I love the idea. When I thought about it what came to mind was that this is the Random Note Core Plugin restricted to a directory or collection of notes. This made me wonder if it’s not better to customize this core plugin to accept different parameters. Perhaps it could be done via the Command Palette: Random /Oblique picks a random note in the directory Oblique.
This would actually be useful for any directory. If I had an extensive set of notes for a certain topic I would appreciate the display of a random note in that collection.
There’s already a great “Smart Random Note” plugin that opens random notes from search results. Works well for this (edit to add link, not my work but am enjoying using it – https://github.com/erichalldev/obsidian-smart-random-note)
I thought Eleanor’s custom/randomized prompts would be cool to prototype.
I’ve created a basic plugin to play around with. It’s not yet in the directory, but you can get it from https://github.com/akaalias/obsidian-shuffle/releases/ - (It can also be used to simply randomize oblique strategies, just update the settings and the template)
Here’s a quick overview:
Example
Input template
## Prompt
1. Include one of these words: $WORD, $WORD or $WORD
2. Begin with a word that starts with `$LETTER`
3. Take place in $LOCATION or $LOCATION
Randomized output:
## Prompt
1. Include one of these words: Wall, Wind or Book
2. Begin with a word that starts with `g`
3. Take place in London or Los Angeles
Place the folder in your .obsidian/plugins directory
Reload plugins
Activate the “Shuffle” plugin
Steps to use the plugin
Hit the ‘Dice’ button in the sidebar to generate a new prompt note
Customize your variable names, values and template to your liking in the settings
I’d love to hear y’alls feedback. I’m thinking we could put together different “prompt-packs” that could be automatically installed with a click of a button inside the settings.
A pack could be:
PS: To demonstrate the idea of a ‘pack’, I’ve added Oblique Strategies to the settings. Just click the “Load Oblique Strategies” button and you can use them right away.
i’m really glad this thread led to something excellent. @EleanorKonik you must be over the moon!
@akaalias thanks for stepping in - i’m glad you liked the idea enough to make something of it! i’m a compsci student with a pretty solid workload so i wouldn’t have been able to work on this properly for a good while.
i suppose the only feature i really envisioned that appears to be missing (or perhaps i just missed it) is the ability to generate a [[note link]] in place to either the generated or found note if it already exists (e.g. if i ‘pull’ an OS card that i’ve already pulled before). although having said that it does feel a little cheeky asking for a feature request for something i was supposed to build
I ended up creating an Oblique Strategy directory with one note per Oblique Strategy card. Each note’s filename is prefixed: “Oblique Strategy” , so I do a search for that term then use the Smart Random Note on the search result. It’s perfect, expandable and future proof.
I find this very interesting. Would it be possible to have your promts/locations and so on be existing notes from a vault (filtered by tag/folder)?
My use case for this would be rather weird (write about law); but I think in connection with your (@akaalias) journey plug in it could be rather interesting. I’d use it as a creative review - outcome uncertain
As a writer, I love Eleanor’s Flash Fiction Pack, but I can think of so many more uses …
Q1: Would it be possible to have more than 3 variables?
Q2: In what format should a “pack” be created? [Probably JSON, with multiple values delimited by \n?]
Q3: Why has the “Conversation Starter Pack” been commented out?
@crabtree/@akaalias: I got inspired by @EleanorKonik’s idea of a Flash Fiction Pack and created a German version. I attach my data.json file here. Feel free to include it as a “pack”!
Note: German writers might not know all typical U.S./U.K. “stock characters”, and I might not know all of those typically used in Germany, so bear with me and suggest improvements (or a link to a good list). For the time being, I used List of stock characters - Wikipedia and tried to translate these.
Suggestion: Would it be possible to include a “version” variable, an author name and a pack name, so pack authors could update their packs more easily?
@akaalias I just got to try this out. It’s fantastic. You’ve written some nifty plugins! A lot of others would benefit from making it a standard Obsidian plugin.
I’ve attached a list of nouns and places I scrounged up from the web. It’s in a Markdown document, in zip format. I’ve tested it and the plugin and Obsidian work fine with this volume of data.
I’ve been using the Prompted Journal app on my phone, but I’ve been unsatisfied by the fact that I can’t integrate my daily prompts with my obsidian notes. So I started searching for a way to get my daily prompts in obsidian instead of the App. I really like the Shuffle plugin, and it was written very well to allow modifications and editing. I got a list of prompts from this Reddit post and edited the main.js file in the shuffle plugin to add the Prompted Journal. I started an issue on Github for the shuffle plugin (Sorry, I don’t know how to do pull requests just yet) and uploaded the files to my github. I hope someone will use this as well, as it has helped me to journal more.
I only wish it would be more easy to switch complete “packs” in Shuffle, but there seems not to be too much activity on @akaalias’ obsidian-shuffle GitHub page recently.
(edit to add link, not my work but am enjoying using it – 
PS: To demonstrate the idea of a ‘pack’, I’ve added Oblique Strategies to the settings. Just click the “Load Oblique Strategies” button and you can use them right away.
Flash Fiction pack is now available with release 0.0.3 
