Deploying your own TTRPG wiki notes (Online)
A while back, I wrote about how I use Obsidian as a digital library to catalog all my TTRPG books, both physical and digital.
If you are curious about the original system I use to manage my collection, you can explore the tool I built here: Games Library Tool.
What started as a simple catalog eventually turned into something much bigger.
Building the Library Inside Obsidian
Inside my vault, every game gets its own note with structured metadata such as:
Cover art
Whether I have read the book
Whether I have played the game
The last time I played
Personal ratings
Wishlist or backlog status
The universe or system the game belongs to
Once this information is in place, filtering and browsing the collection becomes very easy.
For example, I can instantly view:
All my Dungeons & Dragons books
Everything related to Pathfinder
My Old-School Essentials collection
Or simply everything I own at a glance
This is one of the biggest strengths of Obsidian as a note-taking environment. It lets you turn simple notes into a structured knowledge system.
If you want to learn more about Obsidian itself, visit the Obsidian Official Website.
Rewriting the D&D Rules in My Vault
At some point, I started rewriting the Dungeons & Dragons rules directly inside my vault. That may sound excessive, but it solved a real problem.
At the table, physical books are fantastic. I love owning them and flipping through pages, but during play, they can slow things down.
For example:
Someone might be using the Player’s Handbook for character creation
I might need to check a spell description
Another player might want to reference a monster ability
Now multiple books are being passed around the table. If you are also using expansion books or setting guides, it gets even more complicated.
Inside Obsidian, everything becomes:
Instantly searchable
Cross-referenced
Interconnected through wiki links
A spell can link to conditions. Conditions can link to combat rules. Combat rules can link to actions.
The result is essentially a personal D&D wiki, and building it was honestly a lot of fun.
Why I Did Not Just Use D&D Beyond
There is already a digital platform for this: D&D Beyond. To be clear, I think D&D Beyond is a good product, but a few things personally bother me:
You do not truly own the digital content you purchase
You depend on their platform being online
You cannot freely share books you purchased with friends
If the site is in maintenance or has bugs, access can disappear
When I buy a physical RPG book, I own it. I can lend it, pass it around the table, and reference it anytime. So while I enjoy digital tools, I prefer systems where I retain control over my content.
Publishing My Vault
At some point, I wanted my players, especially online players, to access this interconnected rules reference.
The first obvious option was Obsidian Publish, which turns your vault into a hosted website. It is a great service, but it is also another subscription. Since I am trying to reduce the number of subscriptions I maintain, I started exploring alternatives.
As a front-end developer, I already knew about static site generators that transform Markdown into websites. After exploring different approaches, I discovered Quartz, an open-source project that converts an Obsidian vault into a fully navigable website: Quartz.
Why Quartz Works So Well
Quartz preserves many of the things that make Obsidian powerful:
Wiki links
Backlinks
Markdown structure
Graph-like navigation
Fast search
Because the output is a static website, it can be hosted almost anywhere.
My workflow now looks like this:
Write and maintain notes inside Obsidian.
Sync the notes into my Quartz project.
Generate the static site.
Deploy it automatically using Vercel, GitHub Pages, Netlify, etc.
The result is essentially a private Wikipedia for my campaign.
My players can search for:
Spells
Conditions
Rules
Lore
Monsters
Character options
Everything is interconnected through wiki links.
Why I Am Not Publishing My Full Vault (Publicly)
Even though the system works perfectly, I am not comfortable publishing the full version publicly. My vault contains rules and information that go beyond what is available in the official free rules. Even though I own the books, redistributing that content publicly raises copyright questions. Rather than navigating that grey area, I decided the safest option is to keep the full version private (protected with a password) for my table.
The Next Experiment: A TTRPG Starter Vault
Instead of publishing a public rules wiki, I am now thinking about creating a TTRPG starter vault that anyone can download and use as a base for their own system.
The goal would be a public repository with a clean structure so people can start writing notes right away, whether they play D&D, Pathfinder, OSR games, or something else entirely.
I would include a few small opinionated defaults, such as:
A practical folder structure
A clean theme setup
A lightweight plugin selection
A consistent metadata pattern for notes
Nothing would be locked in. Everything could be changed later as your own vault evolves. If that sounds useful, let me know. I can share it publicly once it is ready.
The D&D rules database in Obsidian is a great idea. It would be handy to have that for a lot of different games. I'm thinking I could probably do something similar for D&D BECMI.
As someone that has seen the wonders of Obsidian when used by others but has virtually zero knowledge of coding, nor the time to deep dive into all the various Obsidian plug-ins and how to use them and troubleshooting, etc... I'd love a nice starter vault