, because there were things that you’d learn at one point that were clues to some puzzle somewhere else. And yeah - just in general you needed to keep notes, because the games didn’t record hardly anything.
And none of the early RPGs generated maps - if you wanted a map, you had to draw it yourself.
I still make video game notes but they’re mostly just reminders - things like “500 wood for Robin” or “need Nordic helmet for mannequin at Heljarchen.”