How I PREP D&D with Obsidian

I use Obsidian to prepare for my D&D sessions, it's a non-linear text editor that allows you to quickly and easily link articles together. It has made me faster and better at both prepping sessions and at worldbuilding!

🎬 Created by Daði & Anna Birna ♥

▼ LINKS ▼

▼ INDEX ▼
00:00 Introduction
00:57 What is Obsidian?
03:59 My campaign setting in Obsidian
07:56 The more you know, the more you know you don't know
10:18 Let's make an article together
12:33 How to search
14:35 How to link articles
16:36 Why it's good for session prep
18:12 Let's prep an adventure
19:31 My Prep Format
20:50 Session Sections
22:23 Writing notes during a session
22:43 Formatting
25:09 Outlining Tools
27:51 Outlining the session
29:07 You can publish articles
29:59 Syncing files
31:03 It's secure
31:57 Advanced Obsidian Mastery
33:46 Join us LIVE!
34:14 Outro

[nmo]

You’re already quickly becoming my favourite D&D channel *and* you also use obsidian? Oh hell yeah

[szulgitgk]

I once heard an apocryphal story about a Pathfinder game that had several DMs and dozens of players that lasted for years at a university. DMs and players would graduate and new ones would join, but they all used the same world (and each party's actions affected the world). It was long ago and the DMs had to meet once a week to exchange notes on what happened. It occurs to me that Obsidian would be PERECT for this!

[MattyIce]

The more I watch your videos, the more I wish I could be a fly on the wall during one of your sessions. Your insight and approach to DMing helped get me back into dnd after being burned out from college (being the club president will do that do you 😅😅). Keep it up Dadi and AB!

[ferrisffalcis]

you're one of the few D&D channels in this entire platform that i see apply basic game design principles to running a D&D campaign and i can't say how refreshing it is to see a channel that isnt a bunch of bearded old men going "if you're not throwing a bunch of random garbage from the players handbook cobbled together into a world that was clearly written to be a book and not a ttrpg campaign and letting your players figure out what to do with it, you're a bad gm" and i just wanted you to know that

thank you for not being that

[BeastmanWatchUrMouth]

You've got a gift for explaining things - all of your videos are concise and filled with applicable examples of how to use and do things as a DM. Great job, keep it up, proud of you

[dj_point]

16:05 If you find yourself renaming the same link frequently you can give the file an alias. So in this scenario, in Chief Executive Officer add CEO to an aliases property (Ctrl+; or Ctrl+p "Add file property") and when you type CEO it will auto complete to [[Chief Executive Officer|CEO]].

Obsidian is an amazing tool at its default and I love that you showcase that. It's so easy to get bogged down with all the fancy use methods and plugins.

[finisterre]

Ive been using obsidian for quite a while, and i never realised how helpful linking would be, i feel like I've ascended!

[orcdong]

I had heard of Obsidian before, but never actually watched anyone use it/see it function in video format until I saw this yesterday. Just wanted to let you know that I’ve spent the majority of the last 24 hours moving existing lore and developing new lore in the program lol. Thanks for the demo!

[SacchieILU]

"Make sure all of these characters have a chance to evade death once or twice"

YES!!! I am also a big believer in doing this as a DM.

[jakob]

Thanks! Obsidian seems to be the perfect tool to create my Rulebook. I am converting now from LibreOffice Writer and its so much easier to link everything.
Alliasses are also a thing btw. That way u can type [[CEO]] and obsidian makes it [[Chief Executive Officer|CEO]]. I found this extremly useful when refering to a notes title in plural in the text.
To do this, just add somethng like this to ur note:
---
aliases:
- CEO

- CEOs
- Bossman
---

[worldforger]

Finally! Obsidian is such a life saver for how simple it is. I can help with Templates, create a folder called templates, then for any template you want to create, just create a new article, give it the title of the template, then build it as normal. In your settings, you just then need to assign that folder as your template directory.

[carolxs]

Icelandic names sound very fantastical to me (Brazilian living in the US). Maybe my next NPC will be called Daði.
Only word I know in Icelandic is "Seljalandsfoss" which is a waterfall I went to in 2011.

I love Obsidian and one magical thing I learned recently is that you can import and export stuff from Foundry, so with a little work you can have spells, magic items and monsters all linked!

[marighost_]

I've been using Obsidian for awhile now and it's been an absolute gamechanger. Instead of using Sync, I have syncthing (free, open source) set up on my PC and laptop (and my home server) to backup files. Synchronizes the files locally over your network and updates instantly.

Awesome video, as usual, and it's awesome you showed your own process. Not many seem to do that, and it's enlightening for baby writers like me who doubt themselves and get hung up on the actual structure of my writing, not the content itself. This video was the catalyst for joining the channel.

[superstealthypancake]

Holy crap this might be one of the most useful ttrpg advice videos i have seen as of late. I picked up obsidian yesterday and I've already written more about my homebrew world than i ever have before. I've always wanted to write wiki style articles for myself and my players but every time i tried using world anvil or campfire i would get soooo bored and miserable, but i actually had fun getting my wacky ideas down. So thanks

[austinscroggins]

I am prepping for a huge weekend this weekend (our groups annual dndeekend) where we end up playing about 16-18 hours over 2 days. This was a question that was burning from me since you started your channel and am so happy you put this video together! Seriously, your content and demeanor is something I didn't even realize I needed in this community. Thank you for putting together content Daði!

[mayhem_]

I switched from OneNote to Obsidian and never looked back. One thing I learned is tags which help build tables for homebrew monsters. I DM for 3 other DMs and most of my monsters are homebrew so keeping track is so easy on Obsidian 😊keep up the good work love this channel!

[lollekompolle]

I just recently started using obsidian and it's a gift. It's really fun and makes everything just work. There are workflows to learn, admittedly, but this is with every new program you use. Just use it the way it feels best to you and develop your workflow along the way.

[LoneWolffanwriter]

"Editing at the speed of thought" and the features you described are compelling as heck.
Might be time for me to swap from my Google Doc to Obsidian...
Keep up the great work!

[kllrnooooova]

Finally, an easy to follow tutorial for using obsidian for dnd! I love the other tutorials that feature plugins and templating and lots of customization, but the setup feels more like im working on obsidian rather than dnd. Thanks for this!

[TaylorLopez]

I'm ALREADY using Obsidian to prep my sessions and take notes, and I LOVED this video. First because you make the most of the most basic features of this tool, and yet it's STILL so useful, and second it means others are catching onto this beautiful pairing of D&D + Obsidian.
Thanks!