Obsidian RPG/Pokemon Themed Vault

11 April 2026

I Turned My Obsidian Vault Into a Pokémon theme!

I’ve been using Obsidian for a while now for work and in order to use it as my “second brain” I really need to have work / life combined, so one evening I thought maybe making this more like an RPG could make this more fun?

So I build the whole thing as a Pokémon / RPG game. People are NPCs. Tasks are quests, but work tasks are DEV Tickets. My daily journal is a game save point and I think this setup has enough personality to make me stick with it!

Here’s how I set it up.

The Folder Structure

Mine looks like this:

000_SYSTEM/       - Templates, game logic, system config, claude code!
001_CHARACTER/    - That's me. Character sheet, skills, inventory, money
002_QUESTS/       - Life goals, trips, projects, blog posts
003_NPCS/         - Everyone I know, Pokédex style
004_POKEDEX/      - Reference and knowledge base
005_SAVES/        - Daily notes (save points)
006_ASSETS/       - Images, PDFs, media
007_DEV/          - Work tickets, kanban board, "patch notes"
008_MENU/         - Dashboard views using Obsidian Bases as galleries
404_NOTFOUND/	- Little web nerd quirk for all new notes not assigned

The numbered prefixes keep things in a fixed order in the sidebar as thats how Obsidian works.

Save Points, Not Daily Notes

I like the idea of daily notes becomming save points instead, with a little journal of what happened, any wild encounters “A wild XXX appeared”!

Everyone’s an NPC

This is my favourite bit every person in my life or contact — family, friends, colleagues gets a Pokédex-style NPC entry.

Each NPC has:

  • A Pokédex number (assigned in order of creation)
  • Traits — 2-4 personality words
  • Gym — where they belong (Home, School, Company etc.)
  • Base stats — Skill, Charisma, Wisdom, Luck on a 5-point bar (for the quirks!)
  • Known moves — what they’re good at
  • Relationships — Party, Ally, Boss, Rival, Linked basically heirarchy.

AI Portraits

Boooo!!!! Well until I get around to making my own graphics, I used Gemini AI to create little portaits for people which keeps the style and just adjusts them to the descriptions im writing for people.

Inventory

I plan to record every book, every movie as I read or aquire them, they become part of my life inventory!

What about work?

I didn’t want a separate system for work. Everything lives in one vault — life stuff is the RPG, work stuff sits in 007_DEV/.

Work has its own structure: a kanban board (TODO.md), one page per ticket in 001_TICKETS/, and a Patch Notes.md file that logs everything shipped. When a task is done, it moves to the archive with its full context preserved.

Keeping work and life in one vault means I can link across them. An NPC (colleague) links to the tickets they’re working on. A quest (holiday planning) links to the budget in my money folder. Everything connects.

Obsidian Sync

The whole thing falls apart if you can only use it on one device, which was my problem with using Obsidian before, I know there are many ways to get it working, github/sycthing but I just wanted it to work and I dont mind paying the $4/5 dollers a month if it can help me organise my life in a fun way!

I went with Obsidian Sync because I just wanted it to all work!

It’s not free (currently around £4/month with the yearly plan), but for something I use every single day across my phone and laptop, Being able to jot a save point on my phone last thing at night and have it there on my desktop in the morning is the kind of small thing that makes the system stick.

Also looking to see if I can get my Supernote Nomad e-ink device to get into my Vault as well, then I’ll truely be “gaming”!

Bases for Dashboards

Obsidian Bases (released relatively recently) let you create database-style views of your vault. I’ve got base files in 008_MENU/ that give me card galleries and filtered tables across the vault:

  • NPCs — gallery of portraits, filterable by gym and status
  • Pokédex — all reference entries grouped by type (org, tool, finance, etc.)
  • Quests — active, completed, abandoned
  • Inventory — books, games, films with covers and ratings

The frontmatter properties on each note are what power these views. Every entry having a consistent type, cover, status, and tags means the bases just work without much setup.

Is It Actually Useful?

Time will tell but I’m enjoying journalling and using it way more than I did using notion, like I want to write it in my vault now and because its synced it makes life even easier!

If you’re thinking about theming your vault — do it. Pick something you love, commit to the metaphor, and build around it. The structure will follow.

I’m Mark Wong, an Online Development Manager based in Edinburgh. I’m passionate about AI and building build things with software, was this written by AI??? (well maybe just alittle!)

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