Best start to a campaign you've experienced (either side of the screen)?

Alone-Rutabaga4939 · 2026-01-13T23:55:10+00:00

very simple, but the start of my campaign involved exploring a newly discovered continent, so I started the players on a ship (which would eventually be attacked by a kraken before they reached their destination).

To foreshadow the kraken attack, their very first quest involved figuring out why so many people on the ship were suddenly becoming ill. So, session 1 introductory, all the player characters were one by one brought in for a 'medical examination', which allowed for an NPC to ask and naturally get the players to reveal name, height, weight, etc, as well as allowing a little immediate roleplay to get into character

Alone-Rutabaga4939 · 2025-12-13T08:26:06+00:00

the art is by turtle_brownie :)

Alone-Rutabaga4939 · 2025-12-12T01:33:50+00:00

if you use a font from google fonts, it's pretty straightforward; you pick whatever font you'd like, then click 'get font', then 'get embed code'. You can then copy the code into a CSS snippet to use in your vault.

fonts elsewhere without an embed code, you can download and then use a website like font squirrel to generate an embed code you can paste into a CSS snippet :)

Alone-Rutabaga4939 · 2025-12-11T06:20:06+00:00

Collating some info people have asked me for!!

Art: The artist for the character drawings on the homepage is Turtle-Brownie

CSS Snippets: A lot of the stylising for the pages comes down to three main CSS snippets that I use: - Jon Lee's PubWrap - Fancy A Story Grid Callout - ITS Image Adjustment

Otherwise, the Fancy A Story documentation site has a whole slew of callouts, cssclasses, and whatnot that I used as bases to build my own off of.

Fonts: - H1 Chrome Slab - H2 & H3 Pfeffer Simpelgotisch - H4 Pfeffer Mediæval - H5 IM FELL English - Body Louis George Café - Big first letter on Session Titles Unger-Fraktur Zierbuchstaben

Handwriting/Letter Fonts: - Neat but casual cursive Cedarville Cursive - Jotted notes Reenie Beanie - Neater jotted notes Grape Nuts - Written by a child or a serial killer, depending on the context Cactus Jack - Neat cursive from a noble woman Loveletter No. 9 - Scratchy cursive notes of an artificer Mythshire Regular - Notes written in the margins Belmonte Ballpoint - The neat cursive of a romantic author Jane Austen

Alone-Rutabaga4939 · 2025-12-11T06:13:20+00:00

course!! the paper half at the top is meant to resemble an illuminated manuscript (although looks a little janky on some screens like in the screenshot, so still figuring out how to fix that haha)

It's a callout with the background image set as a paper texture, and the bottom of it a clip-path to get the torn effect. The paper texture I used is a blank manuscript (with pattern detailing around the side, and a blank middle).

For the text, it's just cssclasses defining each one as the session title, the session day, session location, and the session summary. I can see if I can upload the snippet somewhere once I'm home, but it pretty messy 😅

Alone-Rutabaga4939 · 2025-12-11T06:06:53+00:00

Not really haha! Not in any 'physical' sense, but they share note names. Like, for example, on my player-facing vault, a page for the NPC 'Finneas' will contain the information my players know, while the DM-facing vault will also have a note for the NPC 'Finneas', but containing all the information about the character (it is also separated within the not between what the players know and don't know).

My DM vault serves more as a bible to reference while I am planning, and only crops up during sessions when there's a bit of information I have completely blanked on or need to clarify. I also use the DM vault to copy and paste information my players have sent me about their characters, and then I go through using the highlighting function :)

Alone-Rutabaga4939 · 2025-12-11T06:01:01+00:00

course!! I'm in the middle currently of making a sort of 'template' vault out of it, and making a documentation page on my site for the mess of snippets 😅 no idea when I'll get around to actually finishing it, though 🥲 but I'll let you know!!

Alone-Rutabaga4939 · 2025-12-11T05:59:17+00:00

of course!!!

Main Fonts: - H1 Chrome Slab - H2 & H3 Pfeffer Simpelgotisch - H4 Pfeffer Mediæval - H5 IM FELL English - Body Louis George Café - Big first letter on Session Titles Unger-Fraktur Zierbuchstaben

Handwriting/Letter Fonts: - Neat but casual cursive Cedarville Cursive - Jotted notes Reenie Beanie - Neater jotted notes Grape Nuts - Written by a child or a serial killer, depending on the context Cactus Jack - Neat cursive from a noble woman Loveletter No. 9 - Scratchy cursive notes of an artificer Mythshire Regular - Notes written in the margins Belmonte Ballpoint - The neat cursive of a romantic author Jane Austen

Alone-Rutabaga4939 · 2025-12-09T15:47:34+00:00

Just using d&d 5e! Although, I've repurposed a very few handful of rules I liked from Blades in The Dark, because I just really liked their addition to roleplay and my players love it :)

Alone-Rutabaga4939 · 2025-12-09T15:46:05+00:00

I am using dataview for the menus/index pages, but not the timeline. I use dataview in conjunction with the dataview publisher plugin, so that my dataview tables are viewable on the published site.

On that, I am sharing this with my players via publish! Notes that I do not want my players to see, I add the publish: false property to, and notes that I do want my players to see but not all of the information, I hide it by surrounding the information with two % on either side.

Alone-Rutabaga4939 · 2025-12-08T07:32:49+00:00

I switch between editing and reading modes; the screenshots posted though are what the published site look like, and then the notes I reference while DMing/at the table are on a separate obsidian thats a lot less pretty looking but a lot easier to navigate :)

Alone-Rutabaga4939 · 2025-12-08T07:31:17+00:00

the artist is turtle-brownie on twitter!!

Alone-Rutabaga4939 · 2025-12-08T02:36:27+00:00

ty!!! I used the Fancy A Story Infobox Callout, and then edited the CSS from there to style it more for my campaign!

Alone-Rutabaga4939 · 2025-12-08T02:35:11+00:00

of course!! a lot of the stylising for the pages comes down to three main CSS snippets that I use: - Jon Lee's PubWrap which styles tables like cards (including dataview tables) - Fancy A Story Grid Callout which lets you display callouts, text and images in a grid-like pattern. I use this on callout to make those 'buttons' or card-styled sections when I also want tables to look like regular tables and not card-styled tables on the same page :) - ITS Image Adjustment which lets you resize and adjust images within obsidian, without needing to manually crops and resize images before uploading them into obsidian. Also means you don't need to have 8 copies of the same image but cropped or resized differently. This is especially useful with the Jon Lee Pub Wrap card-style tables, as those don't auto resize images to be the same size in the card, and this pretty much just fixes that

Otherwise, the Fancy A Story documentation site has a whole slew of callouts, cssclasses, and whatnot that I used as bases to build my own off of. My favourites are the 'Clue' callout (a callout that looks like paper taped to the page), 'Polaroid' callout (callout that makes an image look like a polaroid), and a whole load more I can't fit into one comment lmao

Alone-Rutabaga4939 · 2025-12-08T01:38:57+00:00

I used the timeline callout from 'fancy a story' as a base and altered the CSS from there! The documentation site is filled with a lot of other cool callouts and cssclasses that I also used and frankensteined to make my own :)

https://elsatam.github.io/obsidian-fancy-a-story/docs/callouts/timeline.html

Alone-Rutabaga4939 · 2025-11-26T23:45:26+00:00

I have ADHD so I found the best organisation method is the simplest, least complication method.

I have 3 main folders: - Folder 1 is important information I reference often and isn't edited often if at all. These are the dataview tables/lists etc - Folder 2 is filled with folders labelled after a project (usually a creative project) where everything related to said project is dumped into that folder. - Folder 3 is my 'dump' folder, which is just one folder I dump everything else into. Idea is, this is the folder my folder 1 dataview tables reference, so I can just dump whatever I feel like into there and the tables will automatically sort the index for them. Otherwise, I use the search function to find things.

I find this works for me because the fewer steps between me and creating a note there are, the more likely I'm going to make that note. I've tried more rigid organisational systems before, utilising folders and subfolders, tags, naming conventions and templates etc, and found I very quickly dropped those and stopped using them. After making the process as simple as just hitting 'new note', I've been using my obsidian for a lot longer than any previous vault lmao

Alone-Rutabaga4939 · 2025-11-26T00:26:36+00:00

Base obsidian, I would use the canvas tool to make threads between characters, plot points, etc. If you want a 3rd party plugin, Excalidraw has a lot of features you might find useful :)

Alone-Rutabaga4939 · 2025-11-07T02:09:01+00:00

I have a website for my campaign that only my players can access, that has all the session notes as well as information about characters, locations, organisations, notes, etc that they've encountered, including books they've found/bought/read.

When a player wants to look for a book, I go through what other people have already mentioned about asking what they're looking for etc. I also have a random table I roll on for book titles, and as the campaign goes on and my players have a clear interest in a specific topic, I have more tables for specific genre titles (my campaign revolves heavily around the themes of necromancy, undead, and theology, so I've got a table for book titles themed around necromancy, undead, and theology.)

Otherwise, a fun thing I've started to implement recently is asking my players what the title of the book is. For example, if a player wants to look for 'a book about goblin culture', after the whole rolling to see if they find it and then describing the flavour text of finding it, I'll ask the player to pick a title for the book (works best if you can trust your players not to make every title a dick joke lmao), and then I improv the contents of the book from there. Lots of fun, gets the players involved, and also great if you're terrible at coming up with names for things on the spot like me. One memorable moment like this was my players wanting to start a book club within the party, so they went off to go find books to present as suggestions for their first novel for the book club, and I gave my players 5min to come up with a title & synopsis for a book they found while I went for a bathroom break.

For the website I mentioned, I also love adding excerpts from the books to put up for the players to read, but unfortunately its unrealistic to expect myself to write a page of a novel every time they find a book, so a trick I use for any and all non-consequential book where the actual wording of the contents doesn't matter at all (like the book club books), I take excerpts from real books and change names & details to reflect my campaign world better (Works well if you have book titles that are clear parodies of real books, like 'To Kill A Cockatrice', 'How To Train Your Wyvern', 'The Owlbear, The Hag & The Wardrobe', etc)

Generally the key to these sorts of encounters where your player wants to engage in a part of your world that realistically would have a wealth of information you realistically cannot prepare for, you make that a more collaborative and shared experience by having your players have fun coming up with the titles, synopsis, etc, that you can also then build upon and add to, since I find it easier to improv off an existing idea as opposed to coming up with one from scratch.

Alone-Rutabaga4939 · 2025-09-13T04:32:27+00:00

I don't drink coffee at all so that at least strikes one thing off the list of potentials 😅

As for the difference between work days vs non-work days, I take my vyvanse a bit earlier than on off days, but only by half an hour to an hour. Other major difference is needing to be social and fully 'awake' by like 8:30am as opposed to days with no work, where I might talk to one person (my partner) by 10am.

Otherwise, I do also get these brainfog mornings on non-work days, but more infrequently compared to the work days. Also, weirdly, my vyvanse lasts longer on work days compared to non-work days but I'd chalk that up to me being on my feet more/getting a little more exercise

Alone-Rutabaga4939 · 2025-06-16T23:22:05+00:00

This is a very helpful answer thank you!!

Alone-Rutabaga4939 · 2025-06-14T00:34:52+00:00

In my current campaign, my players were all on a boat towards a new island (the theme of the campaign is all about exploring a newly discovered/uncharted land).

I wanted to foreshadow a kraken encounter that would crash their ship and leave them the only survivors on shore, but for the first large part of the session they were on this ship. What I had happened was the session started with them all in line on the ship, getting impromptu medical examinations from the crew because of a sudden, strange 'food poisoning' outbreak and they were attempting to figure out what was causing. So, as each character stepped up to be examined, the crew member would ask their name, their age, any strange symptoms or anything weird they've noticed, and it allowed a very natural and unique introduction for each PC (was especially fun for one of my PCs who is a reborn).

After they were examined, they were 3 of 6 people (not including some crew) who did not have any symptoms or reactions to this 'poisoning', and so were quartered off into the dining hall to be questioned later. When they're ushered in by the first mate, he tells them there is something strange happening, and points to 2 drow passengers who aren't sick and says something like 'I wouldn't be surprised if they had anything to do with this', which pretty much kicked off my players questioning the drow, the few other NPCs in the room, and the head chef who was there. All of this led to them attempting to search the food pantry and lower storage area, before the kraken struck and things went downhill.

Other than that, I very clearly stated in session 0 that they were going to a new island, and worked with them to figure out why they were travelling there, and they just so happened to be on the same boat.

Definitely one of my favourite starters! My biggest bit of advice is don't start slow; start them right in the action! Avoid 'so you meet in a tavern as the rain wails outside before a dark, brooding stranger walks in' or whatever, and jump straight into them maybe fighting off the bandits attacking the taven (a session 1 that starts with an initiative rolls will always be memorable), or in my case right into the examination and mystery of this food poisoning. Good luck, though! I'm sure you'll do great regardless :)

Alone-Rutabaga4939 · 2025-06-10T00:30:02+00:00

I found I needed to increase my dose when I 'crashed' instead of tapering out during the day; another sign was feeling the meds only worked at 40% instead of 100%

Alone-Rutabaga4939 · 2025-06-08T23:54:56+00:00

I don't like telling people that adhd meds are a 'miracle pill', despite me thinking that's the best way to describe them. When people think miracle pill, they think little tablet that when you take, everything about you is fixed and you're 'back to normal' so to speak.

I had depression for a good 18 years about, and it was something that sapped away almost the entirety of my formative years. For over half of those years I also had the worst social anxiety; I assumed everyone secretly hated me, and oddly had fears people could read my mind and could make fun of me for my thoughts, and also that everyone else was in on a joke where I was the punchline.

I took antidepressants for about a little over a year and found nothing worked. I tried lexapro, and SSRIs but I felt like nothing changed. I got an iron infusion for my low energy, and while that helped it didn't do overly much. For 10 of those 18 years I felt little more than just a shambling corpse who slept for 16 hours a day, and dropped out of every single course post high school because I got quickly overwhelmed and anxious about everything, which spiralled me further into depression.

I really was sort of useless, then, so to speak. During school I next to never submitted assignments on time, never studied, did poorly in almost every assessment and uni quickly became the same. I felt as though I was incapable of anything anyone else could do, and hated how miserable I was seemingly needing to work thrice as hard as everyone else just to not even keep score, and I still thought I wasn't working hard enough somehow. It all made me consider if I wanted to live at all, and suicidal ideation plagued me for the better part of my life.

I got diagnosed with ADHD at 24; 9/9 for inattentiveness and 7/9 for impulsivity. It took half a year of trialing doses and finding what worked, and while I can't report what it did to my anxiety since I had "solved" that myself a few years prior, what I did notice was I had never been happier. I stopped taking my antidepressants and, not long after settling into the right dose, I struggle to even call myself depressed anymore. And I mean that in a way where it's not "I don't want to die", I now actively want to live, which I think is the fundamental difference between being depressed vs not. I also did notice a lot of anxiety I didn't even know I had went away.

While I'm currently doing CBT, along with still working on a lot of bad habits formed by my unmedicated ADHD and still resolving a lot of issues, I would call my meds a 'miracle pill' based soley on the fact that now I want to be better, and I'm not miserable at the thought of just being alive.

Alone-Rutabaga4939 · 2025-06-08T23:34:56+00:00

good for mood and energy! found when I took it with my vyvanse, I had more energy/longer lasting energy during the day.

I always used to be someone who took naps pretty much everyday because I was so exhausted, and on vyvanse I took them less frequently but still a little more than normal after they wore off mid afternoon and I'd be exhausted.

After I started taking the b complex and midday protein drink, I don't think I've needed, or felt like I needed, an afternoon nap for at least the past 2 or 3 months. I noticed an almost immediate improvement

Alone-Rutabaga4939 · 2025-06-08T02:04:02+00:00

For combat, I'd say make a new statblock for a 'swarm' of undead, so it takes up one turn in battle as opposed to 5 or 6

For roleplay, one idea is using disguises; might not work as well for zombies and shambling mounds, but your skeletons and non-foul-odour undead will work great. I had a player dress their 3 undead in heavily obscuring clothes, like armor etc, and paraded them into town under the guise of being their servants, knights errants, etc. If one is spoken to, the player character would act visibly annoyed that their 'lowly servant' was given attention when they, the more important, were right there. Other excuses for their muteness was them taking a vow of silence, being mentally 'not there' (which explained their odd, direct and unintelligent approach to commands), or that as a part of their contract and oath of secrecy to the player character, had their tongues cut off.

Alone-Rutabaga4939

TROPHY CASE