These are a series of plot hooks that can be used when the group is tasked with carrying out a heist or investigating a previous one.

For a while now, I’ve been tinkering with my own roleplaying game, Raiders of Arismyth. One of the things I realised early on was that I need a good way lookup rules and other information quickly. Find the proper tables, skill descriptions and so on, and to be able to disseminate it to my players.

I briefly tried elventy, Hugo and similar frameworks, but found out that I’m not enough of a developer to actually enjoy doing that. But then, I’ve been using Obsidian for a while now to do random notetaking and to organize my campaign notes. Turns out, with the right plugins and other setup, this is pretty good!

So, what am I using, and how?

To start with, I’ve installed Obsidian, obviously. I’m storing the vault on my NAS, so I can access it via SMP share and webdav, regardless of where I am. I’m using the following plugins:

• Core plugins
  (These are mostly enabled by default anyway)
  • Backlinks
  • Command palette
  • File Recovery (just in case)
  • Note composer
  • Files
  • Graph view
  • Page preview
  • Quick switcher
  • Templates
• Community plugins
  • Dataview
    This enables queries to quickly add lists or tables composed from other notes, a godsend when it comes to compiling skill lists and such. The „News“ section pseudo-blog is also compiled with this.
  • Dataview Serializer
    Dataview doesn’t always play nice when exporting the whole vault to a website — the serializer plugin sorts that out by writing the result of the Dataview directly into the note.
  • Style Settings with the ITS Theme by SIRvb
    purely aesthetical, it makes the whole notebook look vaguely like a D&D book (I’m using WOTC/Beyond as TTRPG theme)
  • Virtual Linker / Glossary
    I find this super useful: I have a glossary folder, and whenever the plugin finds a glossary note title in any of the other notes, that becomes a link. And inside of Obsidian itself, the link even gets a hover-preview.
  • Webpage HTML Export
    This is what makes the site creation magic. The plugin grabs all notes and folders and files I tell it to grab, wraps them in some javascript and presto, you get something that can be uploaded to a webserver and provides a nice static site.

Whenever I want to update the site, I use the Command palette to trigger „Generate HTML Export using previous settings“. Obsidian itself doesn’t upload the result, for that I use a WinSCP shortcut on my desktop. It is not the most streamlined or automated process, but easy enough. The downside is that I really need to have an installed Obsidian on a desktop device — I cannot edit the Vault from the web, nor can I trigger the website update that way.

On the upside, I don’t need to worry overly about the website being hacked through unsafe PHP scripts, so there’s that.

Lately, I hear a lot of referees bemoaning the abominable weapon specialization introduced in Unearthed Arcana. Players, however, might complain, when this fighter boost rule is not allowed. I confess, having played a lot of 2e, I am quite used to weapon specialization being an integral part of the game.

How about this? During character creation, a player of a fighter or ranger character may opt to spend 2 weapon proficiency points to receive a weapon specialization as usual, but they roll a d% to find out which weapon their character will be specialized in.

01 Aklys

02-03 Axe, Battle

04-05 Axe, Hand

06-07 Bardiche

08-09 Bec de Corbin

10-11 Bill-Guisarme

12 Blowgun

13-14 Bo Stick

15 Bow, Composite, Long

16 Bow, Composite, Short

17 Bow, Long

18 Bow, Short

19 Club

20 Crossbow, Hand

21 Crossbow, Heavy

22 Crossbow, Light

23-24 Dagger

25-26 Dart

27-28 Fauchard

29-30 Fauchard-Fork

31 Flail, Footman’s

32 Flail, Horseman’s

33-34 Fork, Military

35-36 Glaive

37-38 Glaive-Guisarme

39-40 Guisarme

41-42 Guisarme-Voulge

43-44 Halberd

45 Harpoon

46-47 Hammer, Lucern

48-49 Hammer

50-51 Hook Fauchard

52-53 Javelin

54-55 Jo Stick

56 Lance, (light horse)

57 Lance, (medium horse)

58 Lance, (heavy horse)

59 Mace, Footman’s

60 Mace, Horseman’s

61-62 Morning Star

63-64 Partisan

65 Pick, Military, Footman’s

66 Pick, Military, Horseman’s

67-68 Pike, Awl

69-70 Ranseur

71 Sap

72-73 Scimitar

74-75 Sling

76 Sling, Staff

77-78 Spear

79-80 Spetum

81-82 Staff, Quarter

83-84 Sword, Bastard

85-86 Sword, Broad

87-88 Sword, Falchion

89-90 Sword, Khopesh

91-92 Sword, Long

93-94 Sword, Short

95-96 Sword, Two-Handed

97 Trident

98-99 Voulge

00 Whip

So you are specialized in the blowgun? I guess your parents could not afford a weapon master specialized in a more knightly weapon to train you in your youth.

Oh, you are a specialist of the guisarme-voulge, huh? Good luck finding a magical version of that one.