# Obsidian - What's the Weather? ![[images/Obsidian-Whats-the-Weather.webp]] [Watch on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E39TCssHIn0) · 8:06 · Josh Plunkett · 2024-01-26 ## Outline ### 00:00 Intro - Josh has covered weather before with random generators (including one with pictures), but he's been browsing the dashboards that non-TTRPG Obsidian users build and noticed many show a live weather forecast. - He shows his Tyranny of Dragons journey board (an Excalidraw map of the Sword Coast route) with weather icons dropped onto locations, and asks whether a real forecast widget could drive in-game weather instead. ![[images/Obsidian-Whats-the-Weather-t0040.webp]] - His sidebar widget currently shows London (4.3 °C, partly cloudy, humidity, UV, day or night, and a three-day forecast), pulled automatically from an API so he doesn't have to do anything. - The idea: instead of a real city near you, pick a place in the world whose climate matches the region your party is in, and get a realistic forecast for that kind of temperate zone. ### 02:13 Tutorial: installing Tenki - Settings, then Community plugins, then Browse, and search "weather". There are a few options (OpenWeather, Weather Fetcher), but he picked **Tenki** by HiroMike because of the name: *tenki* is Japanese for weather. - Install and enable it, then open its options. ![[images/Obsidian-Whats-the-Weather-t0235.webp]] ### 02:45 Getting an API key - The options page has an API key field with a "get your free key here" link to WeatherAPI. - It's a paid service with a free tier. Signing up starts a 14-day trial of a paid plan that drops back to free; Josh gave no credit card details. - The free tier offers 3 forecast days, which is all the plugin supports anyway. Extras like marine and tide data don't matter for his games. - Paste the key into the plugin, then type a city name; the widget updates to that city's forecast. ![[images/Obsidian-Whats-the-Weather-t0410.webp]] ### 04:17 Settings and the campaign idea - You can switch to Fahrenheit and change the refresh interval. His was 0.5 minutes, which is far more than needed; 60 minutes is fine. - For his party on the plains of the Sword Coast, he can choose a matching real place, leave it set for a long time, and the weather will shift through the seasons as real time passes over a year-long campaign. - Tip: don't pick where you live. Pick somewhere on the other side of the world so it differs from what players expect. All you really need is cloudy, sunny, raining or thunderstorm. - He placed the widget in the left sidebar pane so it's on hand during sessions ("here's your weather forecast"). ### 05:30 Conclusion - Compared with random tables, this gives realistic results because weather follows real patterns. - Wish for a plugin variant: a dropdown of climate presets (temperate, dry Australian summer heat, snow, tropical Jamaica) instead of naming a city, and he jokes about what a skull icon in the forecast would mean ("don't go outside, death"). - Even so, it's perfectly usable as it is. ### 07:38 Outro - Like and subscribe, Patreon support for the Foundation Vault, and obsidianttrpgtutorials.com for resources and socials. ## Things mentioned ### Obsidian plugins and tools - **Tenki** by HiroMike, a free community plugin that shows a weather display (current conditions plus a 3-day forecast) - **OpenWeather** by willasm and **Weather Fetcher** by fyears, alternative free weather plugins seen in the search - **WeatherAPI** ([weatherapi.com](https://www.weatherapi.com/)), the forecast service Tenki uses; paid plans with a free tier that's enough here - **Excalidraw**, used for his journey board map - Random weather generators and random tables from his earlier videos ### TTRPG systems and settings - **Dungeons & Dragons 5e**, **Tyranny of Dragons** (Hoard of the Dragon Queen and Rise of Tiamat) running across the **Forgotten Realms' Sword Coast** ### Websites and support - [Obsidian TTRPG Tutorials](https://obsidianttrpgtutorials.com/) - [Obsidian](https://obsidian.md/) - [Josh Plunkett on Patreon](https://www.patreon.com/JPlunkett), paid, includes the Foundation Vault ## Bios - **Josh Plunkett** is an Australian creator who runs Obsidian TTRPG Tutorials, a YouTube channel and website teaching tabletop game masters to run campaigns in Obsidian. He supports it through Patreon, where members get his Foundation Vault. - **HiroMike** is the community developer of the Tenki weather plugin for Obsidian.