Nothing had more revisions and iterations than my Obsidian vault for everything solo roleplaying. I spent a lot of time collecting handy tools, creating lists and optimizing the workflow. Now I can say with firm belief, that I reached a state of perfection … for at least the next two weeks.
I read an article on substack.com where a kind user wrote about their workflow for a solo run of the Great Pendragon Campaign and came to the conclusion that there are too few sources for how the heck people play solitaire roleplaying games.
First of all I have to mention that my attempt is completely digital. I do not use any kind of “pen” and “paper” not even for notes and scribbles. Even though my wife is an avid collector and aficionado of expensive writing instruments, I simply prefer paperless work in every situation.
My preferred tool to take notes and organize everything I should remember, be it work related or private use, is the personal knowledge base and note-taking software Obsidian. Due to the many plugins available it is quite flexible when it comes to personalization and able to serve any use case.
The basic folder setup of my vault is divided into settings and systems. Each setting contains at least three folders, one for the journals, one for the NPCs and one for the maps. In the system folder, I added each rule system I use as a canvas flow chart and cheat sheet.
The main workhorse of my setup is the plugin Solo RPG Toolkit. Sometimes I just sit there and marvel at the beauty of this plugin. It supports the Mythic GME oracle system, custom random tables to be used as meaning lists, customizable card decks, and a dice roller.
In my vault, I added all published Mythic meaning tables which are now accessible via one click of the mouse and the Adventure Crafter digital card deck.
Calendarium is a plugin for customizable fantasy calendars (meh!). Out of the box the calendar of Golarion is included but you can easily add the calendars of other settings and worlds. For example: the implementation of the Hârn calendar took me about an hour. You can take it purely as a reference for holidays and events of the setting of your choice or add important events of your solo campaign.
Leaflet is a wrapper for the library of the same name. Basically it is a customizable Google Maps minus the Google part. You can use real world maps provided by OpenStreetMap or attach images of any world or region you have. It features distance measurement, path tracing and custom markers for POIs.
The plugin Snippet Manager stores any markdown snippet that you provide in a single note or folder whithin your vault. You simply have to call the selector and type the snippet you like to use, paste it into your note and off you go. I use it for scene headers, boxes containing fate questions and everything else.
Of course there are other plugins in my vault that help me keeping everything nice and tidy, but those plugins are not essential to my workflow. For example I use the plugin Banners to display atmospheric images on the top of each note, Git to push backups of my vault to my local git server and Iconize because I like having icons attached to the vault folders and notes.
EDIT: With the update 1.8.3, you can have a web viewer directly in obsidian and open websites as tabs. This is super handy for stuff like the travellermap.com or online wikis.
If you are interested in using my approach, you can download a template vault or install the plugins by yourself:
Banners: https://github.com/noatpad/obsidian-banners
Calendarium: https://github.com/javalent/calendarium
Git: https://github.com/Vinzent03/obsidian-git
Iconize: https://github.com/FlorianWoelki/obsidian-iconize
Leaflet: https://github.com/javalent/obsidian-leaflet
Snippet Manager: https://github.com/ramandv/obsidian-snippets-manager
Solo RPG Toolkit: https://github.com/alexkurowski/solo-toolkit
EDIT: Just to make things clear and because of recent events … the template, is a template, is a template and nothing more. A template is in general not an example. You will not find any of my playthroughs or personal notes in the “template” vault. I am happy to help if you ask nice but I am really not in the mood for stupid and cocky emails in the morning. This vault is meant for you as a starting point. This is not an example … I did not hit her! I did nooooot! Oh hi, Marc!
