Our love is like a ship on the ocean
We've been sailing with a cargo full of love and devotion
I use Obsidian for all my PKM, second brain, GTD, and note-taking needs. I love that it's all text files using markdown – it's like writing code. Sure, it's got some presentation and sharing features, but Notion seems tailor-made for web sharing and for teams, clubs, gangs, or pirates collaborating. I set up a free account and spent a few days playing in it, and I’m now test-running it as a Session Keeper for my Miseries & Misfortunes run on Sunday mornings. Here are my post-session zero thoughts.
My three players took to using it like ducks to water in our session zero of Miseries and Misfortunes. They easily modded the character sheets I set up, adding experience tables and other character properties to their sheets, and shared them across each other's sheets. No permission fiddling required.
I've seen the incredible Character Keeper spreadsheets from the Open Hearth community. The work that goes into them is beyond love – it's borderline obsession. I secretly despise them for it because I just ain't gonna be working that deep with no --I digress. As a software developer, I wanted a more scalable solution for Character Keepers —spreadsheet-based character sheets. I looked at Activetable.io, Obsidian, Miro, and a few other collab apps before giving Notion a run.
There's a bit of a learning curve around understanding a "page" as a building unit, which tripped me up a little when trying to display all the characters inspired by Character Keeper layouts. Everything else is drag-and-drop and widgets. This includes tables, databases, and integrations with a ton of other apps.
Selling Points:
Easy for Everyone: No permission fiddling. It's easy to use and modify.
Wiki-like Expansion: Internal or external links make it feel like a living, playing document.
Formatting Options: Plenty of them to suit all my needs.
Private Pages: You can link to private pages, like my 'GM Ref' link, which takes me to a private page in Notion. However, it won't work for you.
Public Sharing: Share the page with the public like a website and invite guests (AKA players). The free plan maxes out at 10 guests, but that's plenty! You can view mine!
Automations, calculations, permutations: There are options for table and database automations and calculating. I glossed over it, but I'll circle back to it as my needs grow. I don't need a character builder, but some automation is nice, like Scotch.
Needs:
Maps with Tokens: Really just a background image where we can drop and move token images (foreground). My initial thoughts are using Notion's baked-in integrations with Google apps or Miro. Yes, it'll be another app, but I think it'll be usable right in the Notion page.
Dice Roller: Some folks have already made plugins, but I'll likely build a dice server for Notion. I need Cortex Prime dice pools to run Lifted online, and I'm coming up empty.
Everything I've mentioned is on the free plan, but I'd slap down a subscription fee right now.
Next up, I’ll add 2-3 new players in a Wednesday night series of M&M sessions. I will put them on the same Notion page and see how managing two groups of the same game goes. I also plan to use Notion for Mothership RPG in my Kuiper Belt Anomaly campaign because a set of one isn't really data.🤘🏾