How I Use Obsidian to Run D&D

After years of scattered Google Docs and forgotten notebooks, Obsidian transformed how I run campaigns. Here’s my actual workflow.

One Vault Per Module

Each campaign or module gets its own vault. This keeps things cleanly separated and prevents note sprawl. I maintain a separate “reference” vault for system-wide rules and spell descriptions.

Vault Structure

my-module/
  index.md          ← Module overview
  NPCs/             ← One file per NPC
  Locations/        ← One file per location (nested as needed)
  Sessions/         ← Post-session notes
  Acts/             ← Scene-by-scene breakdowns

The Wikilink Workflow

Every time I type a proper noun that has (or should have) its own note, I use [[double brackets]]. This does two things:

Creates a visual cue when I’m scanning notes at the table
Builds a web of connections I can follow mid-session

The graph view shows me which NPCs are central to the plot by how many things link to them.

Sessions vs. Scenes

I distinguish between session notes (what actually happened, written post-session) and act notes (what I planned, written pre-session). Keeping these separate means I always have both the plan and the reality.

Templates

Every NPC gets the same frontmatter template:

---
title: 
tags: [npc]
---

Consistency makes search and filtering reliable.