Organizing Obsidian for D&D | The Big Picture on Vaults

Getting started with Obsidian for D&D is easy. Organizing rules, campaigns, and worlds is not. The possibilities are endless. Your needs might simplify or complicate this further. In this series, we’ll break down what you need to think about and why. We’ll look at strategies to help you get the most out of using Obsidian to organize your D&D life.

Enter the Vault

The first decision we need to make is regarding our vault or vaults. You can use a single vault for everything. You can use one vault for each campaign, world, or game system. You could use one vault for D&D and another for everything else in your life. There’s no wrong way to approach this. But some of these strategies will make it harder for you in the long run.

One Vault to Rule Them All

You can make good arguments for or against using a single vault but experience has taught me it’s the best way to use Obsidian when done well.

Multiple vaults might lead to duplicated notes (for example if each vault needed to reference the same location or SRD). It also requires multiple Obsidian windows if you need to work in both.

One vault allows you to discover connections and generate more ideas. But it also presents challenges.

With one vault, organization and strategy are key. Here are some of the main considerations:

File Structure. We want a structure that makes sense to our brain and the content.

Tags/Frontmatter. We want data to organize and understand what we have across our notes.

Search. We want to protect search functionality from getting convoluted.

Future Proof. We want a vault that can grow with new systems—adding a new campaign, world, or rule system shouldn’t be painful. Adopting a new plugin or dropping an old one shouldn’t break our notes or create a mess.

When your notes are organized well in a single vault, it introduces the opportunity for simple workflows and emergent ideas. Keeping in mind the points above, you can ensure that your vault becomes a source of inspiration—not just an archive. Don’t sweat any of this too much yet. Just set up a single vault with a TTRPG folder to sit alongside any other important areas of your life (mine includes other folders for this blog, cooking, engineering, wellness, etc.).

We’ll cover it all in this series so be sure to subscribe below to get notified when the next article drops.

Game on.