I’m a bit late to the party here, but I’m a DM that uses obsidian for my games. My general workflow is after each session I write a summary on what happened. Then, I create corresponding notes for anything that came up over that session and publish them.
I’ve tried a bunch of ways of hiding information I don’t want my PCs to know but eventually settled on simply putting that info in a comment on the note itself. For example here’s my notes on location called Wulvdin.md (1.1 KB) and here’s the published version. Sadly, this required me to turn of the graph on the publish site as any links in the comments will still show up there. Overall I’ve been happy with publishing my notes. It’s been a good way to establish what is and isn’t “common knowledge” in your world/party as well as ensure everyone’s on the same page info wise. I’ve actually had a few times now where my PCs made a connection using information on from the public notes that they had forgotten.
I do also maintain plenty of notes that my PCs don’t have access to such as locations they haven’t been to, random tables, PC information, and most importantly info about the current quest they’re on. For example, the first major plot line my PCs embarked on was a mystery. I kept a note with a list of clues to help them as well as some scenarios I could throw at them when they inevitably get stuck. This was immensely useful as a north star and allowed me to seed hints where I could without having to railroad my PCs into places to find the pre-hidden clues. Generally I like to build in a degree of vagueness into all my notes so I can be flexible at the table and run with whatever ideas strike me at the time. Here’s the quest line note I was talking about.
Failed orange sky in Dortrum.md (1.6 KB)
One thing that’s been really useful to me is to have a note called scratchpad where I write random things that came up during the session as well as damage calculations for enemies. Then after the session I go through and make more complete notes about that thing. For example, during one of first sessions I came up with a librarian called Cognira wrote this down during the session:
Cognira
- librarian
- wizard
- helpful
Then after the session I developed the full note for me to publish on the website.
What follows isn’t isn’t particularly relevant to obsidian, but it’s something I highly recommend doing. I created a short, 1 page world description that set the tone of the world and whom they would be playing. Then I let my PCs build the homelands and cultures of the races they chose to play within the setting I created. I was still there to talk them through the process and ask the occasional leading question but they were the deciders of what their race was like. It creates a real sense of investment in the world when your players are able to say that those are their people and that’s their land. It also makes narrative sense at the table that the different PCs end up being the authorities and end up knowing the most about where they grew up by default.
Hopefully you found something in my ramblings useful and feel free to ask any further questions.