17
Mar

Thursday Feature – Creating a Merged World – Part 1

Author: Keryth987

My previous article gave the basic steps to creating a Merged world. This time, we’re going to go through the creation process, in depth, step by step. This will be done over a period of articles, so be patient please. In addition, this series will demonstrate how to use Obsidian Portal to help create this new Campaign Universe.

The Universe we will be using as our base is Star Wars, during the time known canonically as The Rebellion Era (aka the time of Star Wars, Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi). To keep it simple, we will be merging in only one other item, Middle Earth of The Lord of The Rings. Now, I can already hear people going, “What? How?” And that is justified. Therefore, a brief explanation for this idea.

“You feel a disturbance in the what?”

This entire particular Universe concept is inspired by a YouTube Video. The Superpowered Beatdown series is a high quality series which does what its name says, forces two superpowered fictional beings to fight. In this case, its an episode which pits Darth Vader against Gandalf the grey. The video can be found HERE and I recommend viewing it for a better picture of where we will be starting. Skip ahead to 3:48 in the video for just the battle.

For those of you who didn’t watch the video, the important thing to know is this. (SPOILER ALERT!!!) Darth Vader defeats Gandalf and takes the One Ring for himself. There are also a few minor details to keep in mind as well. The makers of the video gave Vader the ability to wield Force Lightning, something not seen in the movies, and Gandalf wielded what for all intents and purposes, was The Sword of Shannara.

“…my own. My… precious”

With this in mind, we establish our baseline. We will assume that Vader’s arrival to Middle Earth is after the destruction of the first Death Star. The video shows him in his Tie Fighter, and it is easy to assume he went there after he spun off into space at the End of Star Wars. Also, we place the world of Arda, that’s the name Tolkien assigns to Middle Earth in The Simarillion, within the Star Wars Galaxy. For simplicity’s sake, we’ll place it in the Outer Rim, same as Tatooine or Hoth.

Finally, Vader takes the Ring. Now, logically, based on what is shown in the movies, Vader would succumb to the Ring and Sauron would be reborn within him. However, personally, I think Darth Vader is way cooler than The Great Lighthouse of Mordor, so, Vader will dominate the Ring. If our players require some kind of explanation why, the Dark Side of the Force protects him.

That said, it’s time to start our Obsidian Portal page. Due to a complete lack of imagination on my part when it comes to Campaign Titles, we’re calling this, “Sith Lord of the Rings”. To better follow the progress, I recommend Favoriting the campaign. For simplicity’s sake, we will change the background and leave the color scheme whatever Obsidian Portal assigns us. Also, while personally, I love a ton of customization, we’ll keep the site to just the basics for now.

So, we have our main page, with nothing on it yet. Let’s fix that first. First though, we need to decide what system to use. Myself, I’m partial to FATE. However, There is no OFFICIAL Star Wars setting for FATE. However, Star Wars Saga and 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons use essentially the same rules set, so, to make our life easier on the rules side, we’ll use those. Because this is primarily a Star Wars campaign, we’ll declare the game as a Star Wars Saga System Campaign under the Settings tab. We also set the Status to “In Planning” at this time.

Now, back to the Main Page. Since we are using the YouTube Video as our inspiration, we should include that on the main page. So, in edit mode, after deleting the default text from the box, we use the Media Embed button to insert the address for the video. Obtain this address by pressing on the Share Button on the YouTube site and copying the address provided, then paste the address into the box provided. Click on Insert and the code will be inserted onto the Page.

We should also include a description. Enter that as plain text below the embedded video. I’d recommend inserting a blank line between the video and text.

Sith_Lord_of_the_rings.png

The Final Piece for the main page, is a link to the main wiki. For me at least, the Landing Page (or Main Page) should give a brief introduction to your site, and then lead you to the guts of the entire system. So, we add that, in the simplest way possible, for now, to the bottom of the page. To do this, we click on the Wiki Link button, and select Main Page. And now we have a Home Page.

The next step is to decide what we need to run the campaign properly. What information is needed? This will all go on our main page to link off to important information. The most important things that occur at this moment are:

  • History
  • The Empire
  • The Rebellion
  • Player Character Information

So, we edit the Main Page and delete the default text, replacing it with four links to currently non-existent pages. We merely duplicate the code form our embedded wiki link on the main page, and replace the names. Don’t worry about that either, when you first click on the links, Obsidian Portal will create a new page for you.

Award Winning!

Gold ENnie for Best Website 09'-11'


Silver ENnie for Best Website, Best Podcast 2012-2013
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