Category Archives: RPGs

OGL Rollercoaster – End of the Ride?

The end of 2022 was full of rumbles about the OGL, but WOTC said it would be OK.

January, 2023 soon revealed WOTC’s (Wizards of the Coast) claims that all was OK were soon proven to be a lie.

Third Party Publishers and fans of games unrelated to D&D that used the OGL 1.0a took a stand and prominent people on various social media took a stand. In my experience, Twitter and YouTube were the prominent sources of the latest information and links to articles, as well as discussions.

While the OGL 1.0a was useful for those wanting to use D&D idea and even for those making totally unrelated games, I don’t use the OGL. I did put it on 3 products that didn’t need it, since my stuff was all my own creation, so I removed the OGL 1.0a from those products as it was a wasted page.

Things took a sudden turn the other day and after relaying that I explore a bit of encouragement to try other RPGs that aren’t D&D or its clones.

Surprise!

Now WOTC has apparently waived the white flag of unconditional surrender. [Internet Archive Link so it doesn’t vanish.] They said that they will not attempt to de-authorize OGL 1.0a AND they released the D&D 5e SRD 5.1 under a Creative Commons license.

Having the SRD 5.1 under an irrevocable CC license that also allows anyone to use it, change it, sell it, etc. as long as they give proper attribution means that a LOT of content is now free and available forever.

The one caveat is one must avoid Trademark infringement. If you use the SRD 5.1 you can’t say it is compatible with D&D or Dungeons & Dragons like you can do if you don’t use SRD 5.1. You can say it is compatible with 5e.

The biggest thing it opens up is the use of 5e style stat blocks and monster stat blocks and descriptions. While it does include the names of some previously taboo monsters and proper names, the state blocks and art of those are not included. Some of them are supposed to be trademarked. So while you can use the name, you must provide your own unique explanation of what they are if you want to make “safe” presentations of them in somethin you publish.

There is NO EFFECT on your home games, or even your streamed games.

Moving Forward

Many efforts such as the ORC License and Kobold Press’s Project Black Flag, and many others are still moving forward. WOTC has burnt the bridge of goodwill and realized it is too late for their biggest fans and supporters to join them. While some have decided this move by WOTC is enough for them and they will continue or return to D&D, so many see WOTC as an unreliable corporate entity.

The ORC License and Project Black Flag and others are continuing the course they feel WOTC forced them to take.

The biggest beneficiaries of the whole mess have been the third party publishers, like Paizo, Kobold Press, Goodman Games, Troll Lord Games, and many smaller shops and individuals. Paizo is said to have sold 6 months of product in two weeks and are out of stock of their Pathfinder 2e books. Paizo was poised to regain the ground it lost to D&D 5e. Back when D&D 4e came out, many flocked to Paizo. Now history repeats itself.

I’ve never played Pathfinder, and sadly, poor experience from players in organized Pathfinder Play at conventions have turned me off to it. I don’t care for organized play anyway. Plus I already have a large number of RPGs I received through Kickstarter Projects that I have yet to play.

Play Other RPGs

Many have pointed out that Pathfinder’s evolution from D&D 3e makes it “just a clone” of D&D and that there are other games besides D&D and its clones.

For RPG players that have only ever played D&D 5th Edition they are unaware of other RPGs and may have reservations about trying something different.

I want to join in those encouraging people to play games other than D&D and their clones. I still run and play other old TSR RPGs, plus newer RPGs. As I mentioned above, I have several RPGs from Kickstarters I’ve backed, but have never played them. I hope to rectify that. I have stopped backing Kickstarters for new RPGs, so at least I have a smaller target of games to squeeze in.

I began playing RPGs back in 1977 when the Holmes Blue Box Basic came out. We played many other TSR RPGs that existed & new ones as they came out. My peer group of players in high school formed the Science Fiction Book Club to get around the Satanic Panic nuts and mostly played new RPGs or rotated GMs in the library after school. The librarian was our sponsor. We also dabbled at least once in several other non-TSR RPGs either at each other’s homes or the school library.

The one thing that turned me off to some new games was the person running them loved them but didn’t yet have the skills to convey them and in those cases didn’t play the game again.

I’ve played even more since 2014 when I attended cons regularly.
Since D&D was my first RPG, it sort of defined what an RPG was and hit harder than all the others. I was more of a science fiction fan back then, but still played more AD&D than any other RPG.

I still run and play older versions of D&D. However, I will run more non-WOTC games in the future.

Check this link for my “Game Stack” of RPGs I have played and which I have one shots ready.

NOTE: I am not able to run them at present, but will let people know. I may do a monthly or weekly rotation to go through past one-shots I’ve run at conventions.

My Experience Trying New To Me RPGs

These are things game designers, character sheet designers, and GMs need to keep in mind.

My biggest issue with picking up RPGs that are new to me is the rules. This is true due to my aging brain not making sense of some rules as I could in my teens and 20s. If I can’t figure out how to generate and fill out a character sheet in short order, it turns me off. If a character sheet has information that is needed during combat (or the equivalent bulk of play in an RPG) but it is on the BACK of the character sheet, I won’t have an enjoyable session as I am fighting against the character sheet.

Both of the above examples are from my experience with D&D 5e. I tried generating a character and filling out the official character sheet and I had to jump from section to section and one piece of information (passive perception as I recall) I struggled to find in the Player’s Handbook, but found it in the Starter Set. Character generation should be a two page spread and should walk through filling out the official character sheet. Jumping around is unhelpful.

The character sheet issue was one where level abilities were on the back of the character sheet. In my first convention game playing 5e I didn’t figure out until the last round of combat that my character had advantage on initiative. That is something that should be on the front of the sheet. It wasn’t an official WOTC D&D 5e sheet as I recall, but then maybe it was. It’s been a while.

The other issue with picking up a D&D 5e character that has lots of level based abilities and maybe a level of another class makes them have so many options that I don’t see how to play them effectively if you didn’t rise up through each level and played a few sessions with that character to figure out all the things. Every high level character I ever had I played them as they improved and gained spells, spell levels, items, etc. so I knew how to play them and do all that they could do in a given situation.

Things like this have encouraged me to gravitate to simpler systems. Slot based or usage die based encumbrance is one. As a player of older RPGs my character sheet doesn’t inform what I can do. I am used to being able to attempt anything. Success is not necessarily guaranteed. Having a rule for everything is impossible. I want to play, not spend time fussing with trying to do everything “by the book.”

I hate it when GMs say, “Your character can’t do X because….” or they don’t even give a reason. Anyone should be able to wear armor, swing a sword, try to pick a lock, climb a wall, etc. Just because your character never studied to specialize doesn’t mean they can’t even try.

Because of this, I much prefer the Yes/And, No/But, and Maybe approach. If there isn’t an official rule to allow something, I’m OK with a mutually agreed method of adjudication. Perhaps if RPGs suggested how a GM and Players can have a mutual way to do this it would satisfy those who need a rule for everything.

The point is don’t be afraid to try new things. Some RPGs you won’t like. Try them under different GMs to ensure it wasn’t the GM presenting it poorly. One should try to play with different GMs and players anyway. It is easiest to do this at your local game store and at conventions. I always learn something from playing with different GMs and seeing the way they run their games. Similarly with different players I see how they approach different situations.

As a GM running the same one shot at one or more conventions with different groups of players at each one, it is amazing how the same scenario ends up being totally different when a different mix of players, characters, and their choices make the game. Players ALWAYS see solutions I would never think of, so I present problems for them to solve and reasonable solutions will work. Some may not be assured of success, but I give them a roll when there is a chance of failure.

Just remember, games are supposed to be fun. More fun is had when we respect each other and use our manners. Safety tools is party of that. If you can’t be kind to others at the table, then get some help to figure out why you can’t be kind. Being a jerk to a fellow human being is not fun. If you act like a jerk and use the excuse, “But that’s what my character would do.” you are NOT welcome at my table. If I’m a player, I’ll call it out and if there is no change, I will walk. If I’m the GM, I’ll call it out and if there is no change, you will walk. Enough of us humans are jerks to ourselves, we don’t need your help. Either be kind to others or go learn some solo RPGs where you can be a jerk to others in you own limited creativity.

Making up A Game with My Granddaughter

Back in August, 2019, I made up a super simple RPG with my granddaughter called “Dragon.” She was a player with a bent to be co-DM as she wanted the story to go a certain way. So while she’s got the mental capacity to play an RPG, she doesn’t yet have the hang of player/GM distinction.

She is a blue dragon who breathes lightning.She ate a bunch of people who were causing trouble. But she doesn’t eat them for her diet. She just drinks water and milk.

Then some more people came with weapons because they were upset she ate people. She breathed lightning on them. (I didn’t make it easy to just eat them as they were armored/prepared for that.)
While she was busy with the ones with weapons, some others were trying to take her treasure. She dealt with the thieves by stomping on them.

She elaborated that she has 3 sisters and they all have Anna and Elsa dresses (AKA Frozen) and had a slumber party.

She dominated the narrative, because things have to go her way.

I decided to do this since she was using her magic wand to “write” on my skin, my desk, etc. I used my magic to get rid of it. The little stinker said, “Magic, magic, take away your magic. Now you don’t have magic!”

So I decided it was time to add dice to our make believe. She loved that idea!

I let her choose what dice to roll for different things. I was thinking along the lines of stats, but nothing solid.

I just used dice for how many people eaten, causing trouble, trying to steal, etc.

Probably a simplified FATE like system or just use different dice for amounts.

She’s loved rolling my different dice since she was about 2. Back then it was what’s that number? Then it became which number is bigger, the one on your die or mine? So fun to play with her & see her so excited.

Developments in The Game

We still occasionally play this game.

Trying to come of up a scenario that isn’t just a repeat of the last one or that she buys into is more challenging as she gets older. The last time she asked to play a couple weeks ago, she was greatly disappointed as I had a creative drought and my mind was blank for ideas. Work stress just saps my ability to be creative.

Last post of the year

Today is December 31, 2022. It’s been a challenging year in many ways, just read the headlines. Personal issues have come and gone, and I’m still here.

May your 2023 be filled with health, happiness, loved ones, and gaming!

I’m doing the Dungeon23 Challenge, and will share progress perhaps on a monthly basis. I plan to do as much or as little each day I set aside time to work on it. January is my busiest time of year at work, so I plan to work ahead starting this 3 day weekend.

I also just submitted my scenario to Gary Con that I plan to run each morning for a total of 4 times. I’m considering doing a playtest online before then.

Farewell RPGBA

The RPGBA (Role Playing Blog Alliance) was a website with an RSS Feed of RPG Bloggers. It had a strong presence on G+. When the original owner of the site wanted to step away and had planned for it to just end, Scott Newbury of the blog of Dice and Dragons took over. When G+ ended the group moved to MeWe.

Even though RSS feeds took a big hit when the wonderful support built in to many browsers was taken away the RSS feed PGBA was still going strong.

As with the passing of G+ and the fading of Twitter as a go to for many TTRPG topics, so too is the RPGA going away. This includes shuttering the MeWe site. Since it is behind a login, all the posts there will be lost unless Scott decides to somehow archive them.

I considered for a moment stepping in, but I have myself spread thin already.

I checked the list of blogs and for some reason, mine isn’t there. I pulled the list and made a copy that I have posted on a page of my blog here. So many blogs have gone dark over the years. Sadly, several went dark and were never or not recently updated on the Internet Archive.

I encourage everyone with a blog to ensure their site is backed up on the Internet Archive. This page explains how to archive individual pages manually or with browser extensions, and there is an option to crawl pages you specify.

Prior Site

It should be noted that the RPGBA stepped in when another site for the same purpose ceased accepting new members and itself faded into the mists of time. Sadly, I don’t recall the name of that prior site. Like many others, I waited two plus years for my blog to be accepted, when it went dark.

Dungeon 23 Challenge Narrowing The Scope

I’ve decided to do the #Dungeon23 Challenge as I mentioned in my prior post where I describe what it is, resources some have suggested, and my own ideas about it.

The biggest issues after sticking with it for a year are narrowing the scope of the project so that it is manageable, and narrowing the scope to what resources one uses to generate the maps, select themes, and populate each room.

Some can just wing it and do it all off the top of their head. If I did that, it would be rather bland. I want something fun and interesting that others would want to use, whether in whole or in part.

For generating the dungeon, I’m thinking of the 1e DMG Random Dungeon Generation tables. At the least, I will use it to plan the entrances to the dungeon. I think having multiple levels have a connection to the surface, even if a convoluted connection, makes sense. Some of those connections would be how various creatures get into the dungeon to begin with.

I think there should be factions in the dungeon that control a section of a single level, or multiple levels along obvious stairwells, etc. Food, water, waste disposal, power, control (of areas, creatures, features, magic, etc.), alliances, absolute enemies, minions, lieutenants, and bosses, should all make sense. Just figuring out how all this works would be part of the adventure and exploration for a party of adventurers.

My Process

I’ve decided to stick with what I have and use a Graph Composition book for thee #Dungeon23 Challenge.

I have an index page and page 1 is for Brainstorming.

Brainstorming Page – Even more ideas below.

Using ideas I’ve scrawled in notebooks or written blog posts about or new ideas.

  • Levers & tilting floors, sliding walls, etc. Both simple and complex traps. Some of which are not obvious to the trapped that they have been trapped.
  • Kobolds as maintainer & re-setters of traps. They get food and wealth from traps. However, they compete with carrion eating monsters. Kobold controlled territory will have fewer carrion monsters.
    Kobolds will ignore those who ignore them.
  • Magic and other items will be USED by dungeon dwellers. Adventurers will RARELY find magic items not being used.
  • Not everything in the dungeon is a monster to be slain. Killing intelligent creatures will invoke the enmity of all the others against those responsible. Murder hobos will not last long.
  • Using wits and planning and avoiding fighting as was the case with original D&D style of play will achieve better results. Only creatures of animal intelligence or truly evil intent will the party be at risk of a fight.
  • Balanced encounters are not a thing. Creatures of more HD than the level of the dungeon will not be rare, especially near connections between levels. Factions that span multiple levels will project power in this way. Masses of low HD creatures will offset the advantages of multiple HD creatures, especially if the low HD creatures are cunning and cooperative.
  • Various tricks and trap ideas I’ve written about on my blog or in various notebooks, but never used.
  • Food, Water, and Waste – How do the dungeon inhabitants survive and not fill up the passageways with refuse?
  • How do intelligent dungeon inhabitants make use of the unintelligent ones to maximize their strength and control of their territory?
  • Creative encounter tables – See Nested/Dynamic Encounters below.

Deciding Which Resources To Use

There are far too many good resources to help generate and populate dungeons to just limit it to one resource. This includes manuals of both old and new games, gaming resources for such things, and so many blog posts over the years of OSR blogs about this very topic.

No one resource has everything I feel that I need for this. If I only had to pick one resource it would be the AD&D 1e DMG [Affiliate Link]. This would be Appendices:

  • A – Random Dungeon Generation
  • G – Traps
  • H – Tricks
  • I – Dungeon Dressing
  • K – Describing Magical Substances

More Blog Articles On Megadungeons

Here is a collection of links to various blog posts about megadungeons. Some of them are collections of articles. Sadly, many old blogs and some articles are no more, not even on the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.

http://grognardia.blogspot.com/2009/02/old-school-dungeon-design-guidelines.html

http://thedragonsflagon.blogspot.com/2012/05/secret-door-triggers.html

http://therustybattleaxe.blogspot.com/2013/12/megadungeon-hall-of-fame-megadungeon.html

http://thedragonsflagon.blogspot.com/2014/01/keying-corridors.html

http://initiativeone.blogspot.com/2014/02/ready-reference-whats-blocking-corridor.html

http://9and30kingdoms.blogspot.com/2014/02/random-dungeon-musings.html

https://dungeonfantastic.blogspot.com/p/megadungeon-design.html

https://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=27662

http://beyondtheblackgate.blogspot.com/search?q=megadungeon+design+and+philosophy

http://therustybattleaxe.blogspot.com/p/dungeon-links.html

http://therustybattleaxe.blogspot.com/p/megadungeon-links-ii-maps-tables.html

Dynamic/Nested Encounter Tables

This is a great idea that can be applied to dungeons, cities, and hexcrawls to make encounter tables generate more interesting results. Or use as a base to make custom encounter tables including those options. (Great for one shots and convention games, or modules.)

http://monstersandmanuals.blogspot.com/2011/10/dynamicnested-encounter-tables.html

http://www.welshpiper.com/dynamic-encounter-tables/#more-2342

Dungeon 23 Challenge

Sean McCoy kicked off an idea on Twitter that soon took off.

https://twitter.com/seanmccoy/status/1599809865836363782
Dungeon23

He went into more detail on his blog.

The idea is simple:

  • 12 Months – Levels
  • 52 Weeks – Themes
  • 365 Days – Rooms

Some rooms are empty. Descriptions need not be complex. That is, keep it simple.

This idea has taken hold across Twitter, Mastodon, blogs, and other social media.

Some have lists of a few Megadungeon Resources:

https://twitter.com/yungdumbitch/status/1371617098930122754

Some have created resources specific to the theme of a room per day:

https://twitter.com/zwgarth/status/1600637717162987524

One posted a carrd page with the suggested 52 weekly themes.

https://twitter.com/wldenning/status/1600554252446973989

My Musings

It caught my imagination too. I am so close to acting on this challenge.

The #Dungeon23 idea is interesting. The original idea is to use a weekly planner and do one level each month, one room each day.
The result is a 12 level 365 room megadungeon.

This needn’t be limited to a dungeon. It could be:

  • 12 separate dungeons,
  • 12 districts of a city,
  • 12 regions of a wilderness.
  • All places to explore.

I’ve always wanted to do a megadungeon. All efforts thus far have ended way too soon.

I’m debating doing this. Getting past January will be the hard part, my busy time at work.

  • One could also plan out their own multi-level generation ship for Metamorphosis Alpha.
  • A large base or space station.
  • A mine.
  • So many possibilities….

The dilemma is which idea to settle on and actually do it.

  • A monthly blog post to show each month’s results?
  • Clean it up & publish it?

Making sense of it so that it is an organic structure with factions & any changes resulting from adventurers will change how things proceed.

  • What planner to use?
  • Physical or digital?

Time to let the mind wander.

I favor Graph Composition notebooks that are 200 pages of quad ruled paper.
40 x 28 squares per page. That’s 1,120 squares.
Seems small for 31 rooms, not leaving room for hallways that’s 17.5 8×8 rooms, or 70 4×4 rooms.

The page seems small until you start to build something that makes some sort of sense. Not all rooms will be tight packed.

Some plan of general structure and guidance makes sense.

The goal is to finish, so a plan to help succeed means pre-planning.

Each level could be a different smaller dungeon connected by portals.
The portals could be one way or have the connector back to the prior dungeon be in a separate location.

So many ideas….

The Megadungeon tag on my blog.

City 23 Challenge

I see some are doing the #City23 challenge instead of the #dungeon23

Back in 2015 for the April A to Z blogging challenge, my theme was cities. That might help those doing the city challenge get some ideas.

Festivals In Your RPGs

In my campaign building, the one thing I left out of the calendar was festivals.

Not a problem in my Sunday game.

Through a combination of a random encounter with a farmer taking a load of turnips to town & the death of an every faithful NPC, my player’s made their own festival.

The first annual Saint Mark Turnip Festival was in Session 64 on January 31, 2021. Yesterday was Session 130 and in game it’s less than a month until the next Turnip Festival. Of course, it could be January, 2023 before we reach the in game date. One player hasn’t forgotten & mentioned spreading the word. So I checked. The anniversary will be in just under a month on the game calendar.

Order of The Iron Turnip

The party was returning to town one session and there was an encounter with a farmer taking a load of turnips to town. They were suspicious and rather than attacking they speculated that it was a plot and their imaginings went wild.

After all that wild speculation and associated cross talk, the party then decided that they would call themselves “The Order of the Iron Turnip.”

One player made a graphic to go with it and put up shirts & magnets online, so most of us, including me ordered shirts, etc.

He also made a party map token with this image that we still use in Roll20.

Party Crest for the Order of the Iron Turnip with Latin motto “Ordo Ferrum Rapa” with a background of radiating bars of alternating blue and yellow. Pile of fallen leaves, with a turkey with knife and fork preparing to eat a turnip with a cartoonish face. Art by Patrick Burke, AKA Wicked Wayz. RIP (10/23/69 – 6/2/2022)

Map and Tavern Sign

Patrick also made a much fancier map than I had made for the starting town, Farthorpe. Farthorpe is the most distant West settlement of the Kingdom. Its name is used as a hyperbolic sayings to indicate how far away things are, or how long a journey is.

Patrick made this map of Farthorpe based on my crude scribblings in Roll20.

He liked doing things like that, he even made a sign for a tavern in a different town, The Wizard’s Dog.

He took art from other places and mashed it together.

Tavern sign for the Wizard’s Dog tavern with a fancy border on a blue field and a scraggly, ugly dog with a wizard’s hat sitting on a spellbook. The words “Wizards Dawg” frame the dog and book. Art by Patrick Burke, AKA Wicked Wayz. RIP (10/23/69 – 6/2/2022)

Mark

Mark was an NPC who was hired by the owner of the tavern to round up “Conleth’s” cattle. The campaign started in the aftermath of a powerful earthquake that unleashed a horde of undead that cleared the valley and drove off people from the surrounding villages and farms. The undead were only an occasional issue by the time the PCs showed up in town for Session 1.

Conleth was the second richest man in town before the undead caused so much chaos. He used what was left of his home and the rubble of his former neighbor’s homes to make the tavern that became central to the early portions of the campaign. Conleth hired Mark to go gather “his” cattle for food for the tavern.

The party liked Mark and one PC hired him as a retainer when they went west across the dunes of The Broken Lands.

A Festival is Born

After the loyal retainer Mark the brave but not so wise or smart was killed by a fireball, the party determined to remember him gave him all the credit for defeating the big bad in the original “plot” of the campaign.

Mark was dead several sessions prior to this conclusion.

To honor him, they threw together a big party and called it the “First Annual St. Mark Turnip Festival”. The planning involved a turnip and cow theme.

I basically said “Yes/And.” We had an entire session to roleplay the Turnip Festival. I threw in archery contests, drinking, feasting, & some more.
Patrick made the art for what was on the poster they put all over town.
This same poster they get printed up & post in other towns they visit since that 1st festival spreading the word of Saint Mark.
That was January 31, 2021. We lost Patrick in June, 2022.

The 2nd annual festival will be better than the 1st. Now I have a lot of planning to do for a future session.

Fancy background frame. A knight in chainmail with a sword in hand over one shoulder, a shield on his back, and a turnip with a cartoon face in the other hand. Framed by the words: “First Annual St. Mark The Brave Turnip Festival, Year 567 of the new Kingdom of Drahn, Farthorpe, Broken Lands.” Art by Patrick Burke, AKA Wicked Wayz. RIP (10/23/69 – 6/2/2022)

Festivals In Your Campaign

When planning the calendar you will use for your campaign, whether it is based on a real world calendar, one of the many calendars of fiction, or one of your own design, festivals and celebrations should be a part of it.

This should include such things as events the calendar is based on like equinoxes and solstices and phases of the moon. Secular and religious holidays, historical events, harvest festivals, and others based on the cycle of nature are also appropriate.

If, like me, you didn’t consider that in your own campaign calendar, then add them as you think of them, or let your players come up with their own. Cooperative worldbuilding is always fun and can get a better result than you could on your own. It also invests the players in your world.

If you do add your own, or have them pre-existing on your calendar, be sure to note how big a deal this festival is and have obvious activity of preparations for the approaching day or days.

Share the calendar with your players and add notes to your version of the calendar with all your notes and things that PCs can notice as preparations begin.

Think of holiday preparations in your own country. In the U.S.A there are obvious signs of preparations in some communities as decorations go up on the light poles. Stores and businesses will have their own decorations. Many homes may have their decorations. The greater the importance of the festival, the more likely the town, merchants, and homes are to be decorated.

If you aren’t sure what festivals to have, copy the calendar and use real world festivals as placeholders for something in your world. Some you might re-name and replace with an equivalent one in your world, or something entirely different. It can be a lot of work, so it doesn’t have to be anything fancy.

You could have 12 months of 28 days with a weeklong festival between each of the four seasons. This gives a calendar of 364 days. If your world doesn’t need a leap day, you have a quick and simple calendar with 4 festivals every year that are a week long.

My Journey To Obsidian – RPG Vault Structure

Post 1Post 2Post 4 (Worldbuilding, Campaign & Session Prep) – Post 5 (Running Games)

This is post #3

This was to be the last of three posts, but it would be very long to do in one post, so I broke out the last half about worldbuilding with Obsidian for next time.

An RPG Vault should support Worldbuilding plus Planning and Preparation of Sessions and Adventures, and creation, editing, and finding the information input into Obsidian when it is needed.

My Campaign Vault

Coordination of Information

This is your method for storing your information and retrieving it when you need it. Are you a visual person who needs to see the information or can you just do a search? Or do you need a bit of both?

Will you use a folder structure plus tags, or only rely on tags?

Will you use a Kanban board, a homepage, or both?

Having a top level page or MoC (Map of Content) for your entire vault whether it is all of your RPG information, only your GM information, or only one world, one ends up with a lot of information in just a few sessions of play. Planning a method to organize it for growth and ease of use is beneficial. Also being flexible enough to modify your system as you learn what works best for you.

In my experience, I didn’t know what organizational method would work best for me until I jumped in and used it. Running things in the old days with pen, paper, and notebooks is different from using a computer. Obsidian is so flexible, that I’ve gone through multiple iterations to find what works best for me.

What I have settled on for me is a combination of folders and tags. I use both Kanban Boards and a Landing Page, AKA Home Page. The following headings are the types of things for which I have folders, and possibly tags.

My Home Page is a “master” MoC. It points to the Kanban Boards I use. I have one Kanban for my GM screen for use with play and another Kangan for Session Planning. Each folder has it’s own MoC that I link to from my Home Page, and/or one or both of my Kanban Boards.

My Campaign Home Page
In my Session Planning board I have the following lists:
  • Long Term
  • To Do
  • In Progress
  • Ready For Session
  • Past Session Planning.
My Planning Kanban (Slowly consolidating)

For my GM Screen I collect information that is most useful and needed at my fingertips. This includes such things as various random generators for NPC names, ship names, and random encounters. I have a page that is the Party Record that has each PC and which player they belong to in a table to see all their state, saving throws, and other quickly needed information at a glance. I have lists for combat, quick reference, NPCs, and magic items.

My GM Screen (Also Slowly Consolidating)

I have templates that help me create Session notes, NPCs, Places, Magic Items, Spells, Monsters, etc. I have found that I need more automation so I don’t have to do as much manual edits. I have a MoC of all Places, all Spells, all Magic Items, and all Sessions. After 129 sessions on Roll20 I have a HUGE number of files for my current campaign. It is an open-ended sandbox game, so while there was an initial big plot I set in motion, the party dealt with it, and now they’re going about doing their own thing and finding new challenges.

I created each of these MoCs manually so they are more difficult to update the longer they get. Switching this over to use Dataview queries will make updating these lists automatic.

I Use the Following Plugins with Obsidian:

  • Advanced Tables: I use a lot of tables, and its addition of the to my vault was a big help.
  • Admonition: I also like callouts and like how this plugin enhances them.
  • Advanced Tables: Improves working with Markdown tables.
  • Dataview: and the scripts from Nicole van der Hoeven help with automation and creating MoCs.
  • New Tab Page: For the tab functionality and Home Page.
  • Kanban: Allows setting up multiple Kanban boards. I use one for a GM screen and another for Campaign and Session planning.
  • Leaflet: For maps and map pins, although I haven’t done much with it.
  • QuickAdd: For automation when combined with Dataview and Templater.
  • Timelines: For making timelines.
  • Pandoc: For exporting to different file formats. I need to connect it to LaTex to get more power out of it.
  • Recent Files: is great for finding the most recent files I worked with. Especially before I implemented a Home Page or before I get it linked to at least one of my MoCs.
  • JSON/CSV Importer: To import information from CSV files or spreadsheets.
  • Buttons: Make buttons to run scripts.
  • Fantasy Calendar: Create a custom calendar or use an existing one. Add links to documents like session notes.

I am a fan of using header levels. Header levels let you collapse the text at that header level. With multiple headers of the same level I can collapse certain sections of my session notes. I do this when running games with the recap of last session, housekeeping, and last session’s XP so I can focus on the bits important for what’s going on in the moment. This will be covered in more detail in my final article.

As I do more with Obsidian and refine how I can get the most out of it for both preparation, planning, and running games I improve optimization for my use case. Using Obsidian at work gives ideas for improving how I use it for gaming and other personal projects and vice versa.

My Journey To Obsidian – World Building

In this series: Post 1Post 2Post 3 – Post 5 [In Process]

Check out my Worldbuilding Cheatsheet on Cheatography.

For worldbuilding, it should support both Top-Down and Bottom-Up worldbuilding. This does not need any specific structure or scripting, since out of the box, Obsidian lets you choose how you want to organize, whether by only files and tags, or with folders, or a combination.

It is possible for one Obsidian Vault to accommodate all of the following, but it’s practicality will depend on what types of information is shared between genres and rule systems.

Another practical example is Nicole van der Hoeven’s player notes and gm notes templates and javascript files. For me, it is less confusing to have a separate vault for GM duties and keep player efforts separate. If there were information to share between vaults, I would just copy the *.md files or copy & paste the data.

Josh Plunkett’s YouTube is dedicated to showing different ways to use Obsidian for RPGs.

Genre Specific

Any effort at worldbuilding should be planned to complement the genre selected, such as science fiction, fantasy, steampunk, intrigue, horror, apocalyptic, etc.

Many genres have sub-genres, and some genres are a combination of two genres, for example science fiction can have a horror element like Alien, and fantasy can be high or low in regards to magic.

Science Fiction might be wide open to explore multiple galaxies, solar systems, planets, times, dimensions, etc.

Fantasy could have similar variety, but the majority focus is usually on one world, and often only one continent on that world.

Genre is independent of system and one could run any genre with any ruleset, but most games were designed with a specific genre in mind.

Rule Specific

Once a GM has chosen the rules for the game/campaign they want to run it will determine how they organize things. While a player will have the choice of rule from the GM, unless the GM seeks player input or the player exercises their own agency to choose which ruleset(s) they wish to play.

Rules handle the situations one expects in play at the table. Exploration rules for a game with an exploration component, creatures in the bestiary, character generation, magic or mental powers, equipment, etc.

Rules have as much variety as genres. No ruleset covers everything, but those that try have multiple rulebooks and tend toward complexity. Some rulesets encourage GM rulings where there is no rule. Story type RPGs may have minimal rules and focus on the roleplaying amongst friends.

The rules one chooses will be guided by one’s preferences and the experience they seek with those at the table. Often the choice of rules is in favor of the game that was our first experience playing RPGs. It sets in our mind what an RPG is and for many, anything that falls outside that box isn’t desired. Others will play any game any time and have no preference for rules and just want to game with their friends.

What Do I Need To Prepare?

This all depends on your selected worldbuilding model, top-down or bottom-up, or a combination of the two.

Top-down worldbuilding in a fantasy campaign would decide what is the top element and drill down from there. For example, the world or planet and go down from there.

This also brings up how much of that world do you create? Do you deal with the origins and creation myth and the rise and fall of deities and civilizations? Or do you plan the world in media res with a moment in time and refer back to the past as it comes up in play?

Whichever end of the scale, or the middle, that you start with, what you end up with will be largely the same information.

World

What makes up your world?

How and when was it formed?

What sets your world apart?

How is is special?

Continents

Is there one big continent, like Pangea with scattered islands on the periphery, or multiple continents separated by varying distances from the others?

Or is your world a collection of scattered archipelagoes?

The way you choose to organize this leads to many variations you may not have considered.

Regions

How many regions will there be across a continent or archipelago?

Nations

How many nations are there currently?

How many nations have fallen into the past? This is usually the source of dungeons and tombs for exploration.

How many nations are in a region?

Settlements

These can be villages, towns, or cities.

Adventure Locations

These can be found in many varied places:

  • Tombs
  • Ruins
  • Dungeons
  • Caves & Caverns
  • Mines
  • Forests
  • Swamps
  • Wilderness
  • Etc.

Bestiary

What kinds of people and creatures populate your world?

Which are specific to certain regions, environments, or locations, and which are ubiquitous?

Will you only use creatures from official rules, or will you modify existing creatures, or make up your own?

Religion/Deities

What role will religion play in your world? Will places of worship be rare or common? Will there be any named deities, only one, or multiple pantheons with each nation or ancestry having its own?

NPCs

Who are the people the players’ characters will interact with? Townsfolk, merchants, minions of the chief evildoer, the chief evildoer, etc.?

Lore/History

How much detail will your world involve? If you decide to start with the top, how much is really needed to begin play? If you write a book will that vast amount of information be relevant to actual play at the table?

It is my experience that while worldbuilding in all its details is fun as a GM, all the time spent coming up with elaborate descriptions of the overall setting is not necessarily supportive of time around the table.

This can include calendars. What time keeping system is used in your world? Do all use the same calendar, or does each nation and ancestry have their own way of tracking time? This alone can be quite complex, especially if the year is different from our own, or your world has more or less moons than Earth.

Magic

High magic, low magic, or something in between?

Spells

Will you have any custom, AKA homebrew spells?

How will your player characters learn of them?

Will this be in a handout from the beginning, or only learned of through discovery in lost and forgotten tomes or hidden ancient scrolls?

Items

Similarly, will you have homebrew magic items. How will knowledge of them find its way to your players?

Information Tracking

How will the actions of the players be organized for keeping track of things?

What does one need to track?

In my experience, tracking what occurs in each session from the places visited, NPCs met, monsters dealt with, treasure gained, time tracking, and so forth are the points that are connected by the roleplay at the table. This interaction makes the game world come alive.

If the GM allows the players to change the world by either saving it or letting it burn, it has more verisimilitude.

Sessions

A folder for Sessions and a Template to create “buckets” to place session related information, plus link to other parts.

Dates

Some means of tracking your calendar and placing date specific entries that are tied to your calendar.

Will you track only the real world calendar and what happened each game day, or will you track the in-game dates, or both?

The Fantasy Calendar plugin can help with that.

Will you plan out certain events that will happen unless the party interacts with the time and place involved? Tracking when such things happen in the game world lets you know when to bring it up during play.

Places

Tracking where the players have been and plan to go helps the GM keep track of the situation between sessions.

Some places, like an adventure location, may have something of interest, be it a landmark, hidden entrance, special treasure, hints to other places, etc.

Weather

How will you generate each day’s weather for your game?

Sometimes the players will stay in one location for many days and you need several days worth of weather. Will you generate each day as it happens in game, or generate it ahead of time so minimize delays at the table?

Events

These can be weather, harvests, festivals, accidents, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, floods, eclipses, comets, meteors, prophecies, etc.

This is another use of a calendar and the effects of those events are better planned in advance.

Putting It All Together

Once you have decided how you will approach each aspect of worldbuilding, you can build the structure to support it in your Obsidian vault.

Even if you use folders to subdivide things, a clear understanding of the tags you will use will help you find things without having to spend a lot of time.

Templates can be made for each relevant type of note you need, such as for Monsters, Spells, Gear, Magic Items, etc. Each template can be set with the tags relevant to that type of information.

To consolidate a large amount of notes into an index or MOC (Map Of Content) you can do it manually, or use the Dataview plugin. I prefer the Dataview plugin as it saves so much time getting information in one place.

The system you devise in Obsidian will lend itself to continued worldbuilding, session planning, notetaking about the session, and even running a game.

In the next article I explain how I use Obsidian to run games.

My Journey To Obsidian – Beginnings

In this series: Post 1Post 3Post 4 [currently in process] – Post 4 [currently in process]

This is the second of three five articles of my experience with Obsidian. I wrote this a couple of weeks after I started with Obsidian in December, 2021. The program has changed a LOT in almost a year. It went from beta to version 1.3 currently.

Since I wrote this a year ago you will see things I mention here that are no longer the same or no longer an issue. I have indicated these things in square brackets [ ]. What I want to draw your attention to is how easily I moved my existing data in text format into Obsidian*. This is the great power of such a tool that relies on plain text files. It is both easy to work with and easy to maintain your data.

* I had to get data out of other Apps to get it into text format to then put it into Obsidian.

Obsidian For RPG Campaign & Session Prep

Original Date Written: 2021/12/11

I switched to Obsidian about two weeks ago.

I love the idea of reducing all the different places I store information digitally.

Having multiple “silos” that don’t talk to each other and are not easily accessible to me if the service goes away, such as the end of a free version, or the total end of the service. The only limitation is now power and a working device.

Having it in a format I can read on any device is important. Markdown files are just plain text files that any text editor, like Notepad can edit.

If you are careful, you can even edit the files outside of Obsidian.
You can re-arrange folders and add or delete new files.

DO NOT do this while Obsidian is open, as that might cause a problem like data corruption.

Obsidian reads the data in the folder with the vault and will “re-build” it’s understanding of their relationships, such as links.

This is helpful if you just want to drop in a bunch of text files with the Markdown extension of *.md or image files or PDF files.

So instead of copying each note from Evernote and pasting into a new Obsidian Note, get Evernote exported to Markdown files and just copy them to the Obsidian Vault.

For Evernote export each folder one at a time – ugh! to its format, then import that format into Joplin. Joplin can then export each folder to Markdown files. Use the Markdown with Frontmatter option. [Fontmatter is important to help organize and search for information.]

Obsidian lets you right-click or drag and drop to move files between folders. If you do this in Obsidian, it will update it’s internal database and links, and append 1 to duplicate files.

Within the OS if you move a file, it won’t let you keep two files with the same name, and it won’t preserve any links in the file.

Obsidian has a merge feature, so if you have files with similar content, and perhaps one has a 1 at the end, you can merge. Right-Click the one you want at the bottom of the other note. Be careful, as there is no undoing that. Make a backup before starting and go back to that backup if you make a mistake.

If you have a lot of such files, I suggest using git or other versioning software to make large numbers of updates easily reversible without undoing the ones you want to keep.

Obsidian will not display files that are not PDFs or images or text files with the extension .md. It will let you know a folder isn’t empty if you try to delete it. Right-Click and then Left-Click “Show in System Explorer” and it will open a window with the contents of that folder.

EXIT Obsidian before doing anything with these files outside of Obsidian. You can then evaluate if you want to keep the files or not. If the files are text files and you want the information in Obsidian, just change their extension to .md. If you use Windows and have the default setting that hides extensions, go to the View menu of the Explorer Window and check “File Name Extensions.” Just in case, check “Hidden Items” to verify that you don’t have any files hidden from view.

– Once you have renamed, moved, or deleted files from this folder, re-start Obsidian. Then you can move the files that now show to empty the folder, then you can delete it within Obsidian without issue.

NOTE: When I did this, Obsidian did not open with the files I had open when I exited. I had a text file I changed to .md and I had an HTML file because I was testing a Pandoc conversion from .md to HTML. I don’t know if Obsidian’s internal database picked up those files and modifying them caused this, or what.

– This is when I found that the PIN option can have a keyboard shortcut set. The fewer mouse clicks for me the better!

A Checklist of My Initial Takeaways:

  • [ ] Go easy on the Folders in Obsidian. Less is more.
    • [ ] Obsidian only needs 3 folder: (You can call them whatever you want.)
    • [ ] Notes (The Root folder) – Any other folders would go here, but that just adds complexity, so give it some thought before adding them.
      – In my experience, adding a folder for all the information I have from Evernote lets me review each item and clean up its tags and formatting to match my other files.
      – Another option would be make a new Vault just for Markdown files imported from other software and use Obsidian to clean up that data before copying it to your main Obsidian Vault.
    • [ ] Attachments – Images, PDFs, etc.
    • [ ] Templates
    • [ ] Obsidian is designed to connect information through Tags and Links, and this eliminates the need for folders as organization, since you have multiple ways to find what you want.
    • [ ] I recommend only using folders for topics that have very little overlap with everything else.
      • Such As:
        • Separate Campaigns
          • Separate Games/Rules
          • Separate Projects
      • Some things may be so totally different that it is better to separate them into its own Vault. A good example would be for personal information, so that is separate from game/hobby, work, or other very specialized information.
        • How to link to an Obsidian Vault with a shortcut. It took me a bit to find the correct link and realize what process they meant to create the shortcut, as they did not use the same verbiage as on menus. [NOTE: You can also easily open and switch between vaults in Obsidian with the “Open another Vault” button in the lower left corner. It is the top of the three buttons. It allows switching between vaults and creating new vaults.]
        • Use the method of your OS for creating shortcuts.
          1. In MS-Windows it is Right_Click then Left-Click Create Shortcut.
          2. Type in the link to your Vault with the Obsidian filetype URL: obsidian://vault/VaultName
            1. The Vault name is the name of the Directory (Folder) that contains the .obsidian Directory (Folder).
          3. Give the shortcut a meaningful name, such as the name of the Vault.

Below are screenshots of the process in order:

You will end up with a shortcut like this:

If you Right-Click then Left-Click Properties, it will look like this:

  • [ ] Files and Folders sort alphabetically just like on your computer. Punctuation and Numbers come before letters. You can use this to force the folders for attachments and templates to the bottom so that they are out of sight, unless you need to look at them.
  • [ ] Customizable Keyboard Commands. Nearly everything has the ability to have a Key Combination.
    • [ ] Templates – Have to add it
    • [ ] Toggle Pin – Have to add it. (Keeps file open when open more files.)
  • [ ] Review Tags in the tag pane to eliminate invalid tags, such as if you use # as an abbreviation for Number. I had a tag S because I had #S, so I had to prefix with \ so that it was \#S so that in preview it looks like #S. This then removed the bogus tag from my tag list.
    • [ ] Group Tags. For example, RPGs, Campaign, Play, GM, Notes could all be tied to RPGs, so instead of separate tags, created separate RPG sub-tags (IF it works for you.):
      • [ ] #RPGs/Campaign #RPGs/Play #RPGs/GM #RPGs/Notes
        • [ ] This separates RPG Notes from general Notes. For personal notes in the same vault, you may want a more specific tag like:
          • [ ] #Notes/Personal #Notes/Finances #Notes/Car #Notes/House
      • [ ] Look out for similar or identical Acronyms. For example OBS is used for both OBS Studio and One Book Shelf, I can’t just use OBS as a tag, because in 6 months I won’t know which tag has the information I need.
      • [ ] I suggest a tag for each note indicating it’s source, such as:
        – Sticky Note (Physical or the M$ App)
        – Evernote or similar program
        – Text File
        – Index Card
        – Notebook
        – Loose Papers
        – etc.
        This will aid you in organizing and future proofing (AKA frustration proofing) your information.
  • [ ] Templates. There is no limit to how many you can have. I recommend naming them so that the one you use most is at the top. If you only have one template, the keyboard shortcut you set up will just load it. It is only when you have multiple templates that you have to pick one.
  • [ ] List of plugins and how they might apply
    – Better Word Count – Displays word count of the focused Note in the lower right of the Obsidian screen.
    – Calendar – This can be placed wherever works for you.
    – Periodic Notes – Same author as Calendar – Create notes for each day, week, month, and year. It is best to have a folder for these notes to keep separated from all others.
    – Kanban – Good for projects, can use to make a GM screen NOTE: if you pin a Kanban to keep open, then the links don’t work. Use the back button (is there a KB shortcut?)
    – Recent Files – If you want to go back to a file but don’t know its exact name.
    – Sliding Panes – If you want to squeeze in multiple open notes. NOTE: With Version 1.0 of Obsidian the general features of this plugin were added to Obsidian, so the plugin no longer works.
  • [ ] CTRL+E for toggling between edit and preview. Be careful as if you hit CTRL+W in error, it will close the pane with the focus. This is because Obsidian uses browser code for a base, and CTRL+W closes a tab, or closes the browser if there is only one tab open.
    • [ ] You can either change the toggle for going between edit and preview, or change the key combo for closing panes, or just don’t make mistakes 😉
  • [ ] Resizing and placing bits where you want them. Each pane can be dragged to place above, below or beside another. The possibilities are endless.
  • [ ] Linking panes for a two-pane view with one for edit and the other for live preview. Emulates WYSIWYG editors.
  • [ ] BACKUP plan!!! You need a plan to backup your notes and your settings, just in case.
    • [ ] Saving or syncing to DropBox or Google or M$ OneDrive is NOT a backup if it is your live data.
    • [ ] Regularly zip up the Vault directory and save it off, perhaps once a month and twice a year. Some use Git to hold it, then they have versioning.
      • [ ] You want a back up plan that isn’t hosed when the free service goes away, or the limit to free space shrinks, etc.
  • [ ] Phone app. I haven’t gotten my vault working for sharing with the app. {This is still on my list to figure out.]
    • [ ] I don’t really look up info on my phone when I used Joplin, I had it for Just in case.
    • [ ] I just use Google Keep for short notes that I can add later to my Obsidian Vault, then delete the note.
  • [ ] If you are a Realmworks user looking for how to preserve all your hard work, and still be able to use it, there is an export tool, and a series of YT videos by Josh Plunket for Realmworks users migrating to Obsidian.
    – The sound on a his early videos has some sort of background noise or artifact. He has lots of interesting information, even for those who don’t use Realmworks.
    – He also started a FB group for using Obsidian for RPG campaigns. It is focused on Realmworks users, but also has lots of questions and answers that you might find useful. [The focus has shifter from Realmworks to getting the most out of Obsidian for use in TTRPGs.]

Spellcheck Isn’t The Same As A Year Ago

[Spelling was crude back then, but now it works as you would expect. Obsidian now uses the Chrome spellcheck and additions to the dictionary are stored in the file “Custom Dictionary.txt.”

On a Mac: ~/Library/Application Support/obsidian/Custom Dictionary.txt

On Windows: C:\Users\\AppData\Roaming\obsidian\Custom Dictionary.txt

I deleted all of my original notes from this article on the spellcheck feature as it no longer matters what the issues were. It works very well and as I expect it should.]

A quick note about text files.

I added this to help remove confusion about what a plain text file is. If you don’t need to know the difference for other reasons, you may not know this.

A plain text file is what I mean by text file. This is a file that one can open in Notepad or other TEXT editor and it is displayed normally. The extension of a file does not make it a text file, but the file FORMAT. This means that files with extensions such as CSV, HTML, CSS, MD, etc. can all be opened in a text editor and one can make sense of them.

RTF ( Rich Text Format) files are NOT plain text. The term RICH gives it away. Instead of wrapping text in symbols like two asterisks either side of a word it uses program code that the special format of the file and an editor like MS-Word or Libre Office or MS-Wordpad can read. Open an RTF file in Notepad and you will see characters that aren’t what you want.

Word Processors are NOT text editors. Yes, they can edit text files and save them in plain text format, but one usually doesn’t do that. Save a text file as a Word Document and then open it in Notepad and you’ll see all these funky control characters.

My Journey To Obsidian – Midpoint

In this series: Post 2Post 3Post 4 – Post 5 (Article In Process)

I started using Obsidian about a year ago. At first, I was interested in moving my data from other programs into a text format so they would be less likely to be lost to a vendor’s idea of what is “best” for my data.

I soon discovered it was a great tool for organizing and planning TTRPG campaigns and sessions.

This is the first of three articles about My Journey with Obsidian.

Past Tools

NoteTab Pro – This is a programmable tabbed text editor that works with text formats. It has it’s own scripting language called Clipcode, each “macro” is called a Clip. Clips are gathered in Clip Libraries. There are in an outline format that mirrors the outline format of its Outline file format. Outline files are text files with the *.OTL extension and header lines of code that indicate the start of each topic in the Outline. It’s a powerful tool, but it’s showing it’s age. I got started with it in the late 90’s. It really only highlights HTML, which makes it difficult for things to stand out.

I first used NoteTab to deal with text files at work and implemented it into my personal projects. I was so involved with beta testing that I got my name listed in the help file.

Evernote – I’ve used it since the free version had a lot of options, maybe even before it became a paid service. I kept general notes, things I thought of while away from my computer, my shopping list, etc.

Cherry Tree – A proprietary text outliner. I had different outlines for different things, like my AD&D campaign, and personal stuff.

Campaignwiki.org – I use it for my online campaign notes for my players. It is free, easy to get the data out, and my players can add to it. It supports Markdown. I have more than one campaign in it.

Joplin – I had found it a couple years ago and really liked it, but it was not as easy to use as I’d like. I put a lot of time into it. I mirrored my Campaignwiki in it, but the syntax was a bit different and it wasn’t as easy to add notes. It was dead simple to synchronize with the phone app and it is free.

OneNote – I’ve used it off and on for personal stuff, but don’t like that my information is stuck in it and copy and paste seems to be the only way to get it out. At my day job we’re a Microsoft Partner so it’s MS-Office and OneNote. I don’t like that the program is tied to the cloud and you have to login to OneDrive for it to work. It has limited utility offline.

Obsidian – I stumbled into Obsidian about a year ago in November, 2021. I dove right in and decided I liked it enough that I was soon looking to make a switch. I was motivated by a combination of frustration with Evernote and looking for a way to get my notes out. Joplin was another frustration, plus information in Cherry Tree, and elsewhere motivated me to simplify.

First I found that I could easily get information out of Cherry Tree and Joplin and get it into Obsidian. Exporting from Campaignwiki was also very simple to get working in Obsidian. Evernote was the big headache. I finally found a tool that let me import an Evernote export into Joplin.

Now I had my Evernote, Cherry Tree, and Joplin information in Obsidian, along with a copy of my Campaignwiki campaigns. No longer needing the other programs I uninstalled Evernote from my PC, cell, and deleted my account. I also uninstalls Joplin from my PC and cell, and also uninstalled Cherry Tree.

I still use NoteTab at home and work, but am slowly moving my data over to Obsidian. I keep working to build a set of Clips in NoteTab to help get my data into a format I’m happy with into Obsidian to minimize further editing. The ease of programming Clips to do what I want has made it difficult to move to something else. While Obsidian can’t do all the things NoteTab can do, Obsidian can display data close to that way plus even more. The various Obsidian plugins add so many options.

The one thing I have yet to crack is a way to get my OneNote out in a bulk method. I haven’t looked in the past year to see if perhaps there is a tool, but I hope to find one when I am ready to get that information.

My Obsidian Experience

On discovering Obsidian it was in reference to the Zettelkasten concept. It’s an idea I liked and the tool is awesome!

I had my information for my AD&D campaign organized into folders and made use of tags. I discovered the Kanban plugin and used it for my GM screen and my Campaign & Session Planning. I used the Stacked Tabs plugin and Pinned notes along with the Recent Files template to keep track of information. Someone I know online mentioned they used Obsidian for RPGs and did a couple videos on it. I thought to do some, but then I stumbled upon Josh Plunkett’s Obsidian videos. I took a bit of what he mentioned in his early videos, but soon was doing my own thing.

The way I was using things was NOT optimal. When I ran my Roll20 games on Sunday, I had Discord on my second monitor (we use voice and chat only, no video), Roll20 in my browser, NoteTab open with a list of weather, my AD&D PDFs open, and Obsidian open and frantically jumping around trying to find information that I knew was in there.

Over the summer I was on hiatus for my Sunday game as I travelled around the Western United States. I did keep playing in a Wednesday night Roll20 game and I used Obsidian to take notes. As a player I have a similar setup, Discord on my second screen, and Roll20 and Obsidian on my main screen. It was much less hectic, but still sometimes things got lost. During the Summer, I had my laptop with a single screen and I made it work.

I was plugging away with the usual workflow when suddenly one day, “BAM!” the Obsidian 1.0 update appeared and broke my workflow. I tended to have a LOT of tabs open in my GM vault and with so many, I couldn’t get them to display so I could read them.

I was NOT happy. I ended up closing all my tabs and getting a new workflow figured out, after ranting about it on the Obsidian TTRPG discord and the Obsidian Forums. I slowly started figuring out how to get a new workflow back. I re-watched a few of Josh Plunkett’s older videos and many of his newer ones. I also came across Nicole van der Hoeven’s videos and between the two of them and the Plugins they demonstrated and Nicole’s cool scripts she showed, I soon had a much improved RPG workflow.

I’m Glad That Obsidian 1.0 broke My Workflow

I still use Kanban boards or a GM screen and campaign and session planning, but I’ve added the homepage option of the Default New Tab Plugin. There are a long list of plugins that I use.

My Plugins:

  • Kanban
  • Default New Tab Plugin
  • Recent Files
  • Advanced Tables
  • Leaflet
  • Admonition
  • JSON/CSV Importer
  • Templater
  • Dataview
  • Quickadd
  • Buttons

There are also the plugins for TTRPG Statblocks, monsters, and the dice roller. At the moment, I’m not using them for more than seeing what they do.

The biggest new additions are Templater, Dataview, and the JSON/CSV Importer. I was able to get the information from the PDF of the AD&D Monster Manual into a CSV that I was able to import into my Obsidian RPG vault. I also figured out how to do the same with the Cleric Spells from the Players Handbook after I had already gotten all (All levels for Cleric, Druid, Magic-User, and Illusionist) of them in by hand.

I did use NoteTab to make a clip to format the text of each spell I copied and then copy it to Obsidian. The problem is, I didn't make some tags that I should have as I went, so I couldn't do some of the things I knew I could do with Dataview. So I'm still using NoteTab, but more for its ability to manipulate text than to store information.

My Takeaways Using Obsidian

  1. Organization is key. This is true for TTRPGs as well as personal and work projects. PKM (Personal Knowledge Management) is all about capturing information and being able to find it when you want it. Understanding the ability to use folders which other applications have ingrained in us and can be used just fine in Obsidian, but the true power comes with having a good understanding of tags and how they can help you find your information later. A poor implementation of tags shows its weakness when you can’t do fancy manipulations with the Dataview plugin.
    1. Frontmatter matters. Having a solid plan and structure to the frontmatter of our files includes a consistent use of tags. Having those things in place makes finding and manipulating the information into useful formats so much easier. This gives Dataview even more power with a well thought out structure for tags and frontmatter.
  2. Limit the number of vaults. Too many vaults become cumbersome and every time there is a plugin update you have to update all the plugins. Granted, you don’t have to do it right away, but to avoid things breaking you need to remember to update themes and plugins if you haven’t used a particular vault for awhile. The key is to split out information so different you wouldn’t want it mixed, such as your work and your campaign if you used one computer for work and personal. For personal, multiple campaigns in one vault may not make sense, or be confusing. Also personal projects like a personal journal or a hobby like genealogy may not be conducive to good work. A demo vault to try things out is a good idea to avoid breaking things in your active vaults.
    1. Related to this is don’t try to put too many projects in to vaults until you know what you need out of Obsidian to make it do what you want. Part of this is exporting the data from old tools with helpful tags to minimize additional editing once you have it in Obsidian.
    2. I have information in multiple vaults that makes sense to only have in one vault. This leads to know being able to find something as I can’t recall which vault it is in.
  3. Don’t be afraid to start over. After seeing the possibilities after revising my Obsidian workflow and organization, I am also inspired by watching videos of how others are handling things in their own TTRPG, work, and personal vaults. I am working on an article to help me clarify my thoughts on RPG Vault Structure. So far, it is just me writing out my thoughts, roughly organized. It looks at how the vault structure chosen should work whether one does Top-Down or Bottom-Up worldbuilding. It’ from the perspective of if I made a new campaign, what vault structure would I want or need based on my years of playing RPGs and my experience and new learnings with Obsidian. I hope to share this along with the final version of my Worldbuilding Cheatsheet on Cheatography.
  4. Find a good text editor that can help you with editing the files in your vault(s) if you need to make mass edits. I can do this with NoteTab, but it requires a few more steps do do a mass search and replace on all the files in a directory.
    1. I’ve worked with Vim and Gvim over the years, but their power is also several more steps to access.
    2. I downloaded Atom from Github last year, and finally put it through its paces recently. It can open an entire directory of text files as a “project” and do a search across all files and find something with amazing speed. Similarly one can do a replace across many files.
      This suggests mass editing tags and other parts of frontmatter.
  5. Automation prevents typos and other data storage blunders. Nicole van der Hoeven has demonstrated the power of the Dataview plugin combined with a few javascripts to autoupdate filenames and headers and get notes into the appropriate folder with Templater and Quickadd.
  6. There are so many options with Obsidian, it is best to start small and figure out what you can do with Obsidian. Learn Markdown if you don’t know it, figure out Obsidian options and watch YouTube videos to see what others are doing. Build a demo vault to play with so you don’t mess with any of your data.
  7. Backup. As always it doesn’t matter what your system is, if you don’t have a way to recover when your computer or hard drive fails, you will have much weeping and gnashing of teeth.
  8. Syncing data between my computer and phone is one thing I haven’t cracked for Obsidian. I haven’t tried again since I did about a year ago. I’m also considering syncing one or more of by vaults with Github. I can keep GM notes in a private vault, but how to separate GM from Player visible notes?
  9. It is easy to get data in and out of Obsidian. Getting data into Obsidian is as easy as copying text files into a folder and renaming the .txt extension to .md. It is recommended that you have some frontmatter to track what system/program the data came from, and other helpful front matter and tags for ease of use going forward.
    Similarly, one can copy or even delete files from an Obsidian vault (folder). However, one should not do that when Obsidian is running on the vault you are moving or deleting files through the OS rather than with Obsidian features.
Definitions:
AD&D - Advanced Dungeons & Dragons
D&D - Dungeons & Dragons
Frontmatter - Text at the beginning of a Markdown file that is used to define certain parameters of the file. It is places between a row of three dashes before and after.
RPG - Role Playing Game
TTRPG - Table Top Role Playing Game (To distinguish from computer RPGs, even though pen & paper, AKA Table Top RPGs came first.)
CSV - Comma Separated Value file
JSON - JavaScript Object Notation a data format in text files.

NOTE: I wrote this blogpost in Obsidian and it took very little editing to get it onto my website.

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