Hey Privacy people,

I am looking for a OneNote alternative for all my campaign notes for my tabletop RPGs. I was looking at Obsidian.md as an option and wondering what their data collection is like?

Fot all my personal and private notes I use standard notes but the free version is not quite roboist enougj. I can’t afford to pay premium any time soon I need a free option I can use.

Any suggestions ?

  • cyberwolfie@lemmy.ml
    11·
    7 days ago

    I use Obsidian, which is quite powerful with their vast plugin library. You can do a lot of automation, and you can check out some of Nicole van der Hoeven’s videos, who among other things use it to keep track of TTRPG campaigns, both as a player and as a game master. For example this one.

    I don’t use their sync service, but have all files locally on my Nextcloud server. I sync them to my phone with Syncthing, which unfortunately means I cannot encrypt them with Cryptomator like I planned, but if you only use it on your computer, that is also something you could do. If you are paranoid about them still phoning home with your data, then you can block its network access with a firewall. I think you can install plugins manually.

    I would have preferred it if it was FOSS. I have considered checking out Logseq as an alternative. But the bullet-based workflow doesn’t appeal to me, so I haven’t tried yet. I switched over from Standard Notes, and honestly it was pain to transfer because the text export from Standard Notes was all over the place, as I had used a lot of different note types. I tried to parse some of these smart notes they have, but I couldn’t quickly figure out how they were structured to automate it, so I ended up manually going through and copying over what I wanted to keep. I like the approach of keeping plain text markdown files. It is easier to export to another application in the future, although some of the content will be useless as it is explicitly written for the plugins (e.g. Dataview).

  • runner_g@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    31·
    7 days ago

    It’s not strictly privacy-focused but The Goblin’s Notebook is designed exactly for your use-case. It has markdown, object connections, every object has a player visible setting, so your players can access known content while you keep secrets hidden. There’s a free tier, a mid tier at $1.50 and an unlimited tier at $3 dollars a month (managed via their patreon).

  • JustEnoughDucks@feddit.nl
    2·
    7 days ago

    For taking campaign notes, bookstack might be an option. It is specifically organized in a book, chapter, page hierarchy.

    I also use it for my journal and to do list just because I already used it. Probably not as full featured as obsidian though

    • constantokra@lemmy.one
      71·
      7 days ago

      Unless you need specific functionality that silver bullet doesn’t provide, i’d start there. It’s very similar to logseq, but doesn’t have a bunch of questionable design choices based around a paid sync monetization scheme. Silverbullet is self hosted and has a web app. Logseq is a webapp, packaged for Android and desktop, but only allowed file access for your data so you can’t self host sync… Because they charge for that. It’s a mess.

        • constantokra@lemmy.one
          5·
          7 days ago

          I do too. My point is there’s already a web app you can self host, but you can’t store your data on your server. The web app uses the local file access framework, which is just dumb. There’s no reason for this except to be able to monetize sync, and that’s also dumb because as you said, sync thing works fine. But they’re making a bad choice to explicitly remove functionality, and that doesn’t make me feel confident about the future of the project.

          • hasecilu@lemm.ee
            3·
            6 days ago

            For this exact reason I switched to Trilium, I can acces on all my devices. I’m very expectant of the new fork Trilium Next.

          • TheSun@slrpnk.net
            2·
            6 days ago

            I don’t know, they have to monetise somehow. Paying for the convenience of sync seems like a valid path especially given there’s fully functional alternative syncs available for free.

            • constantokra@lemmy.one
              1·
              6 days ago

              I don’t disagree. My problem is not with their choice of monetizing sync. My problem is with their choice to package a web app for Android and desktop, provide that same web app for self hosting, but not allow you to store the data in the web app. In the discussions on GitHub they claim it’s just something they can’t tackle right now, or whatever. No. It’s functionality that was specifically stripped because that’s how every other self hosted web app works and the local storage framework they use is obviously bolted on and not well supported by browsers. In other words, they’re manufacturing problems to sell you a solution. And again, that’s their decision to make. It just doesn’t seem like they make good decisions, and we’re talking about an app you put a lot of work and data into.

  • akilou@sh.itjust.works
    22·
    8 days ago

    Proton just bought Standard Notes, so keep an eye out for changes there. Otherwise, I use Obsidian but I have it sync to my home server so I can access the same data from my phone and computer.

  • Scipitie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    13·
    8 days ago

    As they are closed source no one can tell you their true privacy policy. It seems better than average from what I’ve read but you never know…

    Personally I use logseq and sync the files via a Nextcloud instance. I can only recommend it, although I also recommend spending an hour to learn the tagging and linking logic and reading through their guide on what’s possible. I still only leverage a minor part of the potential myself.

    One that is closer to onenote (I think, never used onenote) is Joplin.

  • Creat@discuss.tchncs.de
    11·
    7 days ago

    Since you’re specifically looking to replace OneNote, you might want to take a look at BookStack. It has similar organizational concepts, and I think it’s FOSS.