Prep
Getting started
Install#
- In Obsidian, open Settings → Community plugins and turn off Restricted mode if it's on.
- Select Browse, search for Ember Vault, then select Install and Enable.
Three icons appear in the left ribbon:
| Icon | Opens |
|---|---|
| Castle | The Campaign panel: chapters, scenes and every folder in the campaign (NPCs, sessions, assets…) |
| Swords | The encounter tracker |
| Book | The bestiary |
Everything is also in the command palette (Cmd/Ctrl+P). Type "Ember Vault" to see the commands.
Want to see it working first? Download the sample adventure. It's a ready-made vault with a dungeon, a map, NPCs and encounters.
Your first fight, in two minutes#
- Add your party. Open Settings → Ember Vault → Party and add each hero's name, class, level, max HP and Defense. Encounters are rated against these heroes.
- Write an encounter. In any note, type
/encounter 3 goblin, 2 wolfand press Enter. You get an encounter block with its difficulty (Easy to Very Deadly) worked out for your party. - Run it. Select Run on the block. The tracker opens with the goblins, the wolves and your heroes.
- Play. Select Start combat. Heroes go first, in any order; tick each one off when they've acted. Then the monsters go. Select Next round to start again.
To damage a monster, click its HP: a calculator opens on Damage. Enter 12 and apply it, or toggle Crit first. The tracker subtracts armor for you, and with a keyboard you can just type 12! and press Enter. More on the tracker page.
Your first campaign#
- Select the castle icon, then New campaign. Give it a name, a starting level and the number of heroes.
- The plugin makes a folder with a home note, a first chapter and an opening scene.
- Write the scene. Type
/read-aloudfor boxed text,/encounterfor a fight,/npcto link a character. - Add more scenes with + in the Campaign panel. Every folder has a + too, and you can drag notes between them. Use Next scene / Previous scene (bind them to hotkeys) to step through them at the table.
See Campaigns for how it's laid out, and how to build it by hand.
Where things are saved#
- In your notes: encounters, stat blocks, maps, boxes, NPC cards. They're plain Markdown code blocks, so they sync, search and back up like any other text.
- In plugin data (
.obsidian/plugins/nimble-gm/data.json): your party, the tracker's current state, map token positions and settings.
Nothing leaves your computer. The plugin makes no network requests. It only writes to the clipboard when you select a Copy button.