Why not just use Notion or Obsidian for D&D?

Both are excellent general tools and both assume every reader may read everything. A campaign needs the opposite: the DM writes things the players must not see. Workarounds exist — a second vault, a separate database — but they are two sources of truth that drift apart, which is the specific failure this replaces.

Can I import my existing campaign notes?

There is no bulk importer. In practice groups start with the next session and paste in the few pages they still reference, because backfilling a long campaign is a job nobody finishes. Notes export as Markdown whenever you want them back.

Does it work offline at the table?

It installs as a progressive web app on a phone or tablet, but it is a live shared notebook and expects a connection — notes sync to everyone as they are written. It is not designed as an offline-first vault.

Do my players need to pay or install anything?

No. Joining campaigns as a player is unlimited on a free account, and it runs in a browser. Only the person running the game encounters a campaign cap at all.

Is it only for D&D 5e?

The notes, linking, graph and permissions are system-neutral and groups use them for other systems. The bundled compendium is 5e SRD content specifically, so that part is less useful outside 5e.

D&D note taking app

Nearly every D&D group starts in a general-purpose notes app — a shared doc, a Notion page, an Obsidian vault, whatever was already open. It works, right up until the campaign gets big enough to be worth having notes about.

The failure is always the same shape, and it is not about features. A general notes app assumes one author, or a group of authors who are all allowed to read everything. A campaign is the one situation where that assumption is false by design: the DM knows things the players must not, and the players know things about each other they might not share.

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Typing [[ searches every note in the campaign and links to one in a second — and the sidebar shows what this note links to, and what links back to it.

The wall

Where a general notes app stops working

The first crack is the secret. You need to write down what the cult is actually doing, and there is nowhere in the shared document to put it. So you make a second document, and now you own two files that have to agree with each other. They agree for about a month.

The second crack is retrieval. A general notes app searches titles well and bodies adequately, but it cannot answer "who did we meet in the port city?" because nothing in it knows that a person and a place are different kinds of thing, or that they were mentioned together.

The third is that nobody else writes in it. If the notes live in one person’s vault or one person’s account, the group has a scribe rather than a shared record — and when that person misses a session, the record has a hole in it.

The difference

Permissions per note, not per document

In Dungeon Ledger the unit of access is the note. Each one is shared with the table, private to you, DM-only, or shared with named people — and reading and editing are separate settings, so a note can be readable by everyone and editable by one person.

That removes the second document entirely. The secret and the summary of the same event live next to each other, linked to the same NPC, in one campaign. When the reveal happens you change a dropdown instead of copying text between files.

Filtering runs on the server before anything is sent, so a player’s browser never receives a note they are not permitted to read. There is nothing hidden in the page to inspect, and nothing to leak by sharing your screen.

Structure

The organisation happens while you write

Typing [[ opens a search across every note in the campaign and links to one in a second. That speed is the whole trick — anything slower and people stop doing it mid-sentence, which is why the "we should keep a wiki" plan usually dies.

Because the links are real, the graph view can draw them: NPCs, locations, quests and sessions as connected nodes you can filter, search and click through. You get a map of your own campaign without ever having sat down to build one.

Notes have types — player, NPC, location, quest, session, secret — so structure does not depend on five people naming things consistently.

A D&D campaign knowledge graph in Dungeon Ledger showing NPCs, locations, quests and session logs as labelled, colour-coded nodes connected by the links between notes. — Nobody drew this. It is the [[links]] made while writing, rendered.

Switching

What moving actually involves

Realistically you do not migrate a campaign. You start writing the next session in the new place, paste in the handful of pages you still refer to, and let the old document become an archive nobody opens. Backfilling two years of notes is a project that never finishes.

Notes export back out as Markdown with front matter, per note or for a whole campaign, so nothing you write is trapped here. That is worth checking before you commit a campaign to any tool, this one included.

It runs in the browser and installs to a phone or tablet as an app, which matters at an in-person table where people look things up between turns.

Questions about the app

Why not just use Notion or Obsidian for D&D?: Both are excellent general tools and both assume every reader may read everything. A campaign needs the opposite: the DM writes things the players must not see. Workarounds exist — a second vault, a separate database — but they are two sources of truth that drift apart, which is the specific failure this replaces.
Can I import my existing campaign notes?: There is no bulk importer. In practice groups start with the next session and paste in the few pages they still reference, because backfilling a long campaign is a job nobody finishes. Notes export as Markdown whenever you want them back.
Does it work offline at the table?: It installs as a progressive web app on a phone or tablet, but it is a live shared notebook and expects a connection — notes sync to everyone as they are written. It is not designed as an offline-first vault.
Do my players need to pay or install anything?: No. Joining campaigns as a player is unlimited on a free account, and it runs in a browser. Only the person running the game encounters a campaign cap at all.
Is it only for D&D 5e?: The notes, linking, graph and permissions are system-neutral and groups use them for other systems. The bundled compendium is 5e SRD content specifically, so that part is less useful outside 5e.

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