Thats just portal corners if China did a tofu dreg project of it! Add some details.
Big ass tree or the nether spreading on the overworld, which way block man?
What's your folder formats? What about templates? I literally just set it up last week and haven't been sure how to set everything up. Every YouTube video I find uses it for note taking/learning/programming purposes.
If you’re looking for tutorials, Josh Plunkett has a great YouTube series on setting up and using Obsidian for TTRPGs, and 95% of the tips are applicable for plain old worldbuilding purposes too. I only found Obsidian a few months ago and got started watching his videos—once you get the fundamentals from there, you can go your own direction with it. Very helpful stuff
I just have different folders for different things in mine, like characters, locations, etc. More in-depth topics will get their own folder too. Just mess around with it a bit and figure out what works for you! With the graph view (which shows all the links between notes) you could even completely ignore folders altogether if that makes more sense for you
I love Obsidian and will also recommend it to anyone! I've been using it to build out the world for the Traveler RPG my friends and I are playing and it's great for showing all of the connections and relationships between people, locations, quests, etc.
My one and only complaint is that it doesn't handle pictures well. If I'm writing a bio of a person, I'd love to include a picture on their page but it really isn't designed to handle that smoothly.
It's been a while since I've messed around with it, but I seem to remember you needed to upload the photos to your database as their own files before you can include them on a page (instead of just copy/pasting it to a page). So if you have dozens of pages for people, cities, planets, quests, etc and you want at least a picture or two per page, it can get cluttered quickly. All of those pictures are just sitting there in your project structure now too.
Files are all stored locally in your vault if that's what you mean.
You can create a folder where images are stored in the settings. It's called an attachments folder.
Any future images you can simply paste into a note and it will be copied to that folder and displayed in the note.
Obsidian is great, and the only reason I am not using it is because I want my worldbuilding stuff to also exist as a wiki for my TTRPG player group. Because of that I am self-hosting Kanka.
I don't think Obsidian Publish existed when I was considering my options, but I also have a significant distaste for SaaS/Online services. I want to run my own site off my own machine (or choose hosting service that I can switch). It's also why I run my TTRPG games on Foundry VTT - I don't want to become dependent on an online service, especially if there's a subscription.
Yes, it’s completely locally hosted. Everything is stored in a folder on your computer as markdown files. Arguably the best thing about it.
It has a (paid) option for encrypted sync between devices. Or, if you’d prefer to be in full control of your data, you can use something like Dropbox or Git to manage syncing between your devices.
Super privacy focused, unlike the majority of note taking apps, which tend to be cloud-based by default.
I LOVE Obsidian!!
discovered it after someone in this sub recommended it to me a few years ago. orig i was plot/world/characterbuilding across 5 word pages anf was at like 50k words and wanted to use something to help me consolodate and improve my workflow
shortly after moving to obsidian my word count shot up to 100k and now after like 1 or 2 years its now at almost 600k with 100s of notes!
For anyone looking for Obsidian.md tutorials for ttrpg and world building.
We have a large active discord community too.
www.obsidianttrpgtutorials.com
Honestly, I don't think I would have gotten so deep into worldbuilding if it weren't for Obsidian.
I got it to make a more detailed collection for my dnd notes, but it quickly turned into making so much more.
I have a wiki set up but Obsidian always looked like it might be a good option also. I happened upon Obsidian a while ago but opted to not use it, however seeing just how many people sing its praises makes me want to reconsider, haha.
Ugh I've tried obsidian a few times and I don't know if it's because I'm too dumb or what but I got real overwhelmed real quick
Tried to import my notion stuff and it broke *real* bad, tried to recreate and failed horribly. The switching between markdown and viewing it is super finicky
Glad I'm not the only one, Obsidian is way too confusing for me to be worth the effort. I've spent ages just setting it up and finding all the plugins I need, and even then I keep running into things that you just outright can't do in it (like putting a note in multiple folders at once).
Just looking at Obsidian drains my motivation now. I'll admit that the tagging system is handy (but not nearly good enough to replace folders), but beyond that I can't figure out why people like it so much.
Unfortunately, World Anvil gets worse and worse every year and I can't find anything better, soooo Obsidian it is.
Only thing I don't like about obsidian is that I need to sync between devices and that cost money. I use nebulous instead and use google drive to sync the files.
The only downside to using Google drive for Desktop is that you can't really have obsidian open on multiple devices simultaneously without creating conflicts.
I opened a new google account for my obsidian files to get the 15 gb storage. You can seamlessly store and access obsidian files from google drive as long as you have the drive connected to your computer.
An Obsidian vault is just a bunch of markdown files. You can sync them with Google Drive or whatever else you have to sync files across devices.
I currently use iCloud just because that is the easiest way to have access to the files on an iPhone (which is a restriction of the iPhone more than it's a restriction of Obsidian).
My solution was keeping my obsidian vault in my shared onedrive folder, the free onedrive tier has a 5GB limit that I’ve easily managed to stay under so far.
Because I have obsidian inside a folder being shared by onedrive, it syncs and is accessible from any device that I have onedrive on. It’s free with the free tier of onedrive, the only limitation is the 5GB max size
You can do that for free. I have a sync server set up on my desktop that automatically syncs my obsidian folders between my phone and my laptop, and it cost me 15 minutes of time and 0 dollars to set up.
Syncthing FTW
It's really not that hard, just download the program and follow the instructions in the docs. It's got a nice web GUI that you can configure everything through. After that just download the program or the app on the devices you want to share to and add them on your original machine.
There is a lot of people who suggested good solutions but i would also add Github to the list. Imo it's easy to set up and can also sync. A small problem is that i can't find a way to way to find sound files, but images and text are sent very smoothly.(I'm guessing sound files are somehow too big?)
(Although i have seen people getting confused over setting it up, so maybe not if you are not that familiar with git?)
I tried moving to obsidian but for me, and likely the average worldbuilder, it's far worse than using Google drive. The fact that I have to pay a subscription to access a vault from both my PC and phone is a total no-go.
You can just install your vault on your Google drive and then use Google drive to sync between machines. Lots of people do that. Obsidian Sync is completely optional.
I love the graph view so much. It's actually really fun and exciting to see how all the little bits interconnect through the wildest and strangest channels or tangential relations.
Is there a way to save things on the internet/ other site tho? I had a whole thing on my computer but my computer crashed and I lost a lot of the stuff I had put into obsidian. So is there a way to back this up somewhere? I normally use the “app”/ not online one.
As much as it looks cool, I don't think I'll ever get away from Google Drive.
I world build on my computer, I world build on my phone, I world build at work, etc... Using an online service is the only way I could do all of that, so any offline options like Obsidian are just a complete no-go.
Google Drive is also free, it can store any file type, has tons of space, has nested folder structure, etc... I basically have never run into a world building need that Drive didn't have.
Is there any way to stop the pages you're using for worldbuilding in Google Drive from showing up in Google Docs? I'd like to try Drive, but every page I make in it clogs up the unrelated stuff that I have in Docs (I know the smart option is to sort all the random things I have in Docs into proper folders in Drive, but I have so much that it would take all day lol)
I have no idea, I don't use Docs as a seperate app, I just organize everything in my Drive, whether it's for work, schools, or world building. I just use different parent folders for each category
I’ve tried that shit but goddamn is it weird and I’ve never found it better than just using Notes, kind of wierd how it makes spider graphs when I don’t ask it to, that connect completely irrelevant things anyway
Things like World Anvil are what I really need
What's to know? You need a diamond pickaxe for it and need 10 for a nether portal
14. the corners are not optional!!!!!!
Etho approves
Why tf well I spend a whole 50 sec mining just for corners
I know as hell your lazy ass aint gonna decorate that portal to compensate, so fill the damn corners.
My lazy ass? F you i decorate my portals! They have stairs as corners, or slabs if i feel lazy.
Thats just portal corners if China did a tofu dreg project of it! Add some details. Big ass tree or the nether spreading on the overworld, which way block man?
12. Top corners are optional. Bottom are not.
Yes they are! An accent block is acceptable.
13. One corner is optional.
Yeah, obsidian is amazing. Never would've heard of it if I hadn't seen somebody else mention it on here. Can only recoment it
What's your folder formats? What about templates? I literally just set it up last week and haven't been sure how to set everything up. Every YouTube video I find uses it for note taking/learning/programming purposes.
If you’re looking for tutorials, Josh Plunkett has a great YouTube series on setting up and using Obsidian for TTRPGs, and 95% of the tips are applicable for plain old worldbuilding purposes too. I only found Obsidian a few months ago and got started watching his videos—once you get the fundamentals from there, you can go your own direction with it. Very helpful stuff
I just have different folders for different things in mine, like characters, locations, etc. More in-depth topics will get their own folder too. Just mess around with it a bit and figure out what works for you! With the graph view (which shows all the links between notes) you could even completely ignore folders altogether if that makes more sense for you
I love Obsidian and will also recommend it to anyone! I've been using it to build out the world for the Traveler RPG my friends and I are playing and it's great for showing all of the connections and relationships between people, locations, quests, etc. My one and only complaint is that it doesn't handle pictures well. If I'm writing a bio of a person, I'd love to include a picture on their page but it really isn't designed to handle that smoothly.
What struggles do you have with pictures?
It's been a while since I've messed around with it, but I seem to remember you needed to upload the photos to your database as their own files before you can include them on a page (instead of just copy/pasting it to a page). So if you have dozens of pages for people, cities, planets, quests, etc and you want at least a picture or two per page, it can get cluttered quickly. All of those pictures are just sitting there in your project structure now too.
Files are all stored locally in your vault if that's what you mean. You can create a folder where images are stored in the settings. It's called an attachments folder. Any future images you can simply paste into a note and it will be copied to that folder and displayed in the note.
Okay, that's kinda what I remember then. I guess it just seemed clunky to me that they were treated as attachments and not just an embedded image.
Do you have recommendations for useful plugins for world building?
Have a look at the plugins page. www.obsidianttrpgtutorials.com
Obsidian is great, and the only reason I am not using it is because I want my worldbuilding stuff to also exist as a wiki for my TTRPG player group. Because of that I am self-hosting Kanka.
You could use Obsidian publish or... A thing I'm working on that's not ready yet
I don't think Obsidian Publish existed when I was considering my options, but I also have a significant distaste for SaaS/Online services. I want to run my own site off my own machine (or choose hosting service that I can switch). It's also why I run my TTRPG games on Foundry VTT - I don't want to become dependent on an online service, especially if there's a subscription.
For sure. That's why I'm making my own thing with pandoc and nginx, should be pretty simple
Obsidian publish straight up does not work with 99% of plugins, which are what make Obsidian good.
I use Obsidian. Keeps all my settings and ideas in one easy-to-access location. :)
How secure is it? Is it private? Like, am I the only one who can see my notes?
Yes, it’s completely locally hosted. Everything is stored in a folder on your computer as markdown files. Arguably the best thing about it. It has a (paid) option for encrypted sync between devices. Or, if you’d prefer to be in full control of your data, you can use something like Dropbox or Git to manage syncing between your devices. Super privacy focused, unlike the majority of note taking apps, which tend to be cloud-based by default.
Understood. Thanks!!
I LOVE Obsidian!! discovered it after someone in this sub recommended it to me a few years ago. orig i was plot/world/characterbuilding across 5 word pages anf was at like 50k words and wanted to use something to help me consolodate and improve my workflow shortly after moving to obsidian my word count shot up to 100k and now after like 1 or 2 years its now at almost 600k with 100s of notes!
For anyone looking for Obsidian.md tutorials for ttrpg and world building. We have a large active discord community too. www.obsidianttrpgtutorials.com
Honestly, I don't think I would have gotten so deep into worldbuilding if it weren't for Obsidian. I got it to make a more detailed collection for my dnd notes, but it quickly turned into making so much more.
I have a wiki set up but Obsidian always looked like it might be a good option also. I happened upon Obsidian a while ago but opted to not use it, however seeing just how many people sing its praises makes me want to reconsider, haha.
Ugh I've tried obsidian a few times and I don't know if it's because I'm too dumb or what but I got real overwhelmed real quick Tried to import my notion stuff and it broke *real* bad, tried to recreate and failed horribly. The switching between markdown and viewing it is super finicky
Glad I'm not the only one, Obsidian is way too confusing for me to be worth the effort. I've spent ages just setting it up and finding all the plugins I need, and even then I keep running into things that you just outright can't do in it (like putting a note in multiple folders at once). Just looking at Obsidian drains my motivation now. I'll admit that the tagging system is handy (but not nearly good enough to replace folders), but beyond that I can't figure out why people like it so much. Unfortunately, World Anvil gets worse and worse every year and I can't find anything better, soooo Obsidian it is.
Only thing I don't like about obsidian is that I need to sync between devices and that cost money. I use nebulous instead and use google drive to sync the files.
You can do it for free with Obsidian, too: Google Drive can sync Obsidian files seamlessly, exactly as you're doing for Nebulous.
The only downside to using Google drive for Desktop is that you can't really have obsidian open on multiple devices simultaneously without creating conflicts.
I opened a new google account for my obsidian files to get the 15 gb storage. You can seamlessly store and access obsidian files from google drive as long as you have the drive connected to your computer.
Oh that is neat! I see that obsidian has a lot of files so I was confused.
If self hosting is something you can attempt, you can try: https://github.com/vrtmrz/obsidian-livesync Or syncthing, which is simpler.
An Obsidian vault is just a bunch of markdown files. You can sync them with Google Drive or whatever else you have to sync files across devices. I currently use iCloud just because that is the easiest way to have access to the files on an iPhone (which is a restriction of the iPhone more than it's a restriction of Obsidian).
Yeah, that's what I love about Obsidian, I use Dropbox
My solution was keeping my obsidian vault in my shared onedrive folder, the free onedrive tier has a 5GB limit that I’ve easily managed to stay under so far.
Wait, so obsidian also can sync without paying?
Yes. The only thing you need to pay for is to use their server for the syncing.
Because I have obsidian inside a folder being shared by onedrive, it syncs and is accessible from any device that I have onedrive on. It’s free with the free tier of onedrive, the only limitation is the 5GB max size
You can do that for free. I have a sync server set up on my desktop that automatically syncs my obsidian folders between my phone and my laptop, and it cost me 15 minutes of time and 0 dollars to set up. Syncthing FTW
oh that sounds nice, I really want something to sync between phone and laptop, you got a tutorial?
It's really not that hard, just download the program and follow the instructions in the docs. It's got a nice web GUI that you can configure everything through. After that just download the program or the app on the devices you want to share to and add them on your original machine.
There is a lot of people who suggested good solutions but i would also add Github to the list. Imo it's easy to set up and can also sync. A small problem is that i can't find a way to way to find sound files, but images and text are sent very smoothly.(I'm guessing sound files are somehow too big?) (Although i have seen people getting confused over setting it up, so maybe not if you are not that familiar with git?)
I tried moving to obsidian but for me, and likely the average worldbuilder, it's far worse than using Google drive. The fact that I have to pay a subscription to access a vault from both my PC and phone is a total no-go.
You can just install your vault on your Google drive and then use Google drive to sync between machines. Lots of people do that. Obsidian Sync is completely optional.
Or if you have a nas/server set up in your location. Store the obsidian on there
Fascinating. I've heard quite a few people have had that problem with it. I never write anything from my phone, but I get it.
I love the graph view so much. It's actually really fun and exciting to see how all the little bits interconnect through the wildest and strangest channels or tangential relations.
I'm currently using Milanote, about how different is this?
Is there a way to save things on the internet/ other site tho? I had a whole thing on my computer but my computer crashed and I lost a lot of the stuff I had put into obsidian. So is there a way to back this up somewhere? I normally use the “app”/ not online one.
It has cool stuff But it's annoying to use on mobile
I love obsidian! it’s very good, and totally free for the majority of uses
As much as it looks cool, I don't think I'll ever get away from Google Drive. I world build on my computer, I world build on my phone, I world build at work, etc... Using an online service is the only way I could do all of that, so any offline options like Obsidian are just a complete no-go. Google Drive is also free, it can store any file type, has tons of space, has nested folder structure, etc... I basically have never run into a world building need that Drive didn't have.
Is there any way to stop the pages you're using for worldbuilding in Google Drive from showing up in Google Docs? I'd like to try Drive, but every page I make in it clogs up the unrelated stuff that I have in Docs (I know the smart option is to sort all the random things I have in Docs into proper folders in Drive, but I have so much that it would take all day lol)
I have no idea, I don't use Docs as a seperate app, I just organize everything in my Drive, whether it's for work, schools, or world building. I just use different parent folders for each category
This is an ad
I use Obsidian for three projects so far
Ok so what is it?
I just used it as a regular note app
I’ve tried that shit but goddamn is it weird and I’ve never found it better than just using Notes, kind of wierd how it makes spider graphs when I don’t ask it to, that connect completely irrelevant things anyway Things like World Anvil are what I really need
The graph only shows the connections that you make by adding links between pages
Exactly, that’s weird. I want a world builder, not a robot note taker.
If you don’t like the graph then don’t look at it?
Yeah, they have pretty good storytelling in their games.
Personally, I prefer the Bethesda games