Obsidian is outstanding for managing our RPG notes. Since it’s powered by local markdown files, we own our notes. We aren’t reliant on someone managing a platform to keep it going. But sharing is one thing platforms often make easy. Obsidian’s greatest strength fast becomes a hurdle to sharing our notes.

Lucky for us, there are options. But understanding what you want to share and why is important. Some options are better than others depending on these motivations. Here are a few examples:

• Sharing images to immerse players in the game.
• Sharing campaign or setting details for interested players to read up on.
• A shared note for each player character where the player can contribute information.
• A polished website that immerses visitors in the details of their world.

It’s common to default to a published website. After all, campaign managers in that space are abundant. But Obsidian allows us to reexamine how we’re using and sharing our notes. Published websites are an option but not the only one.

If you want to publish contents from your vault to a website, you have options. They range from paid and simple to free but complex. Obsidian Publish is the official (paid) option and it’s easy to use. Some free options include plugins like Obsidiosaurus or Obsius Publish. You can also use Quartz to generate a static site for your vault. The free options lack plenty of features and the initial setups can be quite complex. And none of these options allow you to use things like plugins on your finished site anyways. Yet another problem with plugins.

A New Way to Share

In my experience, even the most engaged players aren’t looking at your website. At least, not very often. Instead of defaulting to sharing everything in an “always on” website, we can focus our sharing. We can share what matters when it matters.

Power up your in-game sharing with Discord Share—a plugin that I built to solve this problem. You can share images, text snippets, or entire notes from your vault straight to Discord.

Mark meaningful campaign events with Discord Embeds. Signal leveling up, major world events, or even a Long Rest with formatted embeds in Discord.

If your player wants to collaborate on their bio, collaborate! Hash it out on a Google doc or in a direct message. Update your vault to reflect the changes. Send your player a PDF by exporting the note from Obsidian.

If a player asks to read up on something in your campaign or setting, use the above methods to send it to them. Straight to Discord or a PDF beats slogging through an endless wiki any day.

The best part about this approach is that you’re engaging with the people in your game. Campaign and setting information becomes part of a conversation rather than a website.

Whatever your motivations, Obsidian comes with options for sharing vault contents. But the nature of its design offers us the opportunity to reexamine how we share in our games. And that’s worth considering.

Game on.