Category Archives: Campaign of the Month

July’s Featured Campaign: Shadowrun – Into The Breach

It’s a new month, and with it comes Shadowrun – Into The Breach, a new Featured Campaign. I had a whole write up ready for this one, but the DM for last month’s Featured Campaign Arsheeh beat me to it. Let’s hear what he had to say.

Campaign Highlights

Among the many features of Into the Breach worthy of note are the following:

• Innovative HTML and Graphics work:
  As previously mentioned, Jim has invested allot of effort into the layout of his site, both in terms of HTML/Textile formatting, and in terms of the graphic images that he has either created or found to adorn the site. Into the Breach exudes the dark cybernetic aesthetic that is the hallmark of cyberpunk. I am not exaggerating when I say that this site layout is one of a very small handful of the coolest and most innovative on the Portal.
• Character Dossiers:
  Jim has created a really clever set of dossiers for each of the characters in his campaign that is well worth checking out.
• Karma, Achievements & Special Abilities:
  Jim has adapted a system that rewards players with cool character abilities both for in-game and meta-game contributions to the campaign.
• Classifieds & News:
  Another really clever innovation to this campaign site is the introduction of a set of News stations and classified adds which offer a variety of story hooks. This allows for a great deal of story options for the players.
• The Subterranean Village of Throal:
  I just love this idea! Seriously, you gotta read about this location for yourself.
• Weapons, Vehicles & Equipment:
  Into the breach contains a host of detailed, visually impressive entries on futuristic technology that ought to make any Shadowrun DM drool!

It’s hard to argue with any of that. To celebrate his acheivement we asked JimTriche to tell us about his newly featured campaign.

Obsidian Portal: How much of the campaign/system is original content developed by you and your players?

JimTriche: The world exists as it is, we’ve made up some weapons, made some organizations and corps, and whatnot to populate it, but for the most part what we use exists somewhere to some degree in the original sourcebooks. Some stuff we’ve borrowed from other campaigns or stories we read, and parts, notably the subterranean Kingdom of Throal are creative evolutions based on other material. (Earthdawn, in that case) The storyline is an original construct, and some of the house rules are either fixes for shortcomings in the Shadowrun 2nd Edition rules or developments that were entirely missing. The Achievements idea was taken from other Obsidian Portal members through general forum brainstorming. I wish more people used them.

Obsidian Portal: Your campaign looks great, can you tell us more about it?

JimTriche: Well, the campaign actually has been going off and on for a few years, and it’s ever evolving. We have 2 guys that GM, and we switch off occasionally, though we tend to guard our plothooks even from each other. It helps to keep things fresh I think. It’s currently in a bit of a Steampunk mode, they’re searching for legendary artifacts to battle a Horror, which Shadowrun and Earthdawn share as major badguys. The goal at the moment is to tie the world together and show a bit of the scope of FASA’s creations, as well as tying them together. Who knows, if we play long enough we may evolve into some Mechwarrior fluff as well!

Obsidian Portal: Where do you get your inspiration the story and the world?

JimTriche: The world is Earth, didn’t need a whole lot of inspiration there, it’s just a bit… run down. The storylines come in as conglomerations, various sci-fi/fantasy books, frankensteined adventure modules from various systems, and bad movies and television. What makes for horrible cinema often makes awesome game plots. Then we mix and match. Tolkien+Gibson+King+Lovecraft= a good start.

Obsidian Portal:  How well do you know your players?

JimTriche: I’ve been friends with them for about 10 years. I met two at work when I first moved into New Jersey, and the others were friends of theirs for closer to 25 years. It’s a good group of people, the kind of guys who have keys to your house. The kind of guys that’d be sharing a cell with you. Good guys.

Obsidian Portal:  What kinds challenges are you faced with in your campaign?

JimTriche: Mostly it’s scheduling logistics, our work schedules all differ, Three of us are married, I have 3 kids, one is a farmer, and so on. Sometimes distractions pop up during game too, in the form of random internet pages or accidents at the corner near the house. Usually we keep things moving pretty well though. I’d love to get the players more into using the Portal, but the geeky stuff is my general domain (and I couldn’t have made the campaign wiki look half as nice without some major help from your forum regulars)

Obsidian Portal:  What aspects of your campaign are you really proud of?

JimTriche: I’m liking that it seems genuine. When I say that I mean that the world feels like it makes sense. The NPCs have their own lives, the players have freedom that I lacked in a lot of my games in years past, I like being able to entertain friends as well. Of the campaign plot itself, I like the way Throal is shaping up, Massive Dynamic (Yes, inspired by Fringe – the other GM’s baby) has become a great resource in game, and the overall story is taking a life on it’s own, while remaining malleable enough that we can still switch off GM duties and run our own subplots while keeping the metaplot in full swing.

Obsidian Portal:  According to your players, what have been the highlights of the campaign?

IncCamaro – “I am extremely interested in what’s happening with the Throal thing here. I definitely want to see where this goes.”

Schweedit – “The whole cabin scene was great, it’s not every day someone unleashes a horrific scourge upon the entire world.”

Blitzkreig8881 and CarlPaul71 were not available for comment, though their likely responses would have been “I like to shoot things” for Blitzkreig, and “I hate your stupid Bear” for Carl.

Obsidian Portal:  What future plans do you have for your campaign?

JimTriche: The metaplot is set, either they defeat the critter they let loose or the world dies. Either way, at the end we’ll regroup, restart or continue on with a new metaplot and campaign. We’ll of course be using the portal from the beginning on that one.

Obsidian Portal: Do you have anyone you’d like to thank?

JimTriche: Thanks to Arsheesh, Hardhead, Chainsaw, Gaaran, Idabrius, FrankSirmarco, MadEd, Gnunn and anyone else I forgot at the moment for all the help and support! Also calabacita for making me extra happy very soon.

Congrats again to JimTriche and all his players! If you have a suggestion for next month’s Featured Campaign, drop us a note on the forums!

June’s Featured Campaign: Age of Legends

Like a buffet patron with a vendetta, the air grew thick and aggressive as the noon day sun came to rule over the Red City. I had finally tracked down Arsheeh, the DM of this month’s Featured Campaign. When I found him, he was playing Texas hold’em in an old storehouse behind a bustling marketplace in Marrakech with Martha Stewart, John Stewart, and Candy. Candy was a stewardess for American Airlines. I pulled a handkerchief from my pocket and wiped the sweat from my brow.

Their dealer was a dark haired, suave looking gentleman wearing a three piece suit made of crocodile skin. The heat didn’t seem to mind him and -truth be told- he looked a bit cold. He dealt me in without saying a word. I took my place at the table and began to question Arsheeh on his campaign, Age of Legends.

Obsidian Portal: How much of the campaign/system is original content developed by you and your players?

Arsheeh: Our campaign utilizes Pathfinder’s core rule system. As for the content of the campaign though, for better or worse that was pretty much all developed by my players and I. I’ve been writing, and rewriting the history of our campaign world, Eriond, for about five years now (whenever I can carve out time from my academic schedule to do so) so certain parts of the world have been pretty well developed.

However I try to encourage my players to participate in building the world as well, and I’m certainly not averse to incorporating their own ideas into the landscape of the campaign. For instance my wife wanted to play a unique highbred class, one part Shadow Dancer the other part Assassin. So I told her to write an interesting back-story for her character (Phadran) that explained what she had in mind. Based on her character’s background, I developed a shadowy organization tied to Phadran that will show up later in our campaign.

Obsidian Portal: Your campaign looks great, can you tell me more about it?

Arsheeh: As far as the storyline goes, basically Age of Legends is a Tolkienish “points of light” style campaign that takes place in the far bitter northern edges of Eriond’s civilization. The events of the campaign thus far have taken place in and around the prosperous town of Hidroth Lea, though that is about to change.

Currently the players are exploring the millennium old Minotaur infested ruins of a former Dwarven kingdom in search of a key to an ancient magic gateway. Ultimately they hope to locate an elven city of Ice that has been lost since the first age, and the magic gateway is the most promising lead to locating this city thus far discovered.

Obsidian Portal: Where do you get your inspiration the story and the world?

Arsheeh: Well, like most of us, I was completely captivated with Peter Jackson’s film adaptation of The Lord of the Rings. As a result, I eagerly reread Tolkien’s classic trilogy as well as his Silmarillion several years back. I was intrigued by Tolkien’s theologically rich creation myth, among other things, and thought it might be interesting to play in a campaign world ordered by a uniquely divine God-figure rather than the pantheon of gods typical of D&D. Thus began The Age of Legends.

Aside from Tolkien, I have been influenced by a host of other writers and have undoubtedly borrowed from their works in building the world of Eriond. Most notably, I have been inspired by Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series (which was my first introduction into the world of fantasy), Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea trilogy and most recently, Patrick Rothfuss’s The Name of the Wind. Since becoming a member of the Obsidian Portal I have also been influenced by a number of other campaigns as well. I cannot name them all here but I know that I have looked to Redstar’s The City of Fogdown, Onsilius’ Minrothad, and Idabrius’ Abridged History of the 10th Age campaigns for inspiration more than once.

Obsidian Portal: How well do you know your players?

Arsheeh: Heh, heh, there’s somewhat of an amusing story here. So my wife and I moved down to SoCal several years back so that I could attend seminary to study philosophy. Now when I think of likely places to recruit players for D&D, “seminary” isn’t exactly at the top of the list. Yet my first semester in the program my wife was involved in a sort of support group for seminary wives. Well, she was at one of these group events and as part of the introductions, the women were each sharing with each other interesting facts about their husbands and such. When it came time for my wife to speak, she sort of looked sheepishly at the other women and said something along the lines of “well my husband plays D&D.”

I doubt that many of the women there even knew what D&D stood for. Still, after the meeting one women came up to my wife and incredulously asked if she was serious about me and D&D, to which my wife, bracing herself against a polemical sermon about the evils of gaming, replied that she was. Well, turned out that the other woman’s husband was an avid gamer as well looking to join a campaign. So our wives set us up on a man-date to see if we were compatible. We got along famously and in the two and a half years that followed my wife and I have been meeting with this couple on average of once or twice a month to game. Generally, we’ll drive over to their place and Spetrevich will spoil us all with her amazing culinary skills. As a result, they have become some of our dearest friends. We try to get together with them to hang out as much as possible, even when gaming is not involved. In fact, we have grown close enough to share both the triumphs and the struggles of our personal lives. Friendships like these are a rare and precious thing.

Obsidian Portal: What kinds challenges are you faced with in your campaign?

Arsheeh: One of the biggest challenges has been just finding time to game. Our game sessions have been somewhat sporadic. At best, we play once every two weeks. At worst, two or three months might pass between sessions. We are all really busy with work and school, so that puts limitations upon when we can meet. In addition, the couple that we game with has a five year old son and we generally don’t begin gaming until after he has gone to bed. This means that our game sessions can run pretty late into the night, and even after a few cups of coffee, we are all pretty zonked by the end of the game (in fact my wife has fallen asleep in the middle of combat on more than one occasion).

Obsidian Portal: What aspects of your campaign are you really proud of?

Arsheeh: I’ve spent allot of time fleshing out the town of Hidroth Lea and its denizens, and although the town is still far from finished (in fact I still haven’t gotten around to creating a map for it), I’ve got to admit that I’m fond of this little town. There are a few other campaign elements yet to be introduced to the campaign that I’m rather fond of as well, but I don’t want to give away andy spoilers here. More to the point, I’m proud to be the DM of such a fine group of gamers.

Obsidian Portal: According to your players, what have been the highlights of the campaign?

Arsheeh: Well, in their own words, this is what some of my players had to say:

Dangerkitty (Phadran): “Without being biased, I can honestly say this campaign has really impressed me. I am one of those players that only needs to satisfy my blood lust every few games or so. I favor creative plots and the vivid, colorful world of Age of Legends has given me just that. The plots are some of the most creative that I have ever played within, yet they still allow for enough challenging battle sequences to satisfy everyone at the table. May our DM live long, prosper, and provide more games…”

Eriondscribe (Romen): “his attention to story, above all else. In one of our very first game sessions, our party temporarily roomed at a local farmer’s home. The next morning, the party awoke to the smell of freshly cooked “silver-wheat pancakes” (silver-wheat being a grain that’s unique to Eriond). When that happened, I knew immediately that our campaign would be story-driven, not a loosely strung series of battles. The silver-wheat pancakes had the same world-immersing effect as Romulan ale in the Star Trek series. Or, for me (an avid fan of Gary Gygax’s original Dungeons and Dragons campaign world), it had the same effect as the list of trees and other flora in the opening chapter of the “World of Greyhawk” campaign setting.

I also impressed with the ease with which Arsheesh dreams up and spews out campaign details for regions, cities, personalities, etc. It sure makes it easy to browse the site and find ideas for characters and their backgrounds. I recently landed on his description of the gnomish city of “Glindell,” and, even though I really didn’t have time to sit and read through it, I couldn’t ‘put it down.’ By the time I finished reading, I was convinced that my next character would be a gnome from the city of Glindell

I also appreciate the way Arsheesh cares about the ideas you have for your characters, their backgrounds, and their goals. He seems to go out of his way to weave your own ideas into his existing campaign world—not to mention tying those characters and their lives into the larger events that are taking place (or going to take place) in the world.”

Obsidian Portal: What future plans do you have for your own homebrew campaign world, Eriond?

Arsheeh: Well, currently the most developed part of the World is the northern region in which Age of Legends is set. Eventually I would like to branch out and have the party explore other parts of the world. I’m curious to discover what cultures, legends and quests will emerge from such an exploration. As of now much of the campaign remains to be written, and I’m excited to see how it is all going to turn out in the end.

Bryn Mawr

I’t s an exciting new month here at Obsidian Portal, and we’re starting it off with a bang! Ready? BANG! Ok that was fun. Now let’s move on to this month’s Featured Campaign, Bryn Mawr, a fan favorite by poet warrior, Dra8er.

Dra8er was kind enough to give us a small interview about his game, his players, and share some of the wisdom he’s collected over the years as a gamer. Let’s read on, shall we?

Obsidian Portal: How much of the campaign/system is original content developed by you and your players?

Dra8er: We are using the D&D 4th edition rule set with a fair amount of homebrewed rules. This is my/everyone in the groups first time playing 4th edition D&D. I was hard pressed to make the switch from 3.5 & figured a dungeon crawl would be a great place to start. I’d like to think that the campaign itself is all original, but I draw influence from my years of gaming and many things are inspired by those experiences I’m sure. I would be unable to point directly to any source. The whole idea is to have fun and create a great story together…

Obsidian Portal: Your campaign looks great; can you tell us more about it?

Dra8er: I wanted to do an “old school” dungeon crawl for 4th edition; I already had a theme in mind (Abandoned Dwarven Citadel) and went about fleshing the mechanics. It has slowly evolved over the last year as I crafted pieces of it. Its fluid as well, in that not everything is set in stone, it will evolve more as the players interact with it. I also wanted the small town to be fully fleshed out, giving the players another area to “role-play” should they need a break from the delve, so it will be an integral part of the campaign as well, not just a base of operations.

Obsidian Portal: Where do you get your inspiration the story?

Dra8er: I had crafted Bryn Mawr and the area as part of another storyline/campaign. In that campaign it is not an abandoned citadel, but a bastion for good in the savage north. During its use I had the idea, what would happen if this place was abandoned for a few decades? Tons of insidious thoughts began pouring out; I actually had to work hard to whittle them down to a logical point.

Obsidian Portal: How well do you know your players?

Dra8er: One player is my son, another is a friend from work (a newbie to table top RPG’s but Vet of World of Warcraft), another is an old colleague, and the others are new friends recruited for this campaign.

Obsidian Portal: What kinds of challenges are you faced with in your campaign?

Dra8er: Currently my only real challenge is time, or the lack there of. I have put a lot into it but there is always tons more that can be done & I never have that “phew OK finished” feeling. I also have spent a lot of time assembling and crafting 3D terrain for this game. I’ve always used miniatures, trinkets, battle-mats and the like, but I’ve never truly crafted an entire campaign with 3D scenery. I’ve bought and commissioned a lot of work for this and hoping it pays off in the end, so far so good! But this has presented itself to be difficult in that I can’t always find what I need and have had to “rewrite” a few encounters to fit the “scene”.

Obsidian Portal: What aspects of your campaign are you really proud of?

Dra8er: How well it has paid off in terms of outright fun so far, we’ve had a blast so far and everyone is always pumped to return. Just hope I can keep up the excitement. There are a few other “things” I’m particularly proud of, but I can’t discuss them yet as they would be spoilers, mwa ha ha ha…

Obsidian Portal: What have been the highlights of the campaign according to your players?

Dra8er: The overall flow of the game and our ability to not get bogged down in mechanics, I must admit I’ve lucked out and wound up with an excellent group of gamers!

Obsidian Portal: Where can we get more information on Savage Sorcery?

Dra8er: The “official” website is still being built and should be up soon (fingers crossed), but you can keep up to date on what we’re doing over on Facebook – Savage Sorcery.

The Westerlands

Obsidian Portal: How much of the campaign/system is original content developed by you and your players?

Gnunn: My campaign universe utilizes the core rules from D&D 3.5 including the Greyhawk Pantheon, but beyond that the setting and plot have mostly sprung out of the brains of myself and my players. I’ve incorporated a couple of pre-published scenarios into the storyline, but only when they seemed like a good fit for furthering the overall plot.

I also recently started incorporating some elements of the Eberron campaign setting into my game world. I did not even know what Eberron was until my game had been running for some time, but when I found out about it, I thought the magic-as-technology elements were a good fit for the long-lost Gnossian civilization in my world. So, I started stealing ideas for my own purposes. In a way my setting is to Eberron as the Renaissance is to Ancient Greece and Rome, with the knowledge of the ancients in the process of being re-discovered… if that makes sense.

Obsidian Portal: Your campaign looks great, and I see that you share a lot of your info on the forums. Can you tell me more about it?

Gnunn: Well, I have a background in museum exhibit design with some training in instructional design, which has helped inform the aesthetics of the wiki. I also absolutely love to learn new things, and I believe that some of the deepest, most lasting knowledge can be gained through play and experimentation.

My impetus for starting my Obsidian Portal wiki was partially because I just thought it would be neat to learn how to program in Textile. I have taught myself to do many things in this way… on a whim… from Excel, to Google SketchUp, to learning how to roll a quarter across my knuckles. The best part is, this learning through play has occasionally paid off in other areas of my life. For example, the company I work for recently started building a wiki to store our internal knowledge base, and I was able to jump right in to start setting up pages for my department!

As far as my activities on the boards are concerned… In addition to loving to learn, I also love to help others learn. I used to work in the education departments at a number of museums in the Seattle area, and teaching just became a habit. On Obsidian Portal, I don’t think of it so much as teaching as I do creative collaboration… but it fills the same intrinsic need to share knowledge. Besides, the folks who use this site are great, and I love to see all the innovative ways people have come up with to use the wiki structure.

Obsidian Portal: Where do you get your inspiration for the story?

Gnunn: I beg, borrow and steal inspiration from anywhere and everywhere. The initial seed for my whole campaign came from the song, “Knights of Cydonia” by Muse. The inspiration germinated into the concept of a civil war between an order of paladins who had been divided by a moral dilemma and things grew from there.

Other elements of my campaign are based on everything from real-world history, the writings of authors like H.P. Lovecraft, H. Rider Haggard, Robert Jordan, David Eddings, Shakespeare, movies and even internet phenomena (e.g. Catfolk in my campaign are essentially manifestations of Lolcats.)

My players also provide a major source of inspiration for my campaign. Nickvu2′s decision to create a 1/2 orc monk named Santiago provided the inspiration for the kingdom of Pais’suria, which shares many characteristics with medieval Spain (monastic culture, deeply religious, subject to invasion by other civilizations). The woman who plays our paladin provided the basic inspiration for the Order of the Spiral Horn when she chose to roll up a Paladin of Ehlonna. I really enjoyed the challenge of modifying a paladin’s code to fit the goals of a neutral good nature goddess.

I am really not shy about co-opting anything that strikes my fancy and incorporating it into the campaign world. I enjoy it, and though my players often roll their eyes and groan (Lolcats!?) they also seem to enjoy it too. When they heard two Catfolk NPCs refer to the Paladin, Brahm as though his name were a meow, they adopted that pronunciation as their own.

Obsidian Portal: How well do you know your players?

Gnunn: One of the beauties of my game group is that we are all close friends. It started as myself, my girlfriend (erbassett) and three of our close friends who had never played before (naughtsauce, LividLiquid, and one other woman who hasn’t set up an OP account… yet.) Our real life friendships originated out of LividLiquid’s weekly karaoke show and have grown from there. Soon, we added another friend from the karaoke group (galgacusferox) and then a friend and coworker of naughtsauce’s (nickvu2) and a friend I had met through my grad program (rethis).

And my players are a group of characters in and of themselves. One is a nationally-ranked Rubix Cube solver, we have a woman getting her degree in Chinese medicine, a karaoke host, a teacher, and a woman who runs an artisan cheesecake business on the side.

Obsidian Portal: What kinds challenges are you faced with in your campaign?

Gnunn: Hmmm… as galgacusferox put it, “it seems like this is one of the easiest groups of people a DM could possibly hope to run sessions for.” There are no personality conflicts or lack of enthusiasm among the group. Honestly, the biggest challenge we have faced is really just that all our players have very busy lives outside the game. Two are currently in grad school, two have jobs with unpredictable schedules and all of us have interests outside of gaming.

I think one of the things that has kept this campaign running despite everyone’s busy lives is that I established very clear-cut rules for how we handle absent players. Simply put, if less than half the group is missing, we play and either myself, one of the other players or a guest rolls for the absent member(s). If you’re absent, you get 1/2xp but can’t die, though you could return to find your character naked with six dead companions in the middle of nowhere needing to figure out how to resurrect them.

As a DM, I feel my biggest challenge in game is accounting for the creativity of my players. They very frequently approach a challenge I have set up in a way I absolutely did not foresee, and I just try to roll with it. It’s tough, but I love it when my players come up with unique solutions to a problem I’ve thrown at them.

Obsidian Portal: What aspects of your campaign are you really proud of?

Gnunn: I am especially proud of having successfully hooked four brand new players on D&D. They were all hesitant at first when I approached them about starting up a campaign. My original players only agreed to give it a try because we were all good friends who liked hanging out anyway. A year later, it is common for someone to say, “We’re going to play this with our kids when we have them, right?”

I also really enjoy watching the player characters grow in terms of depth and in their inter-character relationships. Our cleric struggles with her calling as a healer vs. her desire to destroy undead in vengeance for those who took her parents. Our ranger and paladin have grown into a sort of brother-sister relationship where they are always giving each other crap for their individual foibles. Again, these are characters mostly played by people who had never played the game before this campaign began.

Finally, I was especially pleased last night when my players informed me that they feel their choices really affect the game world and that they do not feel they are being railroaded… it just means I am good at disguising the rails… just kidding!… maybe…

Obsidian Portal:  What have been the highlights of the campaign according to your players?

Gnunn: When I talked with my players about this after this week’s game, they mentioned that they like the extra touches I put on the game, like full-color battle-mat printouts, paper-craft items and the fact that I seem to constantly be hunting for new ways to improve the game experience… like a shark… of improvement.

They also said they like that I embrace their creative solutions to the challenges I present. If they want to try something totally zany, I roll with it, rather than forcing them to follow my pre-conceived ideas.

Also, several mentioned that they enjoy the variety of challenges I have thrown at them (e.g. the puzzles I have worked in as traps or locks) and galgacusferox summed it up by saying that he thinks I have:

“…done a really good job of varying the kinds of challenges our characters face, from different tactical situations in combat encounters, to environmental or interpersonal conditions which really take us off-guard.  It creates an atmosphere where anything’s possible, which I really believe is important for an enjoyable D&D experience.”

I really take that to heart considering it is coming from someone who has played a lot longer than I have.

Oh, we all also sat around and laughed about Ashii the kobold, an NPC the group rescued from his zombified clan and then convinced to become a ward of the Church of Pelor. The thought of an evil, light-sensitive lizard creature becoming a cleric of a sun god is really amusing and they told me they would love to run into him again some day… perhaps I will grant their wish… perhaps.

Forgotten Realms: The Savage North

It’s March! That means a number of exciting things, but first and foremost for you, dear Adventure, it means that there’s a new Featured Campaign! As you know, we feature a new Obsidian Portal campaign every month. We do this so you can see some of the best table-top campaigns the internet has to offer. And this month, we have something very special for you this month.

This month’s Featured Campaign is DMed by Rodney Thompson, RPG Developer at Wizards of the Coast. Rodney was the Lead Designer for the Star Wars: Saga Edition RPG and he’s currently the Lead Developer of the upcoming Dark Sun 4th Edition setting. And his Obsidian Portal campaign, Forgotten Realms: The Savage North, is awesome. Rodney was kind enough to let us interview him about his work at Wizards of the Coast, and his campaign.

Obsidian Portal: So we hear that you work at Wizards of the Coast. Can you tell us more about what it is you do there?
-What are your responsibilities?
-What cool stuff are you working on now?
-If you could change any aspect of the current edition of D&D, what would it be?

Rodney: My job title at Wizards is technically RPG Developer, but I’m a man of many hats. While my primary responsibility is to be a Developer on D&D, I’ve also spent the last few years as the lead designer and developer on the Star Wars RPG.

As for recent projects, my biggest projects coming out in 2010 are the Dark Sun Campaign Setting, which I was the lead developer for, and the D&D Essentials line, which I co-designed. I was also the lead designer on the Monster Vault.

It’s tough to say what I’d change right off the top of my head, because any change has a lot of repercussions once made. I’ll say that we’ve got some exciting new stuff coming up in the Essentials that really are going to surprise (and, I hope, delight) people. I think if I was going to make one change to my 4E campaign, it would probably be to change the way magic items interact with character math. Basically, I like my magic items to be a little more special icing on the cake, and a little less of a required part of the character needed to succeed. That said, we’ve made some headway down that path with DMG2 and we go even further in Dark Sun, so that’s one change that’s coming about.

Obsidian Portal: Where do you get your inspiration for your games?

Rodney: I tend to be a very classic fantasy/classic D&D style of gamer. That said, my current campaign is heavily inspired by Western films—not necessarily in their environment or visual aesthetics, but definitely in terms of the story. My campaign plays on a lot of classic Western themes—lawlessness vs. civilization, dangerous men on a dangerous frontier, authority figures who are little to no help at all, etc.

Obsidian Portal: How much time per week do you spend getting ready for a game session?

Rodney: I tend to prep one adventure at a time, and each adventure I design covers about 1 level’s worth of play. I usually do a few hours of up-front prep before I start the adventure, and then over the course of the three or four weeks it takes to run I usually do about an hour of prep every Sunday night before I run on Mondays. On top of that, I’d say I put about an hour a week into things like maintaining the Obsidian Portal wiki for the campaign, sketching out custom magic items and other rewards, and generally brainstorming the direction that the campaign is headed in.

Obsidian Portal: So your campaign is called Forgotten Realms: The Savage North. Can you tell us about its world, its inhabitants, the PCs, and the overall story?

Rodney: I’m running the campaign in the Forgotten Realms of 4th Edition, but in the North, mostly in Icewind Dale and the lands north of the Spine of the World mountains. Since the 4E Campaign Setting didn’t really touch on that area much, I’m pretty much filling in the gaps using my 2nd Edition FR materials. When I was in college I ran a pretty expansive 2E campaign in the North, and I’m using all of my old materials as a basis, but updating things to the new timeline.

The great thing about the North is that it’s very much the frontier, and there’s a lot of fertile ground for thrusting the heroes into a position of influence right away. There’s less intervention from higher powers there, and plus I’ve always liked the sort of frigid, snow-covered lands as a backdrop for D&D.

The main antagonists of the campaign’s heroic tier were a group of bandits called the Blackhands, known for their distinctive black gloves. More than just outlaws, the Blackhands were pretty much controlling the entire North through fear and intimidation, and were found in most of the Ten Towns “protecting” the inhabitants from harm. When the heroes arrived, they started liberating Icewind Dale from the clutches of the Blackhands, and at the conclusion of the heroic tier they finally discovered the secret citadel used by the Blackhand leaders, laid siege to it, defeated the white dragon Aurelion that had been aiding the Blackhands, and discovered that the Blackhand’s leader had secretly been dead for years. As we enter the paragon tier, the players have discovered that some githyanki had been manipulating the Blackhands all along, and were clearly involved in some kind of plot that seems to encompass not only the North but also the Nine Hells, Baldur’s Gate, the prison-city of Wheloon, Zakhara (yeah, that’s right, I’m including Al-Qadim material in the campaign), and Myth Drannor.

Towards the end of the heroic tier, the heroes started to realize that they were not just brought together randomly, but that they all have some connection to the greater scheme of things. Zereb-Khan (a genasi swordmage, played by Logan Bonner) discovered that an old apprentice of his former master was once a Blackhand lieutenant who served time in Wheloon with Sardon (a genasi warlord, played by Chris Tulach). This apprentice and Sardon were members of the Seven of Wheloon, a group of criminals who escaped from the prison-city after being broken out by drow of the Shadowstep clan. Malkyr (a drow rogue, played by Mike Mearls) is a member of this clan, but wasn’t involved in the breakout. Theren (a half-elf warlock, played by Derek Guder) discovered that his father was murdered by this old apprentice; Theren’s father was also once an instructor at Blackstaff Tower, who set Harold Glimmerswick (a human wizard, played by Greg Bilsland) on a hunt for a mysterious substance known as godsblood. They all recently discovered that the aforementioned apprentice was turned into a seeker of godsblood by the Order of Blue Fire, who apparently have plans to do the same to Sardon. As you can tell, there are a lot of connections between the heroes’ backstories that have come to light over the course of the campaign.

Obsidian Portal: How closely do you stick to the Forgotten Realms canon?

Rodney: I like to use the FR setting as a backdrop, but not as a metaplot. The story I’m telling is definitely my own. As I mentioned before, I’m using a lot of 2E reference materials for my game, so it’s kind of a hodgepodge of the 2E Realms with 4E Realms overlays. In general, I’ve used the 4E Campaign Guide as a jumping off point, and occasionally circle back around to pick up things from time to time, but it’s very much my own story.

Obsidian Portal: We hear that many of your players are also game designers. Do you have to grapple with them for control of your game world, or do they typically let you DM as you see fit?

Rodney: I’m usually pretty flexible about letting my players define the campaign world anyways, so there’s no grappling. If anything, I try and encourage them to take ownership of the setting. For example, Chris Tulach completely made up the whole concept of a group of escapees called the Seven from Wheloon, and I took that and ran with it, tying it into the character histories of other characters. I find that letting my players be creative like that keeps them engaged, and whether or not they are game designers.

Obsidian Portal: How much of the campaign world is original content developed by you and your players?

Rodney: Almost all of it. While I use canon FR locations for most things, every single NPC and storyline is completely of my own making. The only exception is that I inserted the Scepter Tower of Spellgarde adventure into the game at one point, but customized it heavily.

Obsidian Portal: Where do you get your inspiration for your story?

Rodney: The heroic tier, at least, is heaviliy influenced by Westerns. The Blackhands are sort of a cross between the Zhentarim and the Cowboys from Tombstone or Calveras’ men from The Magnificent Seven. Going into the paragon tier, I’m easing back on the Western themes, and leaning more toward classic D&D adventuring. It’s tougher to do the Western-inspired stories at paragon tier, so for that I’m drawing a lot upon the design work I did for the upcoming Plane Above sourcebook, as well as the Al-Qadim campaign setting. I feel like the campaign may head to Zakhara at some point, but up until then the players will be spending a lot of time in Baldur’s Gate, if I had my guess. We’ll have some urban adventures, and then go from there to Zakhara, or possibly to the Underdark or to the Astral Sea, depending on how the campaign develops.

Obsidian Portal: Where does your game group typically play?

Rodney: We have played in numerous places thus far, but we currently play in conference rooms at Wizards of the Coast. The office has some really nice rooms with big white boards, large tables, and comfortable seating that I like to take advantage of. Some rooms even have speaker systems, so I can connect my iPod to it and play background music during the game.

Obsidian Portal: How well do you know your players?

Rodney: I’d say we’re all pretty good friends. I currently work or have worked with four of the players, and the others are either close friends or have come in from other campaigns. We hang out outside of the game, and of course I see several of my players around the office on a daily basis.

Obsidian Portal: What kinds of challenges are you faced with in your campaign?

Rodney: It’s definitely had its ups and downs. I originally started the campaign as a more casual, beer-and-pretzels kind of game. While we were having fun, we weren’t making much progress, and I was itching to run a game that was more fast-paced and plot-heavy. So, late last year I started implementing a series of changes to make sure we played more regularly and got more gaming in. Since then, the game has really picked up momentum. In fact, I started a series of blog articles on the Wizards Community site called Campaign Repairman to chronicle the process of me turning my game around. I figure a lot of DMs probably have some of the same problems that I have faced, and could benefit from some advice on how to make changes and salvage a lackluster campaign.

We’ve also lost a couple of players due to real-life obligations, and so we’ve had some challenges in introducing new players, but so far the core group has remained engaged.

Obsidian Portal: What aspects of your campaign are you really proud of?

Rodney: I’m really excited about how well the game has turned around after slowing down from time to time. I was worried that the campaign was going to fall apart at a certain point, but things look to have turned around. I’m also very proud of the capstone adventure I ran to get the players from 10th level to 11th level. It was an all-day adventure that played out over the course of about 8 hours. It was a blast, and I hope I can top it in the future. Maybe for the 20th level adventure…

Rodney has dedicated his career to his love of gaming. His Obsidian Portal campaign is a living testament to his cause. For the dedication exhibited by Rodney and his players to keeping table-top RPGs alive and well, we welcome them with open arms into the immortals halls of the Obsidian Portal.

Donner und Sturm

From what we can gather, Donner und Sturm sounds like a hybrid between Cannonball Run, Ben Hur, and the Lord of the Rings. Each entry of the Adventure Log reads like a travel log broken down by daily activities. The Characters tab reveals a world full of interesting people from all over the continent of Aventuria, one of the primary locations for the Das Schwarze Auge (The Dark Eye) table-top RPG system.

The Wiki pages are full of trivia and interesting tidbits about Aventuria, the system of Das Schwarze Auge, and the characters inhabiting this world. Donner und Sturm also has a map of the ‘racetrack’ a 2000 kilometer run through the fantastic wilds of Aventuria. And then there’s the youtube videos! All this campaign is missing is the custom action figures. We had the opportunity to interview Meister about his campaign, and he had some very interesting things to share about it. Lets read on.
Interview with DM Meister
Obsidian Portal: How much of the campaign/system is original content developed by you and your players?

Meister: The “Adventure Log”, the movies (youtube) and some of the Wiki-pages are original created by me and my group. The texts about the cities (Baburin, Fasar) are mostly from www.wiki-aventurica.de, the official DSA-Wiki. I only added some parts and pictures from the internet. The tables, including the system of rules, are from the official “rule-book”, but also amplified by my own ideas.

Obsidian Portal: Your campaign has many youtube videos, can you tell us about those?

Meister: The movies are spoken by myself. They including information about the Quest. The pictures are from the internet, showing mostly the campaign-cover.

Obsidian Portal: Where do you get your inspiration the story?

Meister: There are storybooks in troops, but the most ideas came from movies and series like Lord of the Rings, Merlin, Legend of the Seeker and other fantasy stories. I also often read fantasy books and afterwards I have a new idea for a good quest.

But you get the most ideas while you’re playing the game. And this is why I love to play role-playing-games: As a GM you always have to improvise!

Obsidian Portal: How well do you know your players?

Meister: The players of my two role-playing-groups are my best friends. I know most of them since I began playing this game, more than 15 years ago.

Obsidian Portal: What kinds challenges are you faced with in your campaign?

Meister: The mainquest is a horserace by chariot over 2000 kilometre. Its a big part of the quest to fight against the other chariotdrivers or find some friends by the members. There are some unholy, demonish opponents, who are using there might to manipulate the race – of course, the characters have to stop them. In the end there is a great finish, because the characters (winner of the race) have to resurrect an old hero to fight against one of the most powerful demons in this world.

Obsidian Portal: What aspects of your campaign are you really proud of?

Meister: I think I can be proud of my whole campaign, but especially of the “Wiki”, because I’ve spend much time to create a well-arranged overview about the game.

We’d like to thank Meister and his players for bringing Das Schwarze Auge to our attention through their campaign, and for putting so much effort into their campaign here on Obsidian Portal, a truly international community of gamers. It’s good to know that when the chips are down and someone needs to race an angry demon to save the world, we’ll always have a handful of people ready for the job.