Myst 1, and Her Story which is practically made with this approach to gameplay in mind. And probably Darkstone very soon, because it's quest log is that bad ^^'

And Ultima IV which I've tried a few months ago. I intend to get back to it - it's antiquated but the basic gameplay is neat and joting notes down definitely fits the 'on your own' feel. I do think in this case and any other indie game relying on notes, this is part of the gameplay even if it's not inherently virtual.

Haven't done much of that recently, but a few years ago when I played Planescape Torment again, I mapped out the entire Modron maze on the cardboard of a notepad.

Yes to all these questions. It's cumbersome and immersive and immersion breaking and cool and satisfactory and annoying..... It' all of the above!!

Not handwritten but using the Windows Notepad, I had shitloads of notes written to finish the main part of West of Loathing but so many in-game things left undone too.

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Last year I laminated my Darklands map and with dry erase markers kept track of where Id been and where specific stuff happened. I also have notes to accompany the map with more details. Im 60 hours in but never finished so recently I perused the stuff and I wish I had been a little more thorough with the stuff.

That said I dislike keeping notes. I hate alt tabing out of a game to use windows notepad partially because I use a Steam controller for old RPGs. I dislike turning on the lights to write notes but its not as bad. My favorite system was Ultima Underworld where you could write notes directly to your map, but even that is annoying now since I adopted the Steam controller.

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Mapping ishar's towns for recruiting... ages ago... my pc was an Amd 586 133mhz 32mb ram 1gb hd... great times!!!

Niche - a genetics survival game.

List of who I want to (or did) breed with whom.
Lists to figure out who to take to the next island.