Using monster files

Description

This workflow shows you how to get the monster files in monsters to show the following things:

• full frontmatter including its name, HP, size, environment, etc— all the stats you need to know
• a Source link to the book it came from, which opens to the page in the PDF if you have it
• an embed of the PDF within the note

Plugins used

• Better PDF
• Templater
• Dataview

Zotero

This workflow also requires another app that lets you link to pages of PDFs. Choose one of the following or similar:

• Zotero - my recommendation, and the app I refer to in the instructions below
  • You’ll also need to download and install the following Zotero plugins:
    • Zotero folder import
    • Zutilo
• Skim (macOS only)
• DevonThink

Link to original

Instructions

1. Follow the instructions in Using Table of Contents for sourcebooks to replace the Zotero IDs for the relevant book with your Zotero ID.
2. Create a symlink from wherever your PDFs are stored on your machine to the sources/pdfs folder in this vault. You’ll need to search for how to do this in your operating system. At the end of it, you should have a symlink of all your PDFs from your Obsidian vault (although they’re not actually stored in your vault).
3. Use the Global Search and Replace plugin to search for the filename of the PDF that’s in the monster file and replace it with your filename. For example, in the monster Aalpamac, this line shows the filename it’s looking for: "url": "[[Tome of Beasts 2.pdf]]",. However, your Tome of Beasts 2 PDF might be named something else. Replace it with [[Tome_of_Beasts_2.pdf]] or however yours is named.

That’s it! You should be able to see the page of the PDF embedded into the note.