Author Archives: vadercomplex

Obsidian Portal Campaign of the Month March 2024: Wrath of the Highborn

You search the lands for treasures and find them within the Obsidian Portal, in a land called Beregond. Like a glittering, magical jewel, one campaign shines brightly — it is “Wrath of the Highborn” by Keryth987! Within its many facets, you behold lands many decades in the making, fantastical stories written by a true entertainer, animated visuals and videos, and some surprises… is that a Klingon Bat’leth? Step forward into the not-quite-forgotten realms of this multi-award-winning GM to find out how he did it and how you can improve your own campaigns…

1. Congratulations on your third, winning campaign! We know from your previous interviews that you’ve been playing since 1991 and have been using Obsidian Portal for almost a decade and a half, now. What changes in the world of gaming have you seen in that time which have had the greatest impact on you and your group?

First off, thanks. It’s nice to see what is a Labor of Love for me to get acknowledgement. Regarding changes in the world of gaming, I’d have to say the presence of computers and technology, along with the growing popularity of TTRPGs in general. When my group began playing it was 2nd Ed D&d and everything was pen and paper with dice, some miniatures, and a GM screen. Now everyone has a laptop or pad at their seat, with Obsidian Portal and D&D Beyond open as we play 5e for the current game (Other non-D&D Campaigns well, no Beyond being used of course). It’s also been nice to see gaming go from a fringe hobby to the popular activity it is now.

2. The Chronicle section of “Wrath of the Highborn” details the journey of your players with some very excellent writing, from a simple village meeting to epic battles with dragons and demons. Can you give us a brief synopsis of the campaign, so far?

Well, this campaign actually comes out of my previous D&D Campaign, “A Rising Darkness.” In that campaign, the group of PC’s ended up needing to free a powerful elven sorceress to obtain something they needed to stop the Big Bad. That sorceress helped them in turn by also eliminating one of the lieutenants of the campaigns Big Bad, who just so happened to be the Elven Queen who had exiled her in the first place. She then went on to take over the city her rival once ruled and began building an army and playing conqueror, all while sending those she dubbed Her Chosen (and provided with a means of automatic resurrection should they die) with recovering some powerful magic relics called The Jewels of Aelis. The current party, through discovery, divine messengers, and prophecy, learned of this and have taken up the cause of defeating The Highborne Queen, recovering The Jewels of Aelis before she does, and destroying them.

The campaign began with them escorting the daughter of a prominent merchant from Goldshire, along the Sword Coast, across the Trackless sea, to Maztica, where they journeyed to Fort Flame. It was about the time of their arrival in Maztica, that they learned of the Jewels and The Highborne Queen’s goals. Since then the group has been following what evidence they have gathered as to where the various Jewels are, recovering them, and trying to find a way to destroy them, all while dodging The Highborne Queen’s Chosen, as well as some other enemies they have made along the way. As of the writing of this, they are off in Kara Tur, trying to infiltrate the Monastery of the Black Moon, to recover the last of the Jewels that have not already been recovered by either them or The Highborne Queen.

3. “Wrath of the Highborn” is set in Beregond — a world adapted and expanded from Forgotten Realms material — and is also part of a shared set of worlds called “Chornalth” which are written and organized by other GM’s. Are there any challenges or advantages when dealing with interconnected planets and stories managed by other game masters?

Not really. We’ve been sharing “Chornalth” now for some time (The other two worlds being Liga – a heavily modified Oerth/Greyhawk Adventures, and Krynn – a highly modified Dragonlance world with some Dark Sun and others thrown in). Everyone in our group is pretty good at separating player knowledge form character knowledge, so when there is crossover, we are usually able to confer well and still not ruin the RP and sense of wonder while ensuring no one steps on another GM’s toes or messes something up in the other GM’s world. It also is a nice thing to have the shared world, as the last campaign on Liga (a Pathfinder Campaign) and actions taken by those PCs were what was utilized by the Big Bad of “A Rising Darkness,” to release his evil Over-Deity from his prison, which the events of, in turn, provided the villain for Wrath of the Highborne. It’s fun being able to play in one’s own sandbox sometimes as well, so, having the crossover ability allows that to happen both character wise as well as lore and interaction.

4. Decades of work have gone into Beregond and it shows — one of your previous winning campaigns was set in the same world. Is “Wrath” connected in any way to the previous stories of “A Rising Darkness” or are your players treading on entirely new territory?

Well, as mentioned previously, the villain of “Wrath,” The Highborne Queen herself, was a sort of ally of the PCs in Rising, and two of the PC’s in “Wrath” – Shalryssia Peshlakai and Vimesh Damocles, are related to two PC’s from “Rising” – Sylmara Skystriker and Vito Damocles respectively. However, the party has covered far more territory than in past campaigns as they’ve also adventured outside of my modified Faerun, venturing to the continents of Maztica and Kara Tur, and even up into Selune’s Tears via spelljammer.

5. Your site visuals are always outstanding and you’ve been incorporating video and audio components with your games for some time now. For GM’s who want to emulate those same techniques, what advice would you give or what digital tools and resources would you recommend?

Well, the videos are made using Wondershare Filmora, and the music is usually edited as needed in Audigy. I’m rather proud of the two videos for “Wrath,” both the Teaser on the Main page as well as the Introduction/Opening Credits that is listed as the Prologue for each Book on the site). As for the artwork, lots of Photoshop work, and, I have to admit some AI tools for base images. – Specifically Dream by Wombo. I know many frown on AI art, but were I to rely on my art skills, everything would be stick figures and such. The AI lets me take my ideas and those of my players and turn them into images that can be used, though not a single on has not been manipulated via photoshop, whether it’s to create and entirely new image such as the campaign background (there are, according to the folder on my PC, 20 separate images utilized in that), creating the many Book Covers (angain 8-10 base images to produce the various components and then Photoshop to put the elements all together), to modifying the skin colors and eyes of images so Night Elves and Genasi and Half Drow match the player’s vision of their character. It also lets us let our characters not only be “This character looks like Alessandra Ambrosio as a Maztican Priestess of Qotal” as a text or vocal description, but actually be able to see the character’s physical appearance.

6. You have extensive experience with lots of different gaming systems — story-driven like Dresden Files, more rules-focused like D&D, and everything in between. In your opinion, is the game system critical to the success of a campaign or is it just a personal preference?

To be honest, the system isn’t as important to a campaign’s success as much as those involved in playing it – both GM and Players. My group’s been blessed for many years to have had plenty of great players and storytellers. Some have since moved on from the gaming table either due to Real Life commitments or moving out of the area, and others have joined the group to take their place, but in a gaming group that meets regularly every week and has done so since the 90s, we’ve only had to ask 2 people to leave the group due to issues. The heart of any successful campaign is not the setting or the system, but the people playing the game.

7. You don’t shy away from mixing and matching elements from different settings to get the kind of game you want, like bringing in a race from a futuristic TV series or movie into a fantasy game like “Wrath.” Have you ever run into any unexpected problems when introducing something like this? Is there a lot of prep-work involved to make it all fit together or can you just make adjustments after enough years of GM experience?

Well, in “Wrath,” adding in Mass Effect’s Asari was a bit of a challenge…but eventually I found a way to make it work based on the lore I’d created for Beregond and “Chornalth” in general. Others, the idea of how to bring them in just came to me suddenly. And some, like the Draenei and Night Eves of World of Warcraft, well, they were simply a modification of their origins as provided in their original source material. To be honest, the biggest problem caused by this would be a toss up between trying to figure out how to make Klingon weapons work stat-wise, or finding a location to place the Tharks of Barsoom. Seeing as how every race that has been added has been because I wanted said race available, it’s not been too much trouble. And now, with resources like OP and Beyond, it’s even easier as I am able to find resources for these already available to use rules wise.

8. Without giving too much away to your players, can you give us any hints about the future direction of “Wrath of the Highborn?”

Well, as mentioned they are working on retrieving the final Jewel that they know has not already been recovered. This is forcing them to infiltrate the Monastery of the Order of the Black Moon, a group of Shar worshiping Shadow Monks in Kara Tur (and something that came completely out of the background of one of the PCs, Koumori Shojo). This will bring the group into conflict with the Order’s Master Monk, as well as his followers and probably some Priests of Shar as well, After that, the players have indicated to me that they want to deal with the Red Wizard of Thay that once possessed one of the Jewels and that they have come into conflict with, as well as eliminating the remaining of The Highborne Queen’s Chosen. They also have a side quest for the Sha’ir Warlock in the group, Vimesh , to finish, as well as recovering the remaining Jewels from The Highborne Queen (which might cause them to destroy her). And then, finally, they need to discover the location of The Hall of Bones, to destroy the Jewels.

9. Any plans for future campaigns that you would like to disclose? Or are you looking forward to a break while someone else runs the next game?

Well, I always am working on new campaign ideas. I have at least three concepts I’m tinkering with on OP now. But, the current plan is to resume our Savage Worlds campaign that was put on hold, then after that it looks like we might be playing a Planescape campaign, and one of the other players is hinting he is ready to start running the sequel to his last Pathfinder campaign. Honestly, the fact that pretty much everyone at the table is capable of and enjoys being a GM, is one of the reasons our group has lasted this long (the other being strong bonds of friendship). So, it looks like it will be a bit of time before I’m behind the screen again after this.

10. Finally, Obsidian Portal readers are always hunting for helpful hints on how to better run their own games or build their sites. Do you have any particular tips or tricks that you would like to share?

Well, Obsidian Portal has been a godsend for me, enabling me to organize my thoughts and concepts and get them down somewhere solid, as well as to keep track of previous events in campaigns. As for developing sites themselves, Wolfhound’s tutorials over on his “Dresden Files Dallas” site are still a good place to start, as are the Obsidian Portal forums. However, the biggest help for me has been the Obsidian Portal Discord Server, where I have repeatedly gone for help and assistance on how to take an idea and make it work Textile/CSS wise (I’m looking at you Nuadaria and Abersade and others) and i highly recommend anyone interested in using Obsidian Portal go there, socialize, bring up their questions, and share their creations.

Alas, adventurer, our journey into Beregond is brief and too swiftly ended. With thanks to Keryth and his players, we turn our sights to other realms and future jewels of wondrous writing, clever coding, and delightful design. Do you know of a campaign worthy of notice? Perhaps your own, even. If so, send us word on the Community Forums or the Obsidian Portal Discord so that we may share the creativity of our gaming greats with everyone. Until next month, traveler!

Thank you to the community for making this campaign of the month possible! That’s all for now, join us on our next adventure April 1st, and don’t forget to nominate your favorite campaigns for our next Campaign of the Month!

Obsidian Portal Campaign of the Month January 2024: More Things in Heaven and Earth

Get ready to jump into the mystical techno-magical future of North America after “the Awakening”. The year is 2082. The place is “The Emerald City”, where people are willing to risk it all and walk on the bleeding edge, making deals with anything. The GM is Dropbeartots. The runners are a rag-tag group of humans, an elf, an ork and a troll. They adventure in a Sixth World Shadowrun game called More Things in Heaven and Earth.

First off, feel free to tell us about the person behind the GM screen. Where are you from? What do you do aside from gaming? Alter Egos? Life partners? Family? Where can we interact with you on the internet?

I’m just an Immortal elf hanging around waiting to see the Awakening happen still! My alter-ego is a dropbear, of course. My folks were military, so I really didn’t settle down anywhere for very long until my Dad retired. Since then, Ive been in Texas. Aside from gaming, I work a lot and try to make enough money to keep up with Shadowrun’s new releases and increase my collection of older edition books. Two of the gamers in my group are related to me: Ringpop is my wife, and Nomad is my youngest son. My internet activity has decreased quite a bit in the past few years, but I have a neglected site on WordPress called When Dropbears Attack! I really should get back into it…

You are running a Shadowrun Sixth World Game. Are you familiar with the previous editions and if so, can you mention any differences, or talk about the evolution of the Game? What are the things you most enjoy about the Shadowrun world in general?

Shadowrun has been the single game that’s really carried my interest across all editions. I’ve been the forever GM with it since first edition came out! The most captivating thing for me about it has been the evolution of the story of the Sixth World across the decades, and the back cover blurb of the first edition core rulebook just grabbed me more than any other game ever has. It has always been a game about three worlds – Man, Magic & Machine – that kept me engrossed the most as a reader, player, and game master. I keep coming back to it time and again even when I get distracted with my interests in a wide variety of other games. When most people can point to D&D as their definitive TTRPG starting point, I can honestly say that yeah I started with it but I never really loved gaming as much as when Shadowrun was first plopped down in front of me.

Sixth World, for me, has a plethora of good points. In the first five editions, the skill lists were pretty extensive. As a skill-based game, on the surface this always seemed appropriate. But this often seemed to me to cause characters to have a lot of spread-out skills distributed at a low level just to cover all of their bases. With Sixth World, the skill list has been very condensed, and I have found that a lot of my long-time players are happier with building characters.

Another good point to me is the Edge system. As a sort of advantage mini-game, it has encouraged a lot of thought by the players into roleplaying seeking out various environmental and situational advantages

in their exchanges, both in combat and social encounters. I will admit to it being a lot of work to keeping up, but I think if used and taken advantage of, the system offers a lot to players.

Mechanically at its heart, SR has always been a d6 based dice pool system. Since 4th edition, the target of rolling has changed from a sliding scale Target Number that varied wildly to 5 or 6 being a “hit” and the more hits you collect the better off you are at whatever you want to be doing. I think that’s great, as it puts less mathematical work into the rolling part of the game. Although I personally never had a problem with doing the math (and never had any issues with THACO, either!), more people seem to be into less math with their math rocks, so it meets that desire well.

I‘m well aware of a lot of the editorial and mechanical issues with Sixth World. I think the recently released corrected Seattle and Berlin city editions of the core rulebook have done a fantastic job of correcting a lot of errata and injected pieces that were missing with the original core rulebook. Also, the Sixth World Companion offers up a lot of optional rules to flavor your game to taste. Overall, I find Sixth World to be superior in every way to the previous 5th edition of Shadowrun.

As I’m sure most fans of Shadowrun will agree, the biggest draw to the game for me is the game world itself. From the 2050s to the 2080s, the game‘s writers have built up a backdrop of shadowy intrigue, corporate espionage and betrayal, magical wonders, ancient mysteries working their way into a postmodern cyberpunk world, and moved that world through some strange, weird, off-the-wall and sometimes downright head-scratching moments. In the end, it’s largely what you make of it at the table as a group though. And I personally have the most fun with it over all other games.

As far as my thoughts on the most complete, most well-written, and well-tested edition of Shadowrun? I would have to say I’m mixed on that. I find both 3rd and 4th edition to be the ones that grabbed me the hardest of all. I’d put Mike Mulvihill, Rob Boyle, and Adam Jury on my list of those who produced my overall favorite stuff for Shadowrun. Why don’t I stick with those editions instead, you might ask? Hrm, have you seen the prices people are asking for some of those out-of-print books? Can you say “collector gouging”? 😉

How did your group meet up? How often do you play? What are your sessions like?

I have known Bowynn, Krysa’s player and Kwaba, Robot Jones’ player, for an exceedingly long time, I think it’s going on thirty years now. We’ve played SR since Third Edition. It seems like I have known Nomad’s player all of his life 😉 It’s sorta my fault he got into gaming, after all. Twitch and Little Doll’s players, I met through my wife. She met them on the Amtguard field, and introduced them to me and we tried out gaming with D&D for a while, then i finally had to start them playing Shadowrun. I seduced my wife into the dark side of Shadowrun shortly after we met, and I think that she fell in love with the game just as much as she did with me, lol.

We have been playing weekly together for a while now, with game night settling on Tuesdays. My wife and I have been travelling a lot for her job as an RN, so there’s been a lot of play through voice calls on Messenger for a while. Since I recently settled into a new job a few months ago, I’ve been more localized to our house and our in-person gaming has resumed.

Our sessions can usually be boiled down to one word, lol. Chaotic! If you know, you know…

You have a very innovative Navigation System on your site. What inspired you? How did you go about setting it up? What advice can you give for new GMs on Obsidian Portal who want to do the same?

Really, I have to give a lot of props to the site’s design here. It gives the opportunity for Ascendent

members to edit, add, remove, and modify the navbar to their heart’s content if they wish. And I speak only for myself here, but it is a GREAT feature that I was super enthusiastic about when it came up.

I was particularly intrigued by the way you extended your Experience Point Awards to cover three different sections – Heat, Reputation and Karma. I know you also had this on your previous award-winning site, “Wildside”, but what inspired this, and in what way does it help you and your players?

Karma is the real “experience point” value among the three here, although all three are earned by characters in Shadowrun through play. Reputation is how well-known a character becomes among other groups of the world by their actions in-game – its not always positive, either! And Heat measures how much characters have screwed up and both how well-known among and how wanted by the authorities a Shadowrunner has become. The lower the better there 😉

Your “Critters” section is very cool. Which ones have been the most memorable in your game so far? And DO tell us more about the “Drop Bear”…

A lot of the threats a character will run into are human in Shadowrun, but there are other… things out there as well. In Shadowrun, these critters are normal animals that have changed somewhat due to the influx of magical energy into the Sixth World over the seventy-some-odd years of the alternate history. I wanted to build a section for my players to be able to see some of these things and reference rumor of their various capabilities. Most of the time, I add to the critter section before one is potentially encountered.

Well, the Drop Bear is kind of exactly what is described in the Critters section. An awakened koala with very sharp teeth and claws that fall off of trees to drop on their unsuspecting prey – which often tend to be humans! The group has managed to find one of these critters well outside of its native habitat that was subjected to a variety of experimentation in a corporate lab. Ringpop, the resident animal lover, has ended up sort of adopting it and is trying hard to tame it and teach it tricks. She named it Tater Tot. She gets a lot of static from the rest of group because of that…

How involved are your players in the site? Who tends to do what? Do your players add their own Adventure Logs?

The player of Little Doll, the group’s social butterfly and face, tends to post the bigger updates on the Adventure Logs from her character’s perspective about all of the goings-on. When other players are able, they have added to the Adventure Logs as well.

I tend to use the site as a whole as a reference and tracker for our game, and the Adventure Logs to post contacts reaching out to various members of the group to set up jobs, or to frame events that occur in the world that are outside of the characters’ spheres of influence but might affect them in some way.

How long have you been using Obsidian Portal? What brought you to the site and what keeps bringing you back?

I have been using OP since 2009. I had been looking for a campaign journal site, and I really enjoyed the features OP offered a lot. What keeps me there is the fact that they are so devoted to continually improving the experience of use and site utility, and the community built up around the site that is so supportive among the users.

If you had to pick just one thing, what would you say Obsidian Portal helps you with the most?

I would say that Obsidian Portal is awesome for giving me the means to keep my campaigns’ details

organized, cataloged, and documented. And it allows me to customize so much of the way I would like to do that.

What would you say is the biggest highlight of your game so far (please also provide images and links if possible)?

Little Doll and Nomad say that Tater Tot (https://morethingsinheavenandearth.obsidianportal.com/characters/drop-bear) is the highlight of the game 😀

Ringpop says it was the time her character got stuck in Dante’s Inferno and was singled out by Dion (https://morethingsinheavenandearth.obsidianportal.com/characters/dion), the lead singer of Thursus (https://morethingsinheavenandearth.obsidianportal.com/characters/thursos), for romantic overtures only to find out that he is actually a dragon! She ran so fast… Ringpop does not like dragons at all, they make her very nervous and she already has a difficult time in social environments.

Okay, as a last question, we always ask for the GM’s “pearls of wisdom”. What GM insights can you offer the community this month?

In Shadowrun especially, if you can set up paranoia, do it! Use what the players tell you about their perceptions of what’s going on to feed the flames. Don’t always confirm what they say, but do confirm enough to make them feel what they are thinking is right before you introduce a twist and pull their rugs out from under them.

Always keep pressure on the characters, keep them hungry, use external organizations to push them and show them the sharks swimming alongside them, and give them enough rope to hang themselves.

Be sure to reward them well when they pull off something ingenious, give their characters’ actions, relationships, and personal motivations weight, and make them matter in the world at large.

And last, but, not least, if they decide to take on an MCT Zero-Zone, go hard. Make them work.

 Thank you to the community for making this campaign of the month possible! That’s all for now, join us on our next adventure February 1st, and don’t forget to nominate your favorite campaigns for our next Campaign of the Month!

Obsidian Portal Campaign of the Month November 2023: Violet Hill

Saddle up, Browncoats, and take a gander at the goods in this November’s Campaign of the Month — Violet Hill, by Jonathonathon. It’s a veritable ‘Verse of slick design, custom rule-mechanics, and unique Firefly/Serenity storylines developed over many iterations by a husband-and-wife team and it’s just plumb pretty. Fire it up and let’s get this bird in the air!

Salutations, Jonathonathon and congratulations to you and your gaming group on winning Campaign of the Month! Please tell us a little about yourself, how you found your way into roleplaying games, and how your group found each other?

Thank you! I’m really excited you guys took notice of the campaign and selected me! Sorry the site isn’t mobile friendly, my most recent ones will be through!

A little about me: I’m Jonathon and when I’m not scribbling game notes I work my day job as an eCommerce manager. I’m an omnichannel digital marketer but mostly specialize in analytics. I found my way into tabletop games in college when I worked at a grocery store. While I was working a register for my shift, my coworker pulled out a Players Handbook for D&D 3.0 and I started asking questions. Eventually she invited me to a game and that was my first experience with a ttrpg.

My current (and only) PC is my wife, and we actually met because of gaming. I ran into her then-boyfriend on our college campus one day when I was late to class and we chatted for a few minutes. He briefly mentioned a game he was running and asked if I was interested, so I showed up and joined his group where we met. It was a BESM game set in the Outlaw Star universe.

I used to have a pretty regular group for a while but we all grew apart, so mostly I just run games for my wife now. We try to get in a session on weekends when we can scrape together a few hours. Unfortunately it’s tough to bring in more people with an inconsistent schedule and heavily homebrewed mechanics.

Your campaign, “Violet Hill” is set in the universe of the Firefly TV series, using the Serenity RPG mechanics. Could you give us a few, brief highlights for those unfamiliar with the setting and game system?

Sure. We use the old Cortex system, not the most recent and probably more widely known Cortex Prime. The system uses a die rating of d2 through d12 and every trait in the game can be measured on that scale (with the exception of Assets until an alternate version of the system was released in a later publication called Big Damn Heroes). What we love about Cortex is the plot point system. It rewards players for cool descriptions and ideas, and in turn they can use those plot points for things like minor story edits. I like the system because it actively encourages players to be more involved in the game. After you get to know the system, it’s also crazy easy to write and stat for.

What’s the story of “Violet Hill,” so far?

We’ve run this campaign around half a dozen times now, so there’s quite a bit. We first played a pretty traditional Serenity game but I really like running high powered fantasy games. So I started working on a rule set to bring a high fantasy vibe into the world. Thus the “Red” game was born. It was the idea that the Alliance had released a compound which caused people to develop unique powers. The “Red” game ran through a few iterations of mostly super-hero-esque Serenity fun but my wife and I continued developing the story and iterating on the concept.

Eventually every color of the rainbow became its own mutation with unique attributes and the story of “Red” continued to evolve. My wife and I used to trade off running games and we would build on the cannon that we wrote with each successive game. Where we wound up with it is that Red is a fraction of the genetic material of an advanced alien race that the Alliance is trying to understand and control. The alien race that are the progenitors of the mutation have incredibly advanced abilities and technology but their motives have changed from campaign to campaign. At first they were just explorers that happened to accidentally get captured and experimented on.

In our most recent campaign, they’re a pacifist race being attacked by another conquering alien race but have embraced pacifism so completely and for so long they’ve long since lost the ability to defend themselves. Most of the race believe that if they can’t escape the alien invaders they should resign themselves to their fate, but a splinter faction searched the universe for an answer and found humanity. As we all know, humans have a long history of gruesome experience in war and were ideal candidates to fight back. So this small sprinter faction began implanting a small part of their genetic material to mutate humans in the hopes that they could rally an army just powerful enough to save their species. The campaign tells the story of the humans that have been drafted, their quest to overthrow the Alliance to unite humanity, and return to the home galaxy of their alien benefactors using their advanced technology to fight back the invaders.

The alien mutations mechanics described in “Violet Hill’s” wiki are very intriguing. Where did this idea come from and how has it played out, in-game?

Just the desire to bring a superhero/gritty fantasy element into the Serenity universe, although we began exploring the powers further with each campaign iteration. Early on the mutants were identifiable by their eye color which changed when they were exposed. It was a quick and easy photoshop effect we could apply to customize character pictures a little and give PCs bonus XP for. We took to just calling them by their color after that. Reds were superhero lights at first, then we developed different stages of mutations with more powers. After the Red campaigns we moved on to the color Violet. These mutants had higher highs than the Reds but more complications. A big part of their abilities were naturally forming hive-like structures which lent itself well to the crew-style game Serenity was based on. We also wrote custom assets to support this mechanic, further building on the system we’d already established.

The rules have lent themselves to some truly epic moments in game: saving a colony on the Rim that’s out of water by drawing it from nothing, growing biomechanical ships with technological capabilities far beyond what humanity has achieved, growing an additional organ off the brainstem to control an entire army of mutants directly, boarding ships by “jumping” onto them in the middle of intense space battles, and much more. It’s definitely a different tone and feel than the show but there’s still plenty of six shooters and swearing in mandarin to go around.

Your Obsidian Portal profile shows that you have been on the platform for quite a while and have experience with a wide variety of games. If you had to narrow it down, what would be some of your favorites and why?

Yeah I’ve been on OP for over 13 years now. OP was exactly what I was looking for since my games were moving from paper to the digital space unavoidably. At first I was a little resistant because I loved the pen and paper aspect of the hobby but practicality finally won out. OP is just such a convenient way to communicate with players and compile everything all in one place.

I love to try a little of everything, but I have a few stand-out campaigns that I really enjoyed and was inspired to run. I ran a Changeling: the Lost game about a girl who inherited a Goblin Market Stall from her grandmother and began acquiring supernatural powers through deals but was otherwise completely human. One of my wife’s favorite games was “Corporate Woman” which was run in Chronicles of Darkness, where she was a human that could wear supernatural templates like suits and used them to infiltrate different supernatural societies at the behest of a mysterious corporation run by an impossibly powerful administration. I’ve run a BESM game based on one of my favorite anime series, Soul Eater, which focused on a DWMA Meister and her journey through the academy. Adjacent to the Serenity system, I’ve run a Supernatural game where the players were supernatural creatures hunting other creatures that plays pretty similarly to Violet Hill. There’s quite a few, I like to bounce around a lot.

As for what’s next, I’m usually working on a few campaign ideas at any given time, but right now I’m writing a Pokemon Noir-style game inspired by the webcomic “Viridian City” (borrowing that name for the campaign) using the PTU system.

Do you or your players have any memorable moments, crazy twists, or favorite, Firefly-style quotes that were highlights during the campaign?

One of our campaigns involved a mercenary Captain with “Cold as the Black” but my wife, playing an Alliance-hating Rim folk girl, was set on bringing him out of his shell. They grew close over a dozen or so games until at one point they were planet side and her character was approached by a perfect duplicate of the Captain. The two of them merged back together (one of his abilities was that he could duplicate himself and never told her) because the original him was an Alliance Operative running interference for his clone and its crew. He had technically never met her before, but merging with his duplicate transferred all his memories and the Operative was pretty stunned by their relationship. She was pretty mad and it took a few sessions for her to forgive him, but they worked through it.

“Violet Hill” as well as some of your other campaigns, feature an innovative navigation interface with graphics that really help sell the themes and moods, as well as drawing attention to the information on which you want your players to focus. How did you create that layout and has it helped engage your players when they use the campaign site?

Wow thank you, that’s nice of you to say. I’ve got a pretty regular block of code I use to adjust the layout of the campaign then go into color schemas and particulars from there. I’m not all that great at coding and particularly terrible at anything art related, but I’ve been working a lot with MidJourney lately to create assets for my campaigns. It’s an amazing tool for GMs, I can’t tell you guys how much time I’ve saved from not having to comb through pictures for my games trying to find just the right one. It’s really streamlining how long it takes me to prepare. Viridian City is the first time I’ve incorporated layouts from MJ as well as assets to build a campaign, but it’s still very much a work in progress. Historically everyone that is in my campaigns is on desktop so that’s all I wrote code for but this time around I’m trying to make things more mobile friendly.

The setting lends itself well to just about anything — exploration, politics, ground combat, space combat, intrigue, heists, stealth missions, and good old-fashioned misbehavin’. What’s your favorite and what do your players like best?

My wife is all about relationships in games and lives for a great romance and getting to know the NPCs. I’m all about tactical encounters and creative problem solving. Our campaigns usually meet somewhere in the middle. Quippy dialogue and outrageous plans are also frequent additions, as the complication “Overconfident” is often responsible for a ton of plot points changing hands.

Obsidian Portal loves to hear the wisdom of winning GM’s. Do you have any tips or advice for writing stories, running games, building worlds, tweaking mechanics, or keeping the fun going that you’d like to share?

Find a way to make every game special. Most GMs I’ve met do that through story but I advocate for doing it in mechanics as well. When I run D&D games, I borrow a tradition from a friend of mine where he gives every player a wish to really customize their characters. It ensures each character is truly unique and something that no one has ever played before which we all loved. We evolved that into an “Ultra Point” system which allows players to buy up additional class features to really play a truly unique character by exponentially compounding character options. It’s also a great tool to round out a party for smaller groups as players started to drop off.

As you can probably tell from Violet Hill, I love to write custom mechanics to ramp up the campaign and then challenge myself to balance the game around them. I’ve known a lot of GMs that were staunchly against giving their players power and never understood why. I’d encourage GMs to let things get crazy from time to time. The more creative power you give your players, the more interesting solutions they’ll devise. The mechanics all come down to equations and probability, so it’s easy to let your players feel really powerful and still present a balanced (or challenging, or easy, or whatever you want) campaign to the table because everything else is under your control.

Lastly, and I know it’s probably been said to death but, one of my rules to live by is to play your way. It’s really discouraging to go to places like Reddit and other forums where “purists” believe games have to be played a certain way. If you have a great idea for a game you should go for it, and surround yourself with influences and people that inspire instead of criticize. Even if that’s not your cup of tea, when you read something from someone reaching out for inspiration to go a different direction than you would, be supportive instead of dismissive. What matters more than anything else is nurturing our passion for this hobby we all love.

Thank you for choosing Violet Hill as CotM for November!

Wellsir, it’s a mite late and the ol’ brainpan’s full of new know-how. So let’s call it a night with thanks to Jonathonathon on a bang-up job. Obsidian Portal is always looking for new nominations for Campaign of the Month, and you can submit your favorites here.

Also, keep an eye out for news on our Campaign of the Year competition, which is happening soon!

Obsidian Portal Campaign of the Month September 2023: Arcanearth

Do you enjoy Dark Fantasy? You will love this month’s CotM- Arcanearth! Great evil and selfless good, Magic, Angels and Fallen Angels. Religions play a big part of the world as well! This D&D 5E game has seen epic battles against ancient Dragons, Overlords, and giant frogs! The world itself has seen Ages of Angels, Dragons, Magic, Ice, and Rebirth! Come explore this rich world created by Omegabase and crew!

1. Tell us about the person behind the GM screen. Where are you from? Where can we stalk you on the internet? What do you do aside from gaming?

Not much of a social media presence beyond OP. Live and work out of Austin texas. Father of 2 earning a living from IT consulting.

2. You made your home page your main artery to get information on your campaign- Why did you pick that approach? It is quite unique.

Didn’t see the need for another menu, convenient to have most info one click away.

3. You run D&D 5E- What do you like about it? Are there any things you dislike about it?

In most ways it’s the best edition of d&d. I did tone down the ‘easy mode’ aspect by eliminating hit dice for healing on short rests, limited healing on long rests, and allowing only one death save. This certainly contributed to the only 2 pc fatalities. Probably would use a different system next time around, like PF2, or integrate rules from other systems, like PF2. Also might consider an OSR system like the forthcoming Shadowdark.

4. You added Rogue Modrons as a race- what do you like about them, and how important are they to your campaign?

This came about from a short mini campaign where the players took a break from their main characters and assumed the personas of favorite henchman. These sessions don’t appear as separate logs but are mentioned in session 74 when one of the henchmen, who subsequently became a PC for a new player, revisited a key location from the mini campaign.
The player of Hoxton chose a modron he liberated from the plane of mechanus in session 63. Rogue modron seemed the obvious choice as this player has a thing for bots…played the robot Strelok in the last half of the gamma world campaign.

5. You have a very detailed world origin story, as well as a focus on angels and religion, for your game. How important are these to your characters?

Settings as such generally don’t have much utility to players and that holds true here as well. However the setting is indispensable to integrating the pc’s into the world events and related adventures when running an epic scale world-shaking superhero campaign such as this one. Ultimately the players will appreciate being part of a living world and adventures thereof.

6. How regularly do you play?

On hiatus currently, 2-3 sessions monthly when playing. Sessions average 3-4 hours in length.

7. How long has your group played together? How long have you been running Arcanearth?

Most of this group has played together since the 80’s. Most also played the last 50 or so sessions of gamma world 2754. Arcanearth started dec 2017. One player has the distinction of appearing in almost the entirety of both gw2754 and arcanearth (Grek/Strelok/Finch/Hoxton).

8. You won CotM all the way back in 2016 for Gamma World 2754- what keeps you coming back to Obsidian Portal?

Familiarity and lack of any worthwhile alternative. It’s a great place to organize and document your rpg campaign. A friend is starting a shadowrun 4e game soon, maybe we’ll throw that up on OP as well.

9. If you had to pick just one thing, what would you say Obsidian Portal helps you with the most? Do your players get involved on the wiki too?

PCs use OP for character sheets and backstories. The searchable database helps a lot for finding old npcs and events from past sessions. The character pages are the single most useful feature for both players and GMs.

10. Where do you draw inspiration from when preparing your game?

This setting is from fall from heaven 2, a total conversion mod for civilization 4. The epic scope of the macro game is inspired by the FFH2 setting and the fantasy works of Michael Moorcock. On the micro scale, you may discern the influence of Jack Vance. See the sessions about a certain ‘Green Pearl’.

11. How much time do you usually take to prepare for a session?

On average across all sessions, not counting the original world wiki creation, probably as much time to prepare as to play (3.5 hours). The wiki and world building, hundreds of hours over the course of years.

12. What would you say has been the best moment your table has had thus far in your game?

For me, the green pearl sequence. For the pcs, possibly the waking of the sleeping god Danalin and defeat of the Overlords, or more recently, the close battle with the ancient red dragon Acheron.

13. Okay, before we get out of here, give us some of your best GMing pearls of wisdom.

Don’t be afraid to feature a few challenges where it is uncertain or even unlikely the pcs can win outright. Have an out if/when they lose, that leads to more interesting possibilities rather than simply a TPK. Epic foes filled with hubris typically want more from pcs than merely their deaths. Such as their services, use as bargaining chips, information, entertainment, conversion to the cause, experimentation, torture, or simply groveling submission. All of which provide ample scope for a dramatic comeback. Players (and GMs!) enjoy nothing more than hard-won triumph snatched from the jaws of defeat.

Victor
“Age just a number, one and one and one. We stronger than number. Next year I’ll be younger”
Li Na

 Thank you to the community for making this campaign of the month possible! That’s all for now, join us on our next adventure October 1st, and don’t forget to nominate your favorite campaigns for our next Campaign of the Month!

Obsidian Portal Campaign of the Month July 2023: Esomor Prime

Enter the intriguing realms of Esomor Prime, a 5th edition D&D campaign set in the homebrew world of Sam. Here we find a world dominated by 13 powerful noble houses, who rule over dozens of factions and hundreds of lesser houses. In this world Sam runs SIX separate groups, totalling TWENTY FIVE players, all in different regions of the world, for now…

Tell us a little about the people behind the logs? What’s your group like, how did you all start playing together, and what drew you to your current system?

The groups are all friends of mine through various corners of my life, and I use one Obsidian Portal site for all of them. My original group has been playing D&D since 1995 and we were brought together back then by our mutual friend and first DM, Roy. I eventually took over as the full time DM of that group and have never relinquished the reins. The other groups started trickling in over the last 5 years, and include a “brewers group” a “work group”, a “circle of friends new to the game group”, and “friends from college group”, and an “online only group” for those out of town.

How often do you play and how do you generally do so?

The online group is constantly going in a “play by post” format. For live sessions I usually DM every two weeks but with so many groups, they only get to play every two months. Sometimes I am booked solid 4 months out!

What’s the primary inspiration for your game? What themes do you and your players like to explore or situations you dream would come about?

For this current campaign I am running, I wanted a Game of Thrones like setting with lots of political intrigue with strong noble houses and powerful factions and huge world-changing story arcs. My “oldest” group is 8th level and my newest is 2nd, so some of them are just now starting to see the beginning of the “big picture”. I do have a dream of assembling an All-Star game with one player from each group and them all coming together to form an epic, end-of-campaign, world saving task.

You have a mighty list of Player Characters, what complications does that add for you and your players?

Obsidian Portal makes it so easy for all of my players to sort by their own campaign, but there is so much crossover information at their fingertips that each group can indirectly learn from each other group. Not sure who this NPC was? Look them up on the website! Maybe another group has run into them before and you can learn even more about them!

How long did you spend developing the style of your site, and did you have any help?

This huge campaign has been a dream of mine for a long time and I have been tinkering with the idea for years. For the longest time I would just make notes on what style of campaign I wanted to run and eventually this homebrew world started to take shape. As a previous campaign world was coming to an end, I launched this one to transition into. Lately, ChatGPT has really helped streamline the process for some of the minor details.

I love your inclusion of art/memes in the adventure logs, do you create them by yourself, or do share that responsibility?

The Bing Image creator through DALL-E has been a huge help, such a time saver!

As you’ve been on Obsidian Portal for a while, what is your favorite feature for helping to manage your campaign?

Obsidian Portal is so easy to use! It looks great, links are easy to create, and it is a breeze to import images. Plus having one single wiki page for the “Order of Bones” faction that is seen across all groups is a HUGE time saver.

Back to your game, what would you say has been the best moment your table has had thus far in your campaign?

Each group has had some amazing moments, but one of my favorites was my “Bronzewood Valley” group following up on a random minor encounter I left for them where they found a broken compass on a trail. They thoroughly investigated who left it, where it was purchased, and was able to track and save the lost explorer. Through a long series of other events, this led them to working with that adventurer to establish their very own town in the mountains, all from this random broken compass!

Let’s round this out with one of our favorite questions for our featured GMs! If you had a secret sauce for running a great game, what would be the most important ingredients?

Have fun! Sometimes I worry if I have enough prepared for a session, or do I have enough handouts, will the battles be challenging, but once the session gets rolling just go with it and remember why everyone has taken time out of their day to play, so have fun!

 That’s all for this month folks! Don’t forget to head on over the the OP forums to nominate your favorite campaigns for our next Campaign of the Month!

Obsidian Portal Campaign of the Month May 2023: Motes in the Serpent’s Eye

In space… no one can hear you Psychic Scream. But they can feel it! Half dragons in combat armor and bio-anthropologist plant-creature druids find themselves embroiled in galactic politics for May’s winning Campaign of the Month: “Motes in the Serpent’s Eye.” Captained by The_CDM, a GM who has sailed the cosmos of space-time to engineer a fantastic combination of multiple systems and settings, there’s plenty of Veteran-level knowledge to impart on how to run a successful, multi-season game. Come join the experienced crew of the Royal Exploratory Service’s Cygnus Class long-range science vessel, the Speaks Softly, as they seek the origins of life, the universe, and everything.

Hail, The_CDM and congratulations on winning Campaign of the Month! We know from your Obsidian Portal profile that you have been gaming for many years and have been a long-time member of OP. How did you get started in the world of rpg’s and what keeps you involved after all this time?

For me, I suppose it all really began with Chain Mail, which led inevitably to that darn blue box of original DnD basic. A couple of friends and I discovered them in grade school and that was it – we were hooked. Far beyond the dull and regimented board games of the late 70s, we discovered a medium to express our imaginations and develop a sense of deep friendship and camaraderie while doing it. I don’t think I’m being trite when I say it was eye-opening and mind-expanding. Over the years, my gaming groups and I have explored the realms of Traveller, Space Opera (from FGU), Call of Cthulhu, Villains & Vigilantes, Hero System and many, many others. But always we return to that touchstone, some form of DnD.

What keeps me, personally, involved in the hobby nearly fifty (omg that long now?) years later is both complicated and very very basic. Friendship. Camaraderie. The joy of collaborative story telling. Shared experiences, both good and bad. Many of the players and friends that I began this journey with are still with me to this day and to paraphrase one, “Some of my favorite memories are of things that never happened, places that never existed, and folk that only reside in my head.”

From TheTokenShadow, who plays the soul-mech, RC-880 “Durendal”.

Hail, CotM! I am TheTokenShadow (name flub when creating my account and I just stuck with it). I have been playing D&D since 1989 and met this current group in late 2011.

From Zentropyse, who plays the half-dragon, Lord Serpentce:

A long time ago (1982) in a land far away a friend got this new game called D&D he wanted to play. It was a blast! Months later another friend who ran a game I played in introduced me into a group he played with at college. I’ve played with this group ever since because our GM/DM rocks and whatever he’s running is always amazing and fun!

From AcReiBuruCGe, who plays the half-dragon, Pei’Fa:

I play Lord Pei’fa half blue dragon/Drow, who presents as a Mandalorian/Jedi murder machine, who is a truly good time, stabbing bad guys with parts from other bad guys, or sharing a story with the over-entitled nobility at a draconic imperial ball.

I’m called Doc, and I got started in D&D in high school, right before I joined the service. I started because I realized I could utilize the game to practice problem solving skills, and it turned out to help me to not only survive, in some situations, but excel in my career. My friends call me that due to being a combat veteran who was a Fleet Marine Force (FMF) Navy Corpsman (medical). I have PTSD as well as a full list of physical problems from my military service. I added to this list of problems on, many occasions with many activities, including not sleeping well for 23 yrs and living in my car with 2 cats for a bit. I now work at the local Veteran’s Hospital as a Yogi trained by Hindu and Tibetan monks, and last month celebrated 22 yrs of service, at the hospital, not including my 10 yrs in uniform. (Our gaming group is old. Average age around late 50’s. The core group has been together for over 35 years)

My duties now include working on the wards of Acute psychiatry, Dementia, Rehab medicine, long-term Spinal Injury (residents, who live in the hospital), and Blind rehab. I’m also the Aquatic conditioning instructor for our amputee and TBI (traumatic brain injury) patients who are Para-Olympic athletes.

The reason for the “wordy” introduction is to answer the second part of the question. The reason for me to continue gaming is very simple…the gaming group I’m in. We often hear/read about gaming groups calling themselves “family”. The group that makes up this gaggle of “Homicidal Indigents” or “HI”, as we affectionately refer to ourselves on occasion, have been the best support system I could have been blessed with. They were there for me when I was a complete idiot, didn’t deserve any slack, or was simply broken for awhile…over and over. My ability to become a yogi, or even simply do my job, is due to these people. Generous and loving even when they would’ve loved to punch me, these folks had my back when I didn’t or wouldn’t. Our DM told me that he was glad to see that the healer inside me was stronger than the warrior, as his congratulations speech for getting out of the military. As far as I’m concerned, these are the best reasons to continue gaming, even if it’s only 2-3 times a year.

Your winning campaign, “Motes in the Serpent’s Eye” has been running for about six years, split into multiple seasons. Can you give us a brief summary of the main story-lines, so far?

Brief, huh? The main, hidden story engine that drives the campaign has to be Dr. Eon Rose’s research. She’s trying to prove that all sentient species in the setting are not only related, but ultimately are derived or descended from some unknown origin species. Publishing her hypothesis set off a long chain of events that have led to the story-lines we are exploring in Motes. Other ‘main’ story-lines include: the integration of the remaining ‘original’ crew of the Speaks Softly with the ‘new’ crew members, overcoming mistrust, resentment and personal bias to become a team and family that truly cares about one another; the behind-the-scenes machinations of the powers that be in the Dragon Empire, who is involved in promoting and funding this mission? What stakes do they have in it’s success or failure? Why is this mission important?; Encountering new cultures and people and finding ways to interact with them with wisdom (and sometimes violence); Exploring themes that could be taken from our own world, such as the abuse of power, strength through inclusivity and compassion, and of course politics – with a few Kobayashi Maru scenarios mixed in – for instance, the Safe Haven story is proving to be the group’s crucible of fire at the moment.

To create “Motes” you and your friends had to combine core elements of the D&D space opera Dragonstar with Savage Worlds, as well as some supplements and modifications. What kinds of challenges caused the biggest headaches during this process? How did you solve those issues?

Biggest headaches? Emulating that DnD mechanics feel with Savage Worlds was the most gigantic. Especially the magic system. Without it, Dragonstar was just not the same flavor. Originally we tried a version of this campaign using DnD 3.0 – a complete disaster that resulted in an unintentional TPK (a failed piloting roll in an asteroid field combined with me not realizing just how much damage can be generated by such). Savage Worlds presented an opportunity to try it again with superior mechanics, but capturing that vancian magic from the original rules really proved to be a challenge. Stumbling across Rich Woolcock’s work (Savage Vancian Magic) really made it viable. Since then, the new SWADE updates and their exceptional new Fantasy Companion has helped immensely. Savage Worlds modularity makes much easier to describe and emulate new spells, creatures, items, etc. DnD in it’s various incarnations provide players with hundreds upon hundreds of spells and items. At first glance, Savage Worlds, with its fifty-plus powers seems sparse by comparison, but use of trappings, limitations and power modifiers are essential to creating a cornucopia of magic options. We are obviously still evolving the rule set as we continue the campaign, but are pretty happy with what we’ve got going on now. Other headaches were codifying the monstrous amount of gear available in the original Dragonstar setting books. That is still an ongoing process, but I deal with it on a case by case basis. Player: Hey I saw this in the DS books? Can I get one? What are its SW stats? That and the continuing debate between the coin counters and the simple wealth mechanic factions in the group – but that’s a relatively minor headache.

Zentropyse writes:

It’s a work in progress, the tech/magic balance is hard to master- in my mind you’ve got technology which can almost be magical but it is really just absolutely mundane- all of it. Then there’s magic which is magical but in a head to head comparison plays second fiddle to the powered armor, big guns and missiles, IMO. Having a spell battery with spells like Power Down, Control High Tech Devices as well as custom spells like Arcane Cyberjack and Electromagic Pulse helps immensely.

AcReiBuruCGe writes:

a) Play testing
b) Play testing

The mix of high-technology, fantasy, and magic was really intriguing in this setting and it appears to have blended very well into every aspect of the game. Have you or your players discovered any clever combinations that stood out? Any cool items or special spells that saved the day?

Serpence using a Ring of Invisibility and the spell Arcane Cyberjack to take over a pirate gun emplacement in ep 18.
The enchanted gatling ice laser (tripod mount) used by Doctor Keystone to repel pirates from the Speaks.
And while it didn’t save the day, I thought that the intro for episode one, describing the player’s approach to Mount Rimidil Skyhook Station and it’s techno-magical space elevator was quite cool.
Dr Nodagil saving a bunch of the crew from certain death after an explosion on the bridge. Everyone who had been present was bleeding out. The good doctor used his cloak of teleportation to get to the bridge immediately and his Healing with the Mass Healing power modifier to save the entire bridge crew.
Giants shooting down the ship’s shuttle with arrows, giant ones, of course, during Rumble in the Jungle.

Zentropyse writes:

I have been waiting for the perfect moment for the combination of Dampsuit (creates silence) Shattergloves of Ambidexterous Speed (the base Shattergloves- a short range sonic disruptor outlawed by many planetary governments) and Brilliant Energy Touch spell to debut. It will be glorious! If I don’t flub the roll…

AcReiBuruCGe writes:

My character has a glamoured t-shirt, that doesn’t “save” the day, but adds a little ray of sunshine. As he tends to present himself as a fun-loving moron, he will often casually walk towards enemies letting them see various sayings crossing the fabric.

“Your demise isn’t required for my meal to start”

“If I’m not wearing your insides on my outsides, it’s an off day”

“Open your mind and say ‘Ah'”

“I’m not egotistical… I don’t think I’m half as good as I really am”

That sort of magic item is precious to a character hampered with the conceit hindrance.

In the Encyclopedia Obscurum within your wiki, we noticed you even incorporated some X-Crawl, the gladiator-style arena battle game (and a personal favorite). How did this element feature in the campaign?

Primarily as background noise and role play fuel. First of all, X-Crawl is cool as heck. Second, if you had a five thousand year old, galaxy spanning, fantasy race inhabited, civilization hanging around, do you think the favorite imperial sport would be softball? No, they’d revel in the ‘good old days’ of idealized dungeon-delving heroes, romanticized and polished up for broadcast across the empire. Monetized and replete with player-endorsements, and over-priced team tabards for sale! Every scaly backside that’s sat upon the Imperial Throne knows the value of bread and circuses – keep the masses appeased and they will never revolt. Motes players have created their own teams and celebrities (many of them based on old DnD characters) and posted them on the campaign wiki. One player (who plays Lord Pei’fa) graciously runs an occasional side game that is just X-Crawl events in the Imperial League. They are, of course, bloody and gratuitous.

AcReiBuruCGe writes:

I tend to be the one who latched on to the X-Crawls concept. I have written a couple of Imperial Sports Presentation Network (ISPN) news segments. We also have referenced characters from previous games being current superstars in the professional league. There is also a semi-pro, college, and amateur leagues (pros and college are the only ones with full resurrection, post-game contracts).

You seem to be blessed with an abundance of players and have experience running for larger gaming groups. How did you find each other and do you have any advice for maintaining and organizing big parties?

Most of these chuckleheads that I call my dear friends have been hanging around in my life for forty years or more – proving their questionable judgment. Some go back all the way to high school where were understandably the oddballs of the student body. Gaming came naturally and was a less expensive and more dynamic pastime option for us back then. We all ran a game or two, but it seemed either I had a talent for it or was masochistic enough to become the primary game master for the group. One particular friend ran a Villains & Vigilantes game that actually focused on continuing stories rather than the battle of the day, which inspired me as a game master. Members of our gaming group came and went and came back, brought friends, partners, and the curious to participate.

My advice for maintaining and organizing big parties? Patience. Communication. Keeping a campaign alive and focused with 8-12 adults all with real lives requires high levels of the cat-herding skill. Thus tools like Obsidian Portal are essential for scheduling games, keeping players up-to-date, and session recording. Use the Forum feature in OP to give players and GM a place to post in-character interactions and information tidbits in between sessions. The Secrets feature is another amazing tool – every character and NPC has at least one or two on the site. As PCs explore and investigate, they are able through this device to discover hidden stories about their fellow crew mates. As adults getting all of us together regularly can be a serious challenge, but small interactions, secrets and even character short stories posted for all to see can keep the momentum and interest going for those ‘dry’ gaming periods when no one’s schedules mesh. Lastly, if you’re going to be foolish enough to running a game with an average of a dozen players – find a simpler gaming system. DnD will always have a warm place in my heart, but that many players, especially once they get high level, can turn a ten round combat into an 8 hour session. Savage Worlds was our solution to that dilemma. It also makes generating challenging opponents on the fly MUCH easier on the GM. Because when do players do what you expect?

Zentropyse writes:

Obviously we are all cursed, fated to band together and bear that burden though all eternity with aplomb and resolve knowing the game doesn’t serve us, we serve the game.

AcReiBuruCGe writes:

I was introduced to the group by one of the current group. He asked if I could be allowed an audience game, due to being a wordsmith smartass with a dark sense of humor. I’ve been his and the DM’s “special project” ever since.

Do you or your players have any memorable moments, epic showdowns, or favorite quotes that were highlights during the campaign?

One of my favorites took place during the crew’s attempt to capture the pirate ship Happy Insanity. The players used an EMP grenade to disable the bridge defenses – only to ultimately cause that vessel’s demise by disabling the control systems in a key moment. They beat the pirates but lost the ship.

TheTokenShadow writes:

One of the things I enjoy most is the collaborative aspect of our campaign. We have a number of really good writers in the group and some of our best material is spontaneously created when we riff off each other’s experiences.
For example, there was an in-character conversation between the characters Bishop and Rwvyan regarding their secret benefactors.
They had the discussion on the forums and it was generally assumed to be a private interaction over the ship’s comms. I decided to add a bit of chaos and chime in:
Durendal leans over and casually presses the commlink.
“Bishop, you’re on the open channel again…”
It about killed the CDM, he was laughing so hard. Rwvyan’s player rolled with it in good natured fashion however:
“You hear muffled cursing from an unidentified person, and then the line goes dead…”
Ultimately the CDM decided it was an in-person discussion between the characters, rather than over comms, but it’s still an interaction we reference and chuckle over, 4 years later

AcReiBuruCGe writes:

a) Having the requirement of dragon conceit, all of my character’s moments are memorable and all his experiences are highlights as shining examples for others… so I have two.

The first is when my character needed a little exercise and dropped a T-Rex in 3 rounds with his lightsaber through its head. He rode said head to the ground, ala Legolas, and casually stepped off the corpse to announce “Tada!”

That’s when he saw the rest of the away team fighting demon dryders. Everyone was too busy to notice his performance, so he tore into the demons for stealing his moment.

The second is when my character grabbed 4 corpses with telekinesis and used them as shields dancing towards their bad-guy friends. 24 bad guys and 2 hover vehicles ran away just because my character was grinning at them the whole time.

b) My favorite quotes tend to be on my t-shirt.

From laser-lit combat while boarding spaceships to galactic political intrigue ruled by royal dragon houses, there’s a little bit of everything in this massive setting. What aspects of a fantasy space opera story have resonated best with you and your players?

The Dragon Empire is supported on the Twin Pillars of Magic and Technology. What science can’t overcome, magic picks up the slack – for instance – FTL. The laws of science can’t break the speed of light. But a high-powered teleport spell ignores that limitation. Mighty magic is wielded by individuals with specialized discipline or talent, but any old Joe with a week or two of training can climb into power armor and ravage their enemies with laser rifles. The mix and contention between these forces make for intriguing dynamics and some strange dichotomies in the setting. Why bother developing a deep understanding of the healing sciences when you can call a cleric? Prayers don’t need to understand cellular mitosis to fix a broken leg or cleanse toxins from the blood. Same with Starcasting (FTL travel). Science couldn’t solve the FTL puzzle, but magic did handily – but modern commerce and interstellar travel wouldn’t exist without technology – the automated manufacture of which can outstrip the output of an entire school of mages. With hundreds of thousands of worlds under the sway of the Dragon Empire, it is simple to find any flavor of adventure you care to run – from a dungeon-crawl exploring a ‘primative’ world in the outlands to Shadow Run-like stories in the back allies of the Throne Worlds. Its the sheer cornucopia of rpg experiences that are available all in one setting that really resonates with me. Finally, the concept of soulmechs I found fascinating. Science can’t create true AI in this setting, and while magic can appear to with creations like golems, they are either merely sophisticated automatons or controlled by bound spirits. Leave it to gnomes to find a way around that combines both magic and tech. Summoning the spirit of a deceased individual and binding it to a mechanical body is both inspired and pure nightmare fuel.

Zentropyse writes:

For this particular setting, having a Half-Dragon character in a Galactic Empire ruled by Dragons, who are supposed to be arrogant, full of avarice and conceited means my character is an unrepentant jerk that even other Half-Dragons, or as my character relishes in pointing out, other Half-Mammals can barely stand, much less any of the lesser races. That’s fun to play to see how far I can push it before he actually gets thrown out a space lock.

AcReiBuruCGe writes:

I work for the federal government and often refer to it as the Imperium. As a player in this setting, I’m just here for the fights, not the politics.

Without giving too much away, what hints can you give us about the future of this futuristic plot? Is there a Season Four somewhere on the event horizon?

Oh, very much so. The seasons were originally implemented as a way of separating both story arcs and times when we needed a break due to busy real-world lives. Season three will culminate in the finale of the Safe Haven story-line with some very telling reveals and surprises in store for the crew of the Speaks Softly. Assuming they survive and prove victorious over the little pirate kingdom, expect to meet more characters from the Royal Exploratory Service and perhaps some changes in the crew itself might occur.

Season Four, well, that’s going to focus on the Duchess Reythliivmaar and House Esmer’s involvement in the politics and intrigue surrounding the Speak Softly’s mission. Her minion, Lord Di’Shio, Eater of All, has not been idle since the episode six teaser… We will also get some glimpses of some of the other players in the machinations that plague our heroic crew. There’s enough material to keep us all going for several more seasons at least.

Zentropyse writes:

The Dragon Emperor Mezzenbone will be dethroned and suffer the shame of having had the throne and lost it, and my character will have played some small part in that but it’ll probably be somewhere around Season 37.

As always, Obsidian Portal loves to ask experienced GM’s if they have any tips, tricks, or words of wisdom when it comes to delivering fun gaming experiences.

Always remember, the story you are telling is not exclusively yours – it belongs and is being crafted by you and all the players who are joining in the game. Railroading is good only for one-shots and short, focused campaigns, don’t hesitate to embrace the plot twists and kinks that players create with their decisions. Don’t expect to predict their actions – they will always surprise you should you become complacent.

Know your NPCs and plots. Everyone has a story or secret – it doesn’t have to be more than a single sentence about their motivations, but it is essential that you understand them even if your players do not. Let the gears of the evolving story unfolding reveal and alter your plans.

Don’t try to build the entire world(s). Understand the portions that the players currently inhabit and the interaction between these places & people and other parts of the world. This makes you more nimble when your group does something unexpected. Don’t be afraid to improvise on the fly.

Listen to your players. Especially when they are trying to figure out what’s going on in part of the story. Often they’ll come up with a speculation that is a hundred times better than what you came up. Be the Environmental Interface, not the Author.

Take LOTS of notes – they don’t have to be particularly meticulous, or verbose, but jotting down little mnemonics for yourself during sessions/discussions/brain storm meetings gives you a plethora of dangling plot strings and ideas to tie into adventures and help you remember that, for instance, Bishop-1 was once a family man and still has flesh-and-blood relatives out there somewhere. Writing something down helps fix it in your memory for later use.

Give everyone a chance in the spotlight. Tougher with bigger groups, but worth the work.

Never let the players see you sweat. Even when they do something you never saw coming that completely upends your plans for the adventure. Smile knowingly, make a few notes, roll some dice and improvise as if you had planned on that very decision.

Well, the sound of incoming laser-fire and proximity klaxons means it’s time for us to wrap things up. We hope these cosmic insights have helped inspire you to re-tool your own systems and settings to make something really stupendous, like “Motes.” Special thanks to The_CDM and the Players for an excellent interview! Keep a robotic eye out for future Campaigns of the Month here on the blog, and be sure to visit the OP forums if you’d like to nominate a campaign for consideration (even your own).