Thoughts on Obsidian for RPG Prep

Mike explores using obsidian.md/ for tabletop RPG prep.
Video Contents
00:00 Show Start
01:18 Why Obsidian?
02:40 Choose the Tool You Dig
04:19 What Is Obsidian
05:11 Check the Resource Links in the Show Notes
07:17 The Fun and Dangers of Dorking With Our Systems
11:28 Why Obsidian Again?
13:10 On Markdown
20:10 On Synching Notes
24:30 Keeping Things Simple
35:18 Limiting Hyperlinking
36:03 The Lazy GM Campaign Template for Obsidian
41:38 The Danger of Plugin Proprietary Notes
45:32 Espanso for Text Autofilling
49:40 Printing Notes to PDF with Automator, Shell Scripting, Pandoc, and Latex...
52:32 Final Thoughts
Links
Visit the Sly Flourish Blog
slyflourish.com/
Subscribe to the Sly Flourish Newsletter
slyflourish.com/subscribe/
Subscribe to the Sly Flourish Podcast
slyflourish.podbean.com/
Support Sly Flourish on Patreon
/ slyflourish
Buy Sly Flourish Books:
shop.slyflourish.com/
Getting Started with Obsidian for D&D - PhD20
phd20.com/blog/getting-starte...
Nicole van der Hoeven's D&D and Obsidian KZbin Playlist
• Obsidian for TTRPGs
Nicole's RPG Obsidian Notes
nicolevanderhoeven.com/tags/t...
D&D-tagged notes
nicolevanderhoeven.com/tags/dd/
Non-Lazy DMs use Obsidian for D&D
nicolevanderhoeven.com/blog/2...
Obsidian for Tabletop Roleplaying Games (collection)
publish.obsidian.md/hub/04+-+...
Obsidian TTRPG Tutorials
obsidianttrpgtutorials.com/Ob...
Espanso
espanso.org/

[@Arsenico13]

"Only look for solutions when you have a problem". This is such good advice in general!

[@seangibbons4713]

To expand on this advice: "Problems are evergreen, and not all of them deserve the effort of a solution."

[@harryravenkiller8580]

Wow... Obsidian JUST CAME onto my radar a few days ago and here we are... Sly is here to tell us about it.

[@theindyjt]

From Power Word Spill?

[@AdamPreset]

I am Obsidian-curious, so thank you for this video. I am not in the market to fiddle with anything new, but I like seeing other approaches. I use Apple Notes for many things, game prep included. It has gotten better and is easy to use on all my devices.

[@flamingbull3438]

GOD I love Obsidian, it is a game changer for campaign prep. I also set up a Git repository to backup all of my notes and push to it every time I write - no chance I want to lose this if my PC ever bricks

[@kevinmccormick1886]

Love to see this. I stopped using Notion because I'm trying to cut back on hosted services. I recently switched to Obsidian, where I can control the save and sync (even using the paid service if I decide to). While there is a learning curve, Josh Plunkett does a great job showing you how.

[@brannenpfister2579]

What’s bad about hosted services?

[@LumberPanda]

​@brannenpfister2579 what happens to your data when the Venture Capitalist funding dries up and they need to start making the line go up?

[@brannenpfister2579]

@@LumberPanda I have no idea what you just said hahaha

[@AccountingEnjoyer]

Sly this is the video I wanted you to make so badly. Thank you. 🙏🙏🙏

[@SlyFlourish]

Hope you enjoyed it!

[@raion_dragan]

As software engineer (Linux User #13 😉) I can share that "only look for a solution if you have a problem" has been haunting me my whole career. The "Keep It Simple" principle or quotes like "Premature Optimization Is the Root of All Evil" all aim to concentrate on the real value of what we're doing and avoid to getting lost in complexity. Thanks once again for bringing back the focus to what really matters: running awesome games with our friends! 🙏🏻

[@david10865]

I love the phrase "dorking around with" 😂

[@pure35]

Been using Obsidian for a couple weeks now. It's been such a massive improvement over One Note. This and Power Word Spill's vid convinced me.

[@alantesser1645]

Always love Mike’s approach. He’s the opposite of clickbait. Where others would make a video with a premise like, “you’ve GOT to switch to this prep tool!!!!” Mike notes that there might be some cool use cases for a tool that you might not be using yet. Thanks Mike, keep doing it your way.

[@macoppy6571]

19:24 Obsidian is not open source software. Thank you, Mike, for this disclosure 👍

[@MrYouTubeAndWatch]

Love this. Bag of Tips uses your teachings and makes loads of templates to makes being a lazy DM so much better! You all do the pantheons work! Love you all!

[@ARCThunder]

Military-style dating sorts chronologically and makes the most sense for zeroing in from most general to specific date.

[@PhD20]

Thanks for the link, Mike! A lot of my articles beyond "Getting Started" really drill into having a solid set of principles rather than every bell and whistle. Because I agree with your observation that Obsidian can overload new folks with things they don't need. Focus on your needs, build slowly, and build intentionally.

[@SlyFlourish]

Thank you!

[@tuomasronnberg5244]

I prefer my pen and notebook. I can use that to write notes and draw graphs and maps without needing any kind of plugin or app 😄

[@solaries3]

Hilariously, I've been using Obsidian for about yet, but I'm going to use Notion for my next campaign because of YOU! haha

[@SlyFlourish]

Doh!

[@Ravenspath]

I just converted from Notion to Obsidian as well. Even with the learning curve I find it easier to use than Notion. I do miss some things in Notion, and use it for other parts of my life but for organizing my game notes and world building I love Obsidian. The other factor is that I have the files on my laptop vs. the cloud. Though I have set up syncing with google drive so I can get the same information on multiple devices. Great video. Thank you for creating this and your Notion videos. As well as the Lazy GM methodology.

[@Maiasgameroom]

Any videos out there that show how to use Google Drive to sync. I still cant seem to figure it out. It's the one of the major things that holds me back from illy switching over. Currently I love that I can access Notion on my Mac, iPad, and my Android phone.

[@JoshPlunkett]

@@Maiasgameroom You literally just create your vault in your Google Drive. Obsidian is just folders and text files.

[@RedDiceDiaries]

Great video, I've been falling into an Obsidian rabbit-hole for my Enemy Within WFRP 4E prep, can't wait to see the Patreon stuff for this :)

[@im2ez4u2nv]

Love this video, and am thankful you made it... Notion however just works for me, and your templated setup has REALLY helped me develop my adventure. Please keep Notion in your thoughts as you expand your content 😁

[@KirbyMoyers]

Sly - Thanks SO MUCH for this video - it's right on target for me!

[@ivancarabano]

Great advice, I love all your videos

[@AiguretDuren]

I've been using Obsidian for TTRPGs and many more things since December 2022. There are always ways I could improve the way I use it, but even with just doing what makes sense right now works out pretty well! It's a daily application for me, 100%.

[@superjames22]

Hey Mike, one of the first fond memories I have of your channel was when you used plain markdown files for prep. I just loved the simpleness of that approach combined with your lazy dm style. You going back to a more simpler system without notion databases is very welcome! Love to see more Obsidian related content. :))

[@spacelem]

Hi, I am one of the 12 people who uses Linux and Obsidian!

[@christianemden7637]

Nice to meet you who are the other 10?

[@LumberPanda]

​@@christianemden7637present!

[@armorclasshero2103]

Works with dropbox and google folders as well

[@FamBoren]

I just getting into Obsidian, so this video was a blessing. Your thoughts resonates very well with my own thoughts on using Obsidian. I'm looking forwar to see more of this (either here or at your patreon page)

[@petejones284]

The thing I love about writing in Markdown is that I can write without my fingers leaving the keyboard, reaching for a mouse or trackpad...and yes I'm one of your 12 patreons that use Linux!!

[@heycato-l4t]

I've been using Obsidian for a year or so. I really appreciate the VIM emulation.

[@ikaemos]

Glad to catch this on KZbin, I was having trouble following on Spotify this morning. 😅

[@northvikingman]

I love sly flourish videos.

[@BigBadSam1234]

Great video, lots of good reasons to try this out

[@ShurkerOmega]

Love all your videos and books.

[@lowRolls]

Aha! I knew I couldn’t be the only code tinkerer who pokes at DnD with code just because it’s fun. It’s kinda reassuring. 😎

[@SlyFlourish]

Join open5e and make the hobby stronger through code!

[@KrustalHersh]

You also touched on one reason I like “dorking around” with other tools. It usually challenges some process I’m following in my current system. Like your one note for all characters change. Obviously something you can do in Notion now too but getting out of that familiar space makes you reevaluate things even if you toss obsidian aside. Great video and love the reminder to not get into the weeds with obsidian.

[@Beautifulconversation]

Been using it for a month dming the other videos for it haven't been great looking forward to this

[@BobIrving2]

Great video! I love your approach -- find what works for you, don't look for a solution if you don't have a problem, etc. I decided a year ago to stick with Obsidian for a year, and to only add plugins that I NEEDED. It's been amazing for me. Frictionless writing, which is what I wanted. I have a printout of the basic markdown commands on my desk for referral. Also, the new $4/mo sync service is money well spent. You only get one Gb of storage, but after a year I only have about 123Mb. So I think I'm good to go! Thanks again for an informative and balanced video.

[@christianstraubhaar339]

I love the deep dives into techy weird tools. Definitely going to check out espanso

[@Cesoide_]

Dude, I was using notion as well (mostly because of your template) then I switched to obsidian. Now, I'm back to notion, because of the AI features. If you fill everything there, you can straight up ask notion ai about anything that is contained in your notes, which is super cool. (you can ask something like: "who was the npc that first had x magical item" and it will tell you); That said, obsidian is so cool and I love the rollable tables that yo u can build there. awesome for random encounters and just random events to inspire you. I addes a whole bunch of dnd speak random tables in my osidian vault, so I can have it all at my fingertips, in the blink of an eye.

[@schitzoflink8612]

Great video! I do link and make files but for one major reason. I like to use the graph view to see how things connect. It helps me come up with new ideas when I see that there is a node of connections that would make the game more interesting and I hadn't realized.

[@BLynn]

@38:42 I've been using that date formatting at the beginning of my filenames too, though I put in parentheses with a 3 letter abbreviation for the month right after the two digits for it, which means even at work or around the world people can follow the naming convention. I also include a underscore to separate from the rest of the name. 202403(MAR)17_ is the date I wrote this comment.

[@nemcade]

My strategy is that I create an empty file for each character but do not expand on them typically. Even if you don't link them, they appear in "Unlinked Mentions", This way when you need the character you can easily find every mention of them throughout the session notes. Additionally I do have some metadata on them done with properties, but I try to keep things in very few clicks. One page strategy could still be useful, you just get a bit more utility out of it.

[@AdamPreset]

LaTex! Wow! I haven’t used that since CS class … a long time ago.

[@kevinvanloo2049]

I don't use paper that much during my game. Only to draw maps on, really. I did/do want to use my laptop. I wanted a tool to have it all. Links, images, maps, calendars, rules and basically a local wiki of our playworld. I used OneNote, Notion and now Obsidian. Obsidian is the tool that can handle it all. It's complex, and required me to learn markdown and yaml without actual knowledge of these. It was worth it.

[@PascalPflugfelder]

I like using a simple text editor but the only thing I want is some kind of grammar and syntax check.

[@Strammeiche]

I tried notion, obsidian, wiki style systems but in the end I prefer the simplicity of word/onenote and for some things markdown. Other tools make me playing with the tools more than actual prepping/writing/brainstorming

[@ItsYoji]

Linux user reporting in. Also been using Obsidian as my go to for a while now, it's great no matter if you use it for simple notes or crazy databases and mini-programs. Or anything inbetween.

[@cmexrayu]

Good advice

[@chaqalaqalaqa]

I’ve been using Obsidian for D&D and other projects for a couple years and I think it’s unmatched in features and it’s very lightweight compared to something like World Anvil

[@andyduvall7090]

All the files are hosted on your local computer too, instead of a online subscription

[@kmaynard90]

i am in the deep end of the pool mike lol

[@robertwallace5288]

I use drive sync on my phone to sync vto my Google drive and I have Google drive installed on my windows machine allowing me to do what Mike does with icloud

[@BKPrice]

Proprietary isn't as bad on Obsidian because it's all local hosted, so you'll always have your latest version of Obsidian and the plugins that you can use, no matter what happens to the creators.

[@SlyFlourish]

I’ve already have plugins fail when obsidian updates

[@BKPrice]

@@SlyFlourish I'm not saying that using third-party plugins isn't risky. That's the nature of such things, but the risk is less on Obsidian than an online client because if the developers of the software cease to exist at some point you can still use Obsidian and the plugins that have been fixed for the last update before they went defunct, whereas with an online client you can't even use what was already working because you lose all access to the software. Not having your notes in pure markdown isn't as risky with Obsidian as it is with an online program because the company ceasing to exist doesn't erase the program from your computer.

[@samdouglas32]

An Obsidian feature ive really appreciated is being able to embed notes or specific sections by putting a ! in front of the link, e.g. ![[Monsters/Wight]] (if memory serves). Obsidian has pretty good UX for doing this as it shows a drop-down. During a combat encounter, I'll just add these as needed into my session sheet note (if ive bothered to write the stat block ahead of time). I've found this works much better than having to flip between many different notes/pdfs/physical books and getting flustered

[@SlyFlourish]

I didn’t know that. Cool!

[@Aliktren]

I use the goblins notebook, $1 per month, specific to ttrpgs, very powerful, uses very similar format, has a great lazy dm template for prep 😂

[@ShawnMarkham]

Woot!!! He said Linux... Yeah, I'm one of them.

[@KirbyMoyers]

I have synced with Google Drive and it worked fine. I pay for Sync now, to catch the places where I don't have Drive running. However you come at it, sync is quite doable.

[@emil_io]

Plugin to have wikilinks outside of obsidian exist. For example in neovim

[@orkcol]

I remember watching the video about Notion and have been hooked ever since. Wonder if the same will happen here...

[@BigJThundy]

Miro is also tight as hell

[@PhilipDudley3]

I use SyncThing to transfer my files between my PCs and Phone and Tablet.

[@PsychesGamingAddiction]

Hy Sly! I've been using a version of your lazy dm prep method for D&D ever since I have read your book, love it! But for some games I find that I can't use it as well Regarding taking notes I find that most modern Adventures suffer from the "wall of text" syndrome. I am for example running a Call of Cthulhu Campaign (Masks of Nyarlathothep) and while the adventure is definitely a 10/10 it still has a lot of text to parse trough at the table so I honestly struggle to find a way to make notes in a meaningful way. Too short and I might miss some things and too long and it's just like the walls of text in said adventures... Maybe some day i`ll find a middle ground. At the moment i just use bullet points of what's important in any location and reference the adventure book if more detail is needed (like what the NPCs say, what weird books are actually there and so on). But some locations get....big even with just bullet points. Any tips for Mystery/Investigative or even Warhammer Fantasy Gamemasters? These games are different from D&D since there isn't so much combat to rely on for an easy out and clues and such are very important to the game. I have found that writing 10 clues for every CoC session just gets in the way, since there aren't always so many clues for every session, sometimes there maybe is just 1 important clue to find that leads the characters to the cults base. I have also found that digital notes are a pain in the butt for me since no matter how much I prep I still just return to run the adventure from the book xD I might try to do an old school pen & paper style of prep. Any tips how to handle this?

[@drdm2446]

Thanks for the video. A great basic intro. I’ll be sticking with Notion though - don’t fix what ain’t broke and all that. Perhaps if you had more time between sessions (monthly games?) that might mean you’d use the links and pages for NPCs more? P.s. is it me or were there a load more ads than normal on this video??

[@Skellybr0]

Just learned about Obsidian today. It seems crazy. I used to use OneNote, and it worked okay. Then I learned Notion for work. Im about to start Curse of Strahd and was planning to use Notion and Sly's templates to do it, and now im tempted by Obsidian!! I'm so split!! Should i use OneNote like im used to, Notion like i planned to, or bite the bullet and use Obsidian becuase i like some features of it??!! Maybe i will use Obsidian for personal notes and my own prep/data, and use Notion for stuff that involves sharing things with players or making databases. Does anyone have some tips or suggestions? THANK YOU FOR ALL YOU DO, SLY FLOURISH!! 🎉😊

[@raedlives9261]

I consider myself to be Obsidian adjacent, but I'll get there soon enough. 😁

[@igotsmeakabob]

I still wish that there was a premade "generic fantasy setting/game" Obsidian file that I could load up and reverse-engineer. Without that, it's so daunting to open and learn. edit: OK so you made a template for patrons. Hmmm. Maybe I can try that!

[@bobsavage3317]

☮

[@PsychesGamingAddiction]

Another thing you say you use paper notes for running the game? May I ask for more elaboration on that :D ? Do you use notion/obsidian for your "pre campaign prep" to have everything written down in short form and then just have paper notes for whats relevant for that session or? Would love to see a video about how a session looks for you with notes and such

[@wigginns555]

Mike with the Linux users friendly fire 💀😂

[@arcanjl]

Couldn’t find your template anywhere for obsidian. I haven’t use your one for notion, but wanted to see how you did obsidian

[@Satori2046]

Looks good but why do I have the feeling this is way more complicated thant Notion ? :p

[@brannenpfister2579]

Notion vs Obsidian? Which do you think?

[@Rad3yt]

Apple notes for me.

[@gedece]

I'm not in love with Obsidian, but I'm a Evernote refugee after they changed horribly the interface for a low contrast one. I'm just starting to use Obsidian and it freaked me out it put the images at the same leve as my documents. then seeing your video I created a new folder for the images and now it looks better.

[@gedece]

Ahhh, so that is how it works, feeling better about Obsidian free now.

[@millersj]

Linux users rise up!!

[@sqoody7invegas625]

One Note might be ok on PC, but DONT TRUST it for mobile. I lost tons of notes with one note mobile.

[@scottnolan2833]

I have a secret method called “writing $&@% down in a notebook” been using since 1977. Never had it crash. Never had to worry about accessing it.

[@milktots6933]

Obsidian is absolute must not only for lazy prep but for expansive worldbuilding. It’s just as powerful as tailor made campaign management tools, and it is totally free. I’ll shill for them any day

[@SanderDecleer]

I really like your advice of only using plugins as solutions for actual problems. I've only been using it far half a year but was pretty intimidated by the introduction videos suggesting tons of plugins. I really like my current barebones setup