Notes for TTRPG/Shadowrun

I set up some notes for my Shadowrun game I was gonna run. Using Obsidian for TTRPG absolutely rocks! It's really perfect, especially with how you can link and keep track of data in such an easy way. If you set it up right, everything is just a click away right when you need it. Here's some examples of how I set some stuff up.

First up, here's the template I made (Using the templater plugin but you can probably use the default templates plugin) If you link things like ![[LINK^HEADER]] it will embed the header's section in your note! That was such a game changer when I figured that out because now I can have a one big note full of ideas and later embed it in another note. Or in this case, I can summon the summary from the previous session so I can have it readily on hand when I'm running this session.

The purpose of this note is to keep this open as I'm running the game and track what's happening in the "Log" section. I work best if I can just jot down ideas real fast with bullet points, I don't try to make myself write anything more detailed. I do put a reminder to go back and refine them (Like writing the summary) but what's important is that I just can recall important things that happen.

I also have an "ideas" section that I intend to put embeds. This is because I have a system for making rambly notes when I'm thinking reaaaaal fast. These notes are often very chaotic and full of random junk. If I don't feel like moving them into their own notes, it's useful to be able to call it in another note. And having the ideas here is good to help me remember to actually use them!

The extra notes section is just, yk, for extra notes. I will link other useful files too like a pdf or the chummer file or whatever. I also use the Canvas feature to make visual maps for stuff. One day I will have my dream of being able to directly embed them but that's not currently possible.

My YAML/Properties will have things like "Campaign", where I link to the main campaign page (Where I'll use dataview to pull all these notes together!), date, characters, location, and tags. I Might add more properties as I need them but for now this works.

I make seperate notes for various characters and npcs. I will tag them accordingly, like shadowrun/pc for the players or shadowrun/npc for the npcs. I will give them a property to link them to the right campaign (I'm currently only running one game but yk. It makes me feel fancy) and I also link the players to their characters. Yes, I make notes for my friends and their OCs.

Writing

I do my writing inside Obsidian (Or my notes app) and sometimes, very rarely, I might write inside Libreoffice... but I usually port the writing over to Obsidian anyway. It's just better to have everything all together.

My organization is pretty simple. I have properties for the setting, the characters, date, etc. Then I have a main page for "Writing" in general and use dataview queries to pull all the writing together. I will sort the writing as well, so all my shadowrun writing is one place. I can also do these queries in other places, so for example on Saturn's note I pulled all the writing she was in.

Getting dataview to pull a note from a property that is a list was a bit tricky, so I'll tell you how I did it so you don't suffer like I did!

WHERE contains(characters, link("Saturn Trick"))

Simple! But I don't know javascript so it was really hard for me to figure out, haha.

Obsidian Snippets

Some snippets I made. I'll add them at some point.