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Nov 26, 20232 min read

lost contact world building

About two weeks ago, I briefly mentioned that I’m using Obsidian as a world-building tool for a new game I’m working on called lost contact. I chose Obsidian for this task, as I’ve heard that people use it for TTRPG campaigns. And World Anvil, though powerful, seems too heavy relative to it’s benefit in my opinion.

We use it as you might expect for a typical wiki, with the prominent addition of the canvas feature. We’ve used it to create a timeline of events:

An overview of the timeline for the game in an Obsidian canvas, which is zoomed out far enough that no text is visible and just the nodes and their connections can be seen.

To create a mood board for the game:

A loose collection of pictures in an Obsidian canvas. In order: Drawings of an anime girl in a spaceship from Novelance's Aeronautic Log, promotional images from Solid Gray, pictures of the Cupola from NASA and an art installation of it at the Canadian Aviation and Space Museum, pictures of the Huvudspelare, Eilif, Tommaryd, and Idasen furniture pieces from IKEA, and concept art and pictures of the Halley VI research station.

And as a way to play the Microscope TTRPG (it was for work!!! promise!):

A collection of nodes in an Obsidian canvas. All of the nodes have three lines in the center representing the fact that they are cards instead of notes. Three at the top are uncolored, and the rest of the nodes are either red or green. The red or green cards are connected to each other; the top row is connected from left to right, the columns below each card is connected from top to bottom, and of those cards are connected to additional cards to their right.

It’s been pretty nice to use it, as it allows us to arrange notes in 2D space but still get the power that Obsidian normally offers, with being able to link out to markdown files. For example, here’s one of the nodes in the timeline:

A note titled "GHOST VI Adrift", which reads: "During the GHOST VI mission, due to the prior destabilization of its orbit, Dutchman station deorbits and enters an interplanetary trajectory, leaving the immediate vicinity of CGC 76." The words GHOST VI, destabilization, Dutchman, and CGC 76 are links and the bottom of the note includes a link to a Wikipedia article called "Rogue planet"

This node in the canvas is actually a whole markdown note, with its own links to other markdown notes. Adding it to the canvas allows us to order it in chronological order with other events, group them in interesting ways, and see how it relates to other notes that don’t represent chronological events.

It’s like having a conspiracy-laden wall of notes and connections, it’s great.

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