> [!kanban]+ [[Obsidian TTRPG Tutorials]] / [[Obsidian.md - Why do I use It]] > - [[Getting Started]] > - ![[Pasted image 20230527003751.jpg|hsmall+wsmall+center]] > - [[Plugin Tutorials]] > - ![[Pasted image 20230527184201.jpg|hsmall+wsmall+center]] > - [[Community Supported Games]] > - ![[Pasted image 20230527001506.jpg|hsmall+wsmall+center]] > - [[Obsidian TTRPG Tutorials/Templates/Templates\|Templates]] > - ![[Pasted image 20230530220438.jpg|hsmall+wsmall+center]] > - [[Community and Support]] > - ![[Pasted image 20230527005303.jpg|hsmall+wsmall+center]] It's pretty common to see new DMs and even experienced DMs seeking a better way to manage all their information. Guiding new users to better tools has always been a bit of a hobby of mine. I was a long time user of Realm Works, but the development stopped and I had to seek greener pastures. I've found those pastures in Obsidian.md and thought there might be a few DMs here who might be interested in what I've found. # My Tool of Choice: Obsidian.md **Cost:** FREE **What Do I Use It For:** Obsidian.md is nearly everything I need to run a game. I have a copy of every rule, spell, monster, npc, magic item, location, adventure, random table, etc, etc in this tool. I do not use books at the table. If there is a need for me to reach for a book, I will update my vault to contain the information I'm missing by the time the next session starts. I use it as a DM screen, a notebook, adventure module, world wiki, combat manager. It is all my everything. The only thing I don't manage from within this tool is the map being displayed to my TV Table. **New User Guide:** The Complete Noobs Guide to Obsidian.md for Dungeon Masters **Screenshots:** I've included a heap at the bottom so you can see just what this tool can do. **Community:** Facebook: Obsidian TTRPG Users Group Discord: Official Discord > Community > tabletop-games **Note Structure:** There are many ways you can structure your notes with this tool. - Create folders to place files in. - You can create your own hierarchies. - You can also put notes in your folders (aka: create a folder note for a City and within that place notes for each location). - You can create flow charts and link nodes to notes (great for visual people). - You can create maps, add pins and link pins to notes (draw on maps and measure distance). - You can create Notion like databases (tables that auto update based on your note content). - You can create Kanban boards (like Trello) and link cards to notes. - The tool automatically visualises all the links that exist within your notes. ## What Is It Best For? Obsidian.md is much more than just a knowledge base. You can run your games directly from this tool. It has plugin support for combat management and even dice rolling. There is a plugin to send pictures from the tool to a player facing monitor. You can play sounds and music directly from your notes and even integrate with external tools like YouTube. ## Functionality That Matters: The list of things that Obsidian.md can do is growing by the day. Here's a collection of things that might matter to a DM though. - The tool can be as simple as you want to make it. I go to the extreme. You could just use it for Folders, Notes and cross referencing. - Cross referencing/linking between notes (and sub sections within notes) and the tool has functionality that automatically scans your notes and displays a list of missing links. - It uses Markdown to format notes. This might sound overwhelming at first but Markdown is designed to be very very simple to use and it handles all the formatting of your notes ensuring all of your notes have the same look and feel. - You can paste images directly into the tool from your clipboard! With some custom *.css written by the community you can align images left/right/centre/grid. - Full support for Templates with ability to have notes pick specific templates based on the folder the note is created in and there is also a heap of community templates available for DMs. - It has functionality for removing rogue break-lines and other more advanced formatting that comes in handy when working with old data sources. - You can change the look and feel of the application with Theme support (there are multiple TTRPG styles already available). - Embed websites in your notes (embed character sheets from DnDBeyond or maybe a random generator) - There are multiple types of Call Out Boxes and you can create your own styles. - You can create Wiki Style formatting where you have a table on the right with a picture and information that matters. - Table support (including calculations) with ability to create interactive dice rollers inside of your tables. - Ability to define Aliases for notes (useful for complex linking). - Ability to define relationships between notes. - Full tag support. Tag your notes and search using the tags. - You can create custom Fantasy Calendars (and import from Fantasy-Calendar.com) - Ability to create automatic updating tables based on tags (example, automatically create a table that shows all level 3 cleric spells! or a table that automatically updates to show all your session journals). - Audio support (create custom soundboards) - Community content available (D&D 5e SRD) - Can support multiple DMs working on the same vault at the same time. - Initiative Tracker/Combat Management - Create encounters - Dice rolling (including 3d dice and random table rollers) - Pinnable maps with advanced features (multi layer maps, custom pins, draw on maps, measure distance, show maps at specific zoom levels) - TTRPG statblocks (5e supported, ability to import monsters from common data sources, comes with 5e SRD) with ability to send monsters to the Initiative Tracker. - No limits on how much data you can add or limits on the size of your images/maps. - Organise your pdfs by embedding them into notes. You can use Obsidian to manage your entire pdf collection. ## Learning Curve: At it's core, Obsidian.md is an incredibly simple tool. You can type text and paste in pictures with absolute ease. As you learn about plugins and appearance adjustments, the difficulty increases. This is one of those tools that you could dive into the deep end and quickly become overwhelmed. Start small, learn the basics and expand as you go however and the tool is really very easy to use. You won't learn about everything this tool can do in a single weekend. Something that was not possible this week may very well be possible next week (yes the development of new features is that aggressive thanks to the amazing Community Developers). I will say this though, Learn how to use Templates as one of the first things you do. This way, as you learn about more advanced code snippets that are required by certain plugins, you simply create a Template to contain that template so that you never have to remember how to format the text to do that thing. You simply press a hot key to select a Template, pick from a list of what you want to do, and the code is provided for you so that you only need to update the text you want to display. ## Development: Obsidian.md is not open source however it does enable community development. Because of this the speed at which new features become available can be overwhelming. The core tool was not designed for the TTRP community which is a huge benefit. It also means the development is safely funded by commercial users and subscribers to their paid services. There are thousands of users across all sorts of different interest groups both using and developing for this tool. The TTRPG community benefits from this as the tool has dedicated developers improving the core functionality and an army of community developers surprising us with new plugins and visual changes each and every day. ## Backups and Data Availability: With any software you want confidence that your data is safe. Obsidian.md makes your data freely available to use outside of the application (it's literally just folders and files, you can browse them in Windows Explorer) and is also very easy to backup using normal methods. Because the tool stores your notes in simple folder and files, there are many methods available to back your data up. - People use tools like One Drive and Google Drive. - You can get more advanced and sync your data to GitHub. This also means you can track historic changes to your data. - Normal windows backup solutions work. Robocopy or Windows Backup for example - Some users simply run their vault off a USB Stick. Because you can access the data externally, it opens up a lot of more advanced options. Majority if users might not need this. But the advanced users. - Notepad tools that allow you to edit multiple files at once are fantastic for making bulk-changes. A simple Find / Replace can do wonders across thousands of notes. If you know how to use RegEx then you can make magic happen. - For the Data Analysts. Anything you have that can edit a text file can be used. We've got users in the community creating RegEx queries, PowerShell queries, KNIME and Alteryx Workflows. The possibilities here are kind of mind boggling. Especially if you have access to a large TTRPG database. - If the tool ever disappears then your data is safe because its just folders and files. You could move it to a different Markdown tool and still be able to access everything (except plugin support). ## Supported Devices Obsidian.md works on Windows, Linux, macOS, Android mobiles and tablets, iPads and iPhones. ## Syncing Between Devices Obsidian.md has official sync support. This is a paid subscription service and is very popular. It's optional though. There are many other ways to sync. The backup methods above allow you to sync data to other PCs. Also tools like SyncThing allow you to seamless sync you data between devices for free. ## Publishing To A Player Visible Site Obsidian.md has official Publish support (==this site is running on Obsidian Publish!)==. This is a paid subscription service and is very popular. The weakness with Publish is that most of the plugins won't work on your Published notes but if you us just sharing text and pictures then you can achieve great things. There are quite a few free alternatives already as well. ## Summary: I am very picky in the tools I use. My requirements are high. And yet this tool has blown me away. I highly recommend it. I invite challenges to show me a tool that can beat what this has to offer. > [!caption|sban] Full width caption sizing > Caption text can be up here too > ![[ObsidianScreenShot1.png]] > [!caption|sban] Full width caption sizing > Caption text can be up here too > ![[ObsidianScreenShot1.png]] > [!caption|sban] Full width caption sizing > Caption text can be up here too > ![[Pasted image 20230526232519.png]] > [!caption|sban] Full width caption sizing > Caption text can be up here too > ![[Internal Image 3 on New Row.png]] > [!caption|sban] Full width caption sizing > Caption text can be up here too > ![[Pasted image 20230526232522.png]] > [!caption|sban] Full width caption sizing > Caption text can be up here too > ![[Pasted image 20230526232525.png]] > [!caption|sban] Full width caption sizing > Caption text can be up here too > ![[Pasted image 20230526232529.png]] > [!caption|sban] Full width caption sizing > Caption text can be up here too > ![[Pasted image 20230526232537.png]] > [!caption|sban] Full width caption sizing > Caption text can be up here too > ![[Pasted image 20230526232546.png]] > [!caption|sban] Full width caption sizing > Caption text can be up here too > ![[Pasted image 20230526232549.png]] > [!caption|sban] Full width caption sizing > Caption text can be up here too > ![[Pasted image 20230526232553.png]] > [!caption|sban] Full width caption sizing > Caption text can be up here too > ![[Pasted image 20230526232558.png]] > [!caption|sban] Full width caption sizing > Caption text can be up here too > ![[Pasted image 20230526232601.png]] > [!caption|sban] Full width caption sizing > Caption text can be up here too > ![[Pasted image 20230526232606.png]] > [!caption|sban] Full width caption sizing > Caption text can be up here too > ![[Pasted image 20230526232609.png]] > [!caption|sban] Full width caption sizing > Caption text can be up here too > ![[Pasted image 20230526232613.png]] > [!caption|sban] Full width caption sizing > Caption text can be up here too > ![[Pasted image 20230526232616.png]] > [!caption|sban] Full width caption sizing > Caption text can be up here too > ![[Pasted image 20230526232619.png]] > [!caption|sban] Full width caption sizing > Caption text can be up here too > ![[Pasted image 20230526232623.png]] > [!caption|sban] Full width caption sizing > Caption text can be up here too > ![[Pasted image 20230526232627.png]]