I have two questions please: 1) That's a very attractive theme for everything, is it public/open? 2) Did you HAND INPUT all those books into Obsidianmd, did you have some way of transcribing/copying it over, or some crazy script that was scraping all the books/PDFs?
Nicole, thank you for your videos! You help me to explore Obsidian plugins that are new to me, give some ideas to implement to my work and self-development management. I’ve never played TTRPG before, but feel they can be interesting to me so I discover them leisurely on your channel 🤓
Oh, great! Glad I'm not the only one. One thing I haven't added yet is spells, but I don't tend to use too many custom spells so I figure they're already searchable via D&D Beyond!
Thank you! I just got tired of not using anything I paid so much for... but, yeah it was a lot of work (and still is). But I do love using it now to prep for my games!
Very cool. Adding to bookmarks to watch later. I used to keep track of all my notes on paper, then on Trello, then in Doom Emacs and finally Obsidian, which I _think_ I will stick with long term. Looking forward to gleaming what I can from this to run my Savage Worlds campaigns. (quick plug, not sponsored or affiliated but if you want an RPG where mechanics take a back-seat to the story I highly recommend Savage Worlds).
Hey Nichole, thx for the cool obsidian videos. I was using notion, more specifically sly flourish templates, but I find obsidian way better now, thx to your videos. In regards to adding monsters, did you manually added them all? I’m an old timer dm, but since I got used to all those digital tools to help me run the game, whenever I’m running a in person session, I take too long to keep track of monster stats the old way. But it seems so tough to add them all by hand
I saw you on the Obsidian TTRPG talk and was really blown away by how great you have everything set up and organized! I was using a campaign management tool that is no longer being supported and after watching your videos I've hopped on the Obsidian bandwagon and love it. While very comfortable with computers I have 0 coding experience. Trying to brute force my way through I've managed to have my dataview query go from broken to returning 0 results so big step forward! Any advice on where to get started?
So happy to hear that you've jumped headfirst into Obsidian! I think it's the best tool out there for keeping track of campaigns for sure. As for your Dataview query, are you definitely defining the right directory? If you have your notes in a folder, you'll need to include the path in the query. Are you on the Obsidian Discord? I'm nvanderhoeven there; feel free to hit me up - might be easier to send me the query etc. over there.
Wow this is amazing. I'm stunned and inspired. I'm assuming the source books your are querying are pdfs. Does Obsidian handle these natively? Can you convert a pdf to mark down to manage the content ?does converting it change the original pdf? Did you start with building templates for each folder then populate each as needed? This is really amazing and a massive undertaking.
Nicole, this is beautiful and inspiring. I have so many questions: are you importing this data by "hand", because that's part of the processing…process? Do you then use a VTT alongside Obsidian, and if so, are you finding ways to import your data into it? I use both Encounter+ and Foundry and they have ways to interface with .md files…for the most part. And also: should I get the Game Master's Book of NPCs? :) I know that I, for one, would love to see more D&D/Obsidian stuff from you! …though I'm also really appreciative of your other Obsidian topics, too! Thanks for what you do!
Thank you! Happy you appreciate the work, because boy was there work. :D I write scripts to parse the text from books, or from sources online, but there's always SOME manual work, unfortunately. Especially when combining, for example, adventure seeds from multiple books. I do consider it part of the "processing" of a book to incorporate it into my notes. I don't use either Encounter+ or Foundry! I use Owlbear Rodeo for ultimate simplicity (and one of my players is wont to join the game on her mobile or tablet), so I don't integrate my notes with any VTT. I just leave Obsidian open and have a digital GM's screen constructed with the Workspaces plugin. I love the Game Master's Random Book of NPCs! It's nice to have a fully fledged-out character at the ready, backstory, motivation, loot and all! I recommend it-- but I recommend the digital version for easier transfer. Thank you for your comment and for the nice words! Appreciate the support. :)
@@nicolevdh Thanks for the advice! I'll get the Random Book, then. Totally understand (and appreciate) Owlbear, but if you're ever wanting a little more, Encounter+ is more than OR but a good bit less than Foundry, and you can both join and GM from iPad/iPhones, which is nice. Great, super-nerdy fanbase, too, if a little on the small side. Highly recommend. Thanks again!
@@nicolevdh - Thank you so much for your videos and love this one! - I am a longtime DM and recent user of obsidian for PKM - I was floored by how useful it is for me to boost my creativity and connect ideas - basically help my mind out with all curiosities of life. Anyway, I would love to know how to get the basic DM data into a vault - This would solve so many challenges I have now with preparing for campaigns, designing new worlds, and just making things more fun for me and players. Since I am not a coder (but pretty technical) could I pick your brain on how you got the resources/assets into Obsidian? Cheers, and thanks again for your great work!
Gosh, just telling me I haven't used all my PDF/Books. This would be a great way for me to use them and not feel the burden of having to read, especially across many sources.
Oh, Carson, I hear you! I think I'm getting better about using stuff from the books I've bought, but I'm still nowhere near using 100% of it. There's also the problem that the stuff I've pulled out of the PDFs and into Obsidian are still separate from the PDFs themselves. Working on a video on this topic now-- it should come out soon. :)
I have been having a whole lot of trouble learning how the dice roller plugin works to make Rollable Tables with Advanced Tables. Do you have a video explaining how that works?
Loved this! And I never thought about using the dice plugin for other stuff. I can make it pull random lines/paragraphs for things in my vault. Oh, so many ideas coming in! Jeremy is an amazing guy and makes fabulous plugins. Thanks for the video! BTW, did you buy all the books as PDFs, and copy from them? Or did you ocr them?
Jeremy IS amazing! He's really responsive as well - he created Fantasy Calendar without TOO much "hinting" from me, haha. Rolling dice is funnily enough the thing I use Dice Roller the least for. I bought them all as PDFs! I don't often buy physical books anymore.
@@nicolevdh Got it! I have most of my books digitally too. I've talked to Jeremy a few times, about the Leaflet plugin, which I use every day. Always nice and super fast coder.
This is amazing! I just so happen to also have a copy of Vault of Magic and would love to set it up the way you have. Is there a way you bulk imported all the items without having to manually enter each of them?
Yay! Love Kobold Press's stuff! I hate to tell you this but... no, I didn't find any place where all the items were listed already. I wrote a script to parse the items a bit and separate them into markdown files, but I still had to manually examine each one for formatting and other things. This is what I do now while I'm listening to/watching streamed D&D shows like Critical Role. :)
The manual way, I'm afraid! :( There are other (non-legal) ways but I went the legal, manual route-- by copying images from the PDF. This is also why I haven't done the art for all the monsters.
This is really neat, but inputting all the monsters from the SRD seems daunting, especially formatting them for Jeremy's Statblock plug-in. Is there a place where I call pull those .md's instead of creating a bunch myself?
OMG Rachel, tell me about it. One way to make this easier is to use the TTRPG Statblocks plugin to import data from, for example, 5etools. The plugin parses the JSON files from it and puts it into monster statblocks for you! Unfortunately it still doesn't have everything, so...yeah, I've spent a lot of time on this.
Great video it really helped me out. However I am stuck, and hopefully its a simple answer that I am not seeing. How do you handle the " roll twice situation" for your NPC creation tables, specifically in the Bonds section for when a 10 is rolled. I cant seem to get it to work.
Hi! Glad it helped! I didn't do it in that example, but in other cases (ex: my item tables), what I do is use nested tables - I roll on a table with some rows rolling on another table. For example, in Table A I might have ten items. Table B then has ten rows, but the last row includes two rolls on Table A. When they are rendered in Obsidian, both rolls are shown. You should be able to do the same with Bonds. :)
@@nicolevdh Is there any easier way to get it all into Obsidian than manually entering it? Also, are you using the same vault for during sessions, or is this vault purely a repository?
@@Xenolith234 I don't manually enter these - I use existing copies online (only of books I've already purchased), write a Python script to parse them in some cases, and then manually format if necessary after that. I share the vault with two other people (a brother and a friend, both of whom are my DMs and have also purchased the same books), so I don't put things specifically for my games in that vault. So I have one vault that is just a repository of DM stuff, one that is a player-facing repository of handouts for the game that I run, and I put specific game notes in my personal vault. Might be overkill for some, but that's what works for me!
@@nicolevdh Oh, that's great - I have a similar, overwhelming setup where I own far too many physical books and PDFs that they don't actually ever see use. Have you posted all of the publically legal templates you use anywhere? I didn't see them on your site.
@@nicolevdh - I have seen a lot of RUclips channels and just wanted to thank you for your amazing work. You are one very interesting person - creative, intelligent, and thoughtful. I hope you find a nice place to live too - don't let anyone get your down!!!!
Sort of. I imported many of them (the ones that were available) but I unfortunately like a lot of indie/esoteric RPG stuff. Those I write scripts to parse, but there's still a lot that I do end up entering manually.
This is a very impressive setup. I love how organized you have everything. Great video
Thanks, Ryan! It took a lot of work, but it's really useful now!
DND is a really good way to learn Obsidian! Thank you.
Haha! I guess it is! Glad that works for you! Thank you for watching. :)
Further question - did you manually add in everything from the book or was there a way to import it into obsidian?
Whoops, asked the same thing and just saw your question lol.
I have two questions please: 1) That's a very attractive theme for everything, is it public/open? 2) Did you HAND INPUT all those books into Obsidianmd, did you have some way of transcribing/copying it over, or some crazy script that was scraping all the books/PDFs?
Nicole, thank you for your videos! You help me to explore Obsidian plugins that are new to me, give some ideas to implement to my work and self-development management.
I’ve never played TTRPG before, but feel they can be interesting to me so I discover them leisurely on your channel 🤓
Thanks so much! I'm happy to share what I know. TTRPGs are great! They can be a great creative outlet as well. :)
I'm working on my own D&D DM 5e reference vault and came here to get inspiration for formatting.
Oh, great! Glad I'm not the only one. One thing I haven't added yet is spells, but I don't tend to use too many custom spells so I figure they're already searchable via D&D Beyond!
This is brilliant and daunting. I’ve thinking about doing something similar for a while, you might have just given me the push I need.
Thank you! I just got tired of not using anything I paid so much for... but, yeah it was a lot of work (and still is). But I do love using it now to prep for my games!
OMG your approach to this topic is awesoma. It openend my mind to become more observant and create new ways of displaying usefull information
this is cool..but just a tour i was looking for a guide on how to
You are my hero. This is phenomenal, something for me to work towards!
This is great! I have the same problem, crapload of stuff, hard to put to use. Thanks for the video, fantastic ideas!
Awesome!! Glad I could give you some ideas. Now I just need to stop buying stuff long enough to process them...
I keep watching this for ideas on my overall Obsidian setup -- and now I want to hoard all this D&D stuff!
Haha! Ikr? I'm right there with you. There's a neverending parade of books that I can't seem to stop buying from DTRPG/DM's Guild. :D
Very cool. Adding to bookmarks to watch later. I used to keep track of all my notes on paper, then on Trello, then in Doom Emacs and finally Obsidian, which I _think_ I will stick with long term. Looking forward to gleaming what I can from this to run my Savage Worlds campaigns. (quick plug, not sponsored or affiliated but if you want an RPG where mechanics take a back-seat to the story I highly recommend Savage Worlds).
Thank you, I haven't heard of it but will check it out! I do like to dabble with other RPGs on the side. :)
Hey Nichole, thx for the cool obsidian videos. I was using notion, more specifically sly flourish templates, but I find obsidian way better now, thx to your videos. In regards to adding monsters, did you manually added them all? I’m an old timer dm, but since I got used to all those digital tools to help me run the game, whenever I’m running a in person session, I take too long to keep track of monster stats the old way. But it seems so tough to add them all by hand
I saw you on the Obsidian TTRPG talk and was really blown away by how great you have everything set up and organized! I was using a campaign management tool that is no longer being supported and after watching your videos I've hopped on the Obsidian bandwagon and love it. While very comfortable with computers I have 0 coding experience. Trying to brute force my way through I've managed to have my dataview query go from broken to returning 0 results so big step forward! Any advice on where to get started?
So happy to hear that you've jumped headfirst into Obsidian! I think it's the best tool out there for keeping track of campaigns for sure.
As for your Dataview query, are you definitely defining the right directory? If you have your notes in a folder, you'll need to include the path in the query. Are you on the Obsidian Discord? I'm nvanderhoeven there; feel free to hit me up - might be easier to send me the query etc. over there.
Wow this is amazing. I'm stunned and inspired.
I'm assuming the source books your are querying are pdfs.
Does Obsidian handle these natively?
Can you convert a pdf to mark down to manage the content ?does converting it change the original pdf?
Did you start with building templates for each folder then populate each as needed?
This is really amazing and a massive undertaking.
Nicole, this is beautiful and inspiring. I have so many questions: are you importing this data by "hand", because that's part of the processing…process? Do you then use a VTT alongside Obsidian, and if so, are you finding ways to import your data into it? I use both Encounter+ and Foundry and they have ways to interface with .md files…for the most part. And also: should I get the Game Master's Book of NPCs? :) I know that I, for one, would love to see more D&D/Obsidian stuff from you! …though I'm also really appreciative of your other Obsidian topics, too! Thanks for what you do!
Thank you! Happy you appreciate the work, because boy was there work. :D I write scripts to parse the text from books, or from sources online, but there's always SOME manual work, unfortunately. Especially when combining, for example, adventure seeds from multiple books. I do consider it part of the "processing" of a book to incorporate it into my notes.
I don't use either Encounter+ or Foundry! I use Owlbear Rodeo for ultimate simplicity (and one of my players is wont to join the game on her mobile or tablet), so I don't integrate my notes with any VTT. I just leave Obsidian open and have a digital GM's screen constructed with the Workspaces plugin.
I love the Game Master's Random Book of NPCs! It's nice to have a fully fledged-out character at the ready, backstory, motivation, loot and all! I recommend it-- but I recommend the digital version for easier transfer.
Thank you for your comment and for the nice words! Appreciate the support. :)
@@nicolevdh Thanks for the advice! I'll get the Random Book, then. Totally understand (and appreciate) Owlbear, but if you're ever wanting a little more, Encounter+ is more than OR but a good bit less than Foundry, and you can both join and GM from iPad/iPhones, which is nice. Great, super-nerdy fanbase, too, if a little on the small side. Highly recommend. Thanks again!
Thank you, that DOES sound really good. I must try it out! Thanks for the recommendation!
Awwww, wait. It's iOS only? That's a shame. I use Android phones exclusively and I'm not a fan of iOS. Maybe when/if they expand...
@@nicolevdh - Thank you so much for your videos and love this one! - I am a longtime DM and recent user of obsidian for PKM - I was floored by how useful it is for me to boost my creativity and connect ideas - basically help my mind out with all curiosities of life. Anyway, I would love to know how to get the basic DM data into a vault - This would solve so many challenges I have now with preparing for campaigns, designing new worlds, and just making things more fun for me and players. Since I am not a coder (but pretty technical) could I pick your brain on how you got the resources/assets into Obsidian? Cheers, and thanks again for your great work!
Gosh, just telling me I haven't used all my PDF/Books. This would be a great way for me to use them and not feel the burden of having to read, especially across many sources.
Oh, Carson, I hear you! I think I'm getting better about using stuff from the books I've bought, but I'm still nowhere near using 100% of it. There's also the problem that the stuff I've pulled out of the PDFs and into Obsidian are still separate from the PDFs themselves. Working on a video on this topic now-- it should come out soon. :)
I have been having a whole lot of trouble learning how the dice roller plugin works to make Rollable Tables with Advanced Tables. Do you have a video explaining how that works?
Loved this! And I never thought about using the dice plugin for other stuff. I can make it pull random lines/paragraphs for things in my vault. Oh, so many ideas coming in! Jeremy is an amazing guy and makes fabulous plugins.
Thanks for the video! BTW, did you buy all the books as PDFs, and copy from them? Or did you ocr them?
Jeremy IS amazing! He's really responsive as well - he created Fantasy Calendar without TOO much "hinting" from me, haha. Rolling dice is funnily enough the thing I use Dice Roller the least for.
I bought them all as PDFs! I don't often buy physical books anymore.
@@nicolevdh Got it! I have most of my books digitally too.
I've talked to Jeremy a few times, about the Leaflet plugin, which I use every day. Always nice and super fast coder.
@@OyvindSolstad Me too! It's a must for D&D in particular!!
What a great video! Wow.
what video will show me how to add the info from the lazy dm workbook into Obsidion?
found it and saving it on a playlist.. XD
Glad you liked it! :)
This is amazing! I just so happen to also have a copy of Vault of Magic and would love to set it up the way you have. Is there a way you bulk imported all the items without having to manually enter each of them?
Yay! Love Kobold Press's stuff! I hate to tell you this but... no, I didn't find any place where all the items were listed already. I wrote a script to parse the items a bit and separate them into markdown files, but I still had to manually examine each one for formatting and other things. This is what I do now while I'm listening to/watching streamed D&D shows like Critical Role. :)
@Nicole van der Hoeven would it be possible to share this script, I have alot of pdfs and I would like to do this as well.
this is very inspiring. can I ask how you went about adding images to all the monster files?
The manual way, I'm afraid! :( There are other (non-legal) ways but I went the legal, manual route-- by copying images from the PDF. This is also why I haven't done the art for all the monsters.
This is really neat, but inputting all the monsters from the SRD seems daunting, especially formatting them for Jeremy's Statblock plug-in. Is there a place where I call pull those .md's instead of creating a bunch myself?
OMG Rachel, tell me about it. One way to make this easier is to use the TTRPG Statblocks plugin to import data from, for example, 5etools. The plugin parses the JSON files from it and puts it into monster statblocks for you! Unfortunately it still doesn't have everything, so...yeah, I've spent a lot of time on this.
Great video it really helped me out. However I am stuck, and hopefully its a simple answer that I am not seeing. How do you handle the " roll twice situation" for your NPC creation tables, specifically in the Bonds section for when a 10 is rolled. I cant seem to get it to work.
Hi! Glad it helped! I didn't do it in that example, but in other cases (ex: my item tables), what I do is use nested tables - I roll on a table with some rows rolling on another table.
For example, in Table A I might have ten items. Table B then has ten rows, but the last row includes two rolls on Table A. When they are rendered in Obsidian, both rolls are shown.
You should be able to do the same with Bonds. :)
@@nicolevdh I'll give that a try, thanks!
One question I have - where are the names coming from? Did you just create a page with a bunch of names on it to draw from?
!!! Thank you for this!!
You're welcome! Glad I could help! The hard part is getting all of the monsters and items and everything, though...
@@nicolevdh Is there any easier way to get it all into Obsidian than manually entering it? Also, are you using the same vault for during sessions, or is this vault purely a repository?
@@Xenolith234 I don't manually enter these - I use existing copies online (only of books I've already purchased), write a Python script to parse them in some cases, and then manually format if necessary after that.
I share the vault with two other people (a brother and a friend, both of whom are my DMs and have also purchased the same books), so I don't put things specifically for my games in that vault. So I have one vault that is just a repository of DM stuff, one that is a player-facing repository of handouts for the game that I run, and I put specific game notes in my personal vault. Might be overkill for some, but that's what works for me!
@@nicolevdh Oh, that's great - I have a similar, overwhelming setup where I own far too many physical books and PDFs that they don't actually ever see use. Have you posted all of the publically legal templates you use anywhere? I didn't see them on your site.
@@Xenolith234 Glad it wasn't just a me problem! Sorry, no, I haven't posted the actual vault anywhere since it is definitely not all under the OGL. :(
Thanks!
You're so sweet. Thank you, Tomas! I'm happy to help.
@@nicolevdh - I have seen a lot of RUclips channels and just wanted to thank you for your amazing work. You are one very interesting person - creative, intelligent, and thoughtful. I hope you find a nice place to live too - don't let anyone get your down!!!!
Did you manually input all the 3rd party content?
Sort of. I imported many of them (the ones that were available) but I unfortunately like a lot of indie/esoteric RPG stuff. Those I write scripts to parse, but there's still a lot that I do end up entering manually.
@@nicolevdh I would be very interested to try and understand your process for this!