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Campaign of the Month November 2026: Sylvangarde

Pathfinders and Kingmakers, gather ’round the tale-telling fire and witness the history of our fantastic and final Campaign of the Month winner of 2026, “Sylvangarde” by astrounicorn. It is a saga begun in the ancient age of 2012, shared with family and friends, and spun by a sorceress of stylish storytelling. Make way to the Riverlands and join us on a long-running, fun and funny adventure!

~ We would love to hear a little about you and your gaming group — who you are, what you’re into, creative projects you’re involved in, and how you got into gaming.

I can’t even begin to answer who I am, sorry, I just keep hearing the caterpillar from the cartoon Alice in Wonderland: “Who ARE You?!?” lol.
When not running games, or planning to run games, I paint minis and write puzzle story books for kids.
I began gaming as a DM. I had a story idea for a book, actually, and a friend recommended that we play out the scenario. I fell in love with helping the group craft their story and we’ve never looked back. We play a combination of in person and virtual meetings, twice a month when possible.
Our current group is myself (Diana), my husband (Ryan), our two best friends (Mary Beth and Will), my sister (Tyler) and my mom (Tammy).

~ Why did you choose Pathfinder for this campaign and why did you focus on The Riverlands?

My husband, actually. We began roleplaying with D&D 3.0, then 3.5, then Ryan went out and bought all of the Pathfinder stuff, so I agreed to do our next campaign there. Our campaign is loosely based on the Kingmaker Adventure Path from Paizo, which takes place in the River Kingdoms. I love the area’s connection to the fae, it appeals to my sense of whimsy.

~ Sylvangarde has adventure logs dating back to 2012 — that’s phenomenal! The back-and-forth letters between characters from the older section were especially good, and the Sylvangardian Newsletter seemed to be a great information-giving tool. How did the logs and the campaign itself develop and change over all those years?

I have always encouraged character logs (players get a hero point for each log entry), and the creation of the Sylvangardian was especially helpful to update players who missed sessions, or to refresh out memories when we went long stretches without playing. It is also a great way to poke fun at the characters, and to show the players how their character’s actions may be perceived by the world at large.

~ Some of the rule-mechanics you employ, like Hero Points, Hex-Improvements, and Downtime Activities, really seem to enhance the game beyond just standard adventuring. Which optional rules helped the campaign the most?

The Hero Points hands down are my favorite table rule. Players can gain them in a variety of ways, particularly creating character log entries, and acting in character while ignoring strategy or tactics (for example, a character with low int and wis failing a knowledge nature check to tell the difference between a cat and a skunk, then deciding to pet the ‘cat’, even thought the player believes it’s a skunk). The land improvements are a fun way to track the kingdom’s growth and visualize the physical changes that urbanization causes. Downtime Activities encourage thinking of their character’s day to day activities and hobbies, not just their martial moments.

~ As the Game Master, what have been the most interesting parts of the game so far, and (without giving too much away to your Players) what parts are you really looking forward to, next?

I really loved the initial founding of the kingdom and how the players melded such disparate elements (mostly human settlers from up north, ‘reformed’ bandits, kobolds and fey) into a cohesive national identity. The group will be going on a trip shortly, escorting Lord Mayor Melchior to the Outlaw Council for the first time. They will have much fun exploring more of the River kingdoms.

~ What moments during the campaign excited your Players the most?

My husband’s favorite time was a year when he and I were the only people playing, so he played Melchior, and we ran a series of adventures with him, his faithful vassal, and his love interest, a semi-feral elf. Their courtship was hilarious and full of mishaps that we love to rehash to this day. The rest of our current group recently helped a nearby town bond with a tribe of centaurs, which was so much fun.

~ And finally, as we always do, Obsidian Portal loves to ask if you have any tips, sage advice, or inspiring quotations to share for other storytellers and game-makers?

The only was to lose at table-top gaming is to stop playing. We will eventually finish Sylvangarde’s story, but we’ll never be done finding new stories to make. Having fun is the goal, and telling gaming stories between sessions keeps the fun alive.
I also have a small quote book that I maintain of the most hilarious or off the wall stuff a character or player says, and reading from that can pull any of us out of a funk (my favorite Sylvangarde quote is “Shut up and eat your toe!”)
As a DM, I consider nothing to matter more than our enjoyment of the game. It matters more than rules and more than they story I thought up. No story survives contact with the players, and that it a good thing.

Our thanks go out to astrounicorn and her family and friends for sharing “Sylvangarde” with us. We wish you all the best and look forward to reading more about the quests across Golarian. And we extend our thanks to all of our Campaign of the Month winners, nominees, and blog-readers this year who enjoy sharing their creations and seeing how games are played beyond our own tables and screens.

Soon, it will be time to vote for Obsidian Portal’s Campaign of the Year from our monthly winners, so keep an eye on your scrying devices for future announcements. And if you know of a worthy contender for Campaign of the Month in 2027 (even your own campaign), please let us know by posting in the Community Forums or reaching out through OP’s social media. Happy Gaming!

Update Post – October 20, 2026

Hail, Portal People!

The season clock has chimed again, so it’s time for another reckoning. See below for all of the new features and bug fixes that were added to OP since the previous Update Post.

If you have any questions, comments, or feedback, feel free to post them in the Community Forums, or email support directly at [email protected].

Campaign of the Month October 2026: The Final Reaping

Mysterious forces are at work in this Shadowdark RPG version of the legendary world of Greyhawk. Main players, and sometimes whole societies, are sowing distrust and dissent among the Commonfolk; so what will the adventurers do to progress? Find out what happens when a creator blows his perception check against its deception check as we converse with GM Aveneer discussing his campaign, The Final Reaping.

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 am from Chicago. I am a high school math teacher and math team coach. I have a wife and daughter, both of which do not share my obsession with RPGs, which I am glad for. It’s nice that they have their own interests. I didn’t want my daughter to become a mini-me. My Instagram is @nuttle_shuttle

Tell us a bit about your players. How long have you been playing together. Describe your typical gaming session. Online or In Person?

My players are a mixture of ladies and gentlemen, some of whom I’ve been playing with since college (early 90s). The ladies came later, as they are spouses. Most games we play in person, D&D 5e, with laptops on Roll20, but this campaign, The Final Reaping, is a Shadowdark game, so I wanted to keep the tech to a minimum, so we are all pencil, paper and dice for it. I usually set my games in the World of Greyhawk because I think it’s the best blend of high fantasy and mystery, with enough lore built in, but enough space to put your own stuff in there.
As for a typical session, usually everyone is late, and them we spend 30 minutes bickering about food. Finally, once we start playing, we go for 4 to 5 hours. My games are a mix of SERIOUS FANTASY and random gouts of hilarity mixed in (usually from player antics and monologues/conversations). The Final Reaping is deadlier than other games, because such is the nature of Shadowdark.
This game is also unique in that it is a “drop-in” game, meaning that whomever is available to play shows up and plays. That is why the players change from session to session. This came about because we have a schedule that we follow as a gaming group, and if not enough people can play, I wanted to have something else for us to do. So this game sort of started as background noise but is slowly inching its way to a more prominent spot.

You have chosen to structure your campaign with everything on the Landing Page. Nonetheless, there are some significant design techniques employed in creating the set up with links and pictures. Please describe what tools you used in doing this, and how you came to decide on the layout of the campaign.

All of my other Obsidian Portal campaign pages (Miscreants from Meazeltown; Dragons Are Little Bitches, Man; The Temple of Elemental Evil; and The Further Adventures of the Crimson End) have the same structure. I wanted this to be a bit different. I saw this structure somewhere and I liked it. I have no talent whatsoever in programming so I did what all programmers do: I asked AI to help me build it. Since I wanted it to have an old-school flavor, I made the color palette mostly monochromatic, and I chose images that came from OG D&D books and modules. I also love fonts so I wanted to find some interesting ones to use. Sometimes I go overboard, and at first I did, by using a very flowy, difficult-to-read font for the normal text, but I just switched it up for the default Shadowdark font (Montserrat).
I suppose I could go even further and make the sub-pages similar to the Landing Page, with images of each NPC/place/item/etc. in a box that links to their wiki page, but that is a tale for another day…

The Allies and Enemies windows are interesting. Currently there are only two listings in the Enemies section and both seem to have had previous experiences with the Adventuring Group. Is it the same group of players, and, without giving away any secrets, do you intend for them to have major roles as antagonists in the New Campaign?

I don’t want to flag enemies as “enemies” unless players are sure that they are enemies. There are lots of betrayals and double-crossings in my games, and so players aren’t really sure who to trust at first. For example, the players encountered The Scythe and The Skull (the two creatures that disrupted the ritual of Incabulos) and my players were asking among themselves if those two were on the players’ side or if they should be attacked. I mean, one of them wielded a bloody scythe and the other had the skull of a lizard on his head, but they didn’t actively attack the players, so are they really enemies?
The enemies listed are ones that the players have actively crossed swords with, though I should update that based on our last session. And, to be honest, Ulfar the Black was a random encounter who the players set free after defeating him and his surly band of baddies, so who can tell what burns in his heart?

How important are Deities to your campaign?

I like to make the world seem as realistic as possible, so worship of deities and people and heroes trying to carry out their deity’s wishes is seen. Motivations come from dogma, especially since deific power is on display constantly. So I would say that deities are pretty important.

Tell us something about Shadowdark RPG. What made you choose that system, and what do you feel are its main benefits to your campaign?

I played D&D all my life, and when Shadowdark came about, I was skeptical (as I am with all new-fangled things). But this new-fangled thing was a new-fangled thing disguised as an old-fangled thing. Like, I blew my perception check against its deception check! I read the free guide and the random tables and the carousing really spoke to me. I also really enjoyed the idea of light playing a much bigger role, and if light is taken away, every creature around the players gets advantage on their attacks.
One of my campaigns (Miscreants from Meazeltown) has as its conceit that the players are some of the weaker monster races (kobolds, goblins, derro) trying to take back the stuff that humans, elves and dwarves have stolen from them. I wanted to make that campaign a Shadowdark game, but in Shadowdark, darkness and who has darkvision plays a major role and it didn’t make sense to have the players be the only underdark denizens NOT to have darkvision, so I kept it 5E.
Since this campaign uses a lot of older adventures as its basis, I felt Shadowdark would fit in well with that old school D&D deadliness. Plus, it’s so easy to run. When my group was at Gen Con last year and we played some 5e and even 3.5 D&D, I turned to one of my friends and said, “We could have had four full combats in the time it took us to get through this one combat.” Which is true. Combat is so fast. I typically over-plan in my games and we never get as far as I want to, but in the first session of The Final Reaping, we covered all that I planned for. It was both shocking and amazing.

How important are your Adventure Logs to the campaign?

To me, they are very important. To my players, less so. There is so much info in them – foreshadowing, clues and solutions, in addition to a summary of the sessions. In an ideal world, every one of my players would read the adventure logs, but we all know they don’t. It’s not really their fault. My gaming group is blessed with SIX DMs who want to run games, so it’s sometimes difficult to keep track of what is happening in which game. But like I said, the logs are very important because they include vital information, and they allow me to write the plot of the adventure in a narrative form, which I find fun and challenging.
As an aside, I really get annoyed with myself when I break tense in the logs or misspell a world. But that’s just me.

Without divulging any major secrets, what are your future plans for the Campaign?

As I said before, I wasn’t planning to run a Shadowdark campaign; it just came about because we had openings in our schedule and I just threw it in there. I got the idea for the campaign by reading through old Dungeon magazines. I found an interesting adventure (“The Dark Conventicle” from Dungeon #11) and came up with a way to modify it and expand it to cover an entire campaign. I didn’t want to write a whole campaign, so I also stumbled upon a repository of old Living Greyhawk modules that I decided to use to link the whole campaign together. It actually worked out really well, and the Living Greyhawk modules are all designed to run in a 4-5-hour session each, so it kind of fits in perfectly. Of course I had to modify them slightly to fit in with the theme and the plot of the campaign. I also found the use of Creighton Broadhurst and his Dread Thingonomicon invaluable.
So future plans. Well, the heroes have to get the diseased Zenobia to the port city of Scant. They also have the mystery of The Scythe and The Skull to worry about. There are many murders that have happened. They also encountered the boy Aaront with the dark spirit inside of him. Plus, the player Mick has a curse on his arm that he needs to either investigate or get removed. Will all these threads converge? It all seems too easy doesn’t it? Like it will all wrap up in a nice box with a bow on it.

There is currently only one Map on the system. Will you be adding more as time goes by, and have you ever thought of using the INTERACTIVE Mapping to list things or make further links to the main WIKI?

I haven’t used the maps because I don’t know how much my players would use them. I tend to put any maps on the pages that relate to them, but I could just link to the maps page. I will be adding more. Usually I include mainly maps of cities.
I had never thought of using interactive mapping. Maybe I will. That’s a cool idea.

The campaign seems to be in its early stages, but have there been any memorable sessions that stand out so far, for you or your players?

The second session with The Scythe and The Skull was memorable for the “Oh shit” reaction from the players. In the last session we played (which I haven’t uploaded yet), the players ventured into a kobold warren and right before one was about to attack, the light timer went off and the player was left in darkness as their torch went out right before they attacked. The session with Ulfar the Black and his compatriots was also amusing as there were two boats drifting down a river and one of the players, Lirien, fell into the water. But the wizard, Liorka Bonepickle, who had a background as a thatcher and carried a wooden ladder (tools of the trade), lowered the ladder down to allow Lirien to climb back up.

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?

First, I think it’s ok for characters to die, or at least, they should feel that they could die. Too many times I’ve played in games where there is no threat of mortal danger. Players just skate through the game, they never deplete their resources and they hardly get damaged and the BBEG is toast after two rounds of combat. There should be more than one encounter per long rest, with as many as five. Players should need to decide when to use their resources; not hoard them until the end baddie of the day. This causes an increased feeling of dread as the day goes on because players never know when they will need to tap their resources or when they might run out.
Bending the rules is ok as long as it fits in with the theme of the game. For example, in my Temple of Elemental Evil game, as written, for the players to destroy the Orb of Golden Death (an artifact in the game), as written, they needed to do the following: hit it with a wind of 50 or more mph force; then strike it with a maul made from a solid piece of granite; then burn it with a very hot flame (1,000 degrees F); and then immerse it in very cold water (32 degrees F.). Now, there is no way they would ever know this, save from a bunch of research (also they didn’t have a Legend Lore spell), but what they concocted was just as good:
“The next task at hand was destroying the Orb of Golden Death. The heroes had no idea how to do that, so they began looking through books and notes they had uncovered. The one book that seemed the most promising, Lost Gods, Ancient Pacts: The Vestigial Condition, was still unreadable to them. Ray thought maybe they should start using spells of the four elements to strike at the orb, since it was created for use by the Temple of Elemental Evil. He chose a spell from each element: ice knife or watery sphere for water, stoneskin for earth, and gust of wind for air. The group agreed to use Cindersteam for fire. When all of these were applied at once, the Orb seemed to become brittle, but then became whole again. They then decided to try them in a certain order, but which order? Someone suggested the order in which they attacked the Temple. It was decided that the order should come from the poem so long ago from Trym’s dream: water, flame, earth and sky. However, when applied in this way, these magicks seemed to further repair the cracks that had just been made. This made the party especially grumbly, until they concluded that a reverse order would work better. It did. The swirling winds stripped off much of the gold of the skull, while the stoneskinned strike of Ray cracked the orb into clearly visible, yet still connected pieces. Cindersteam severed these connections, breaking it into multiple pieces and the streams of flowing water washed away any remnants of the skull.”
So the players didn’t do what they were supposed to do, but really, it was a much more satisfying ending than having to go to a large city and do a bunch of research. I mean, what adventure story ends with the heroes and the Dewey decimal system?

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

Campaign of the Month September 2026: City of Shadows

Welcome to colonial Singapore in the year 1870, a bustling metropolis filled with abundance and vitality. But behind the façade of prosperity lies a city rife with terror and mystery. Unfold the adventure with GM Nicesociety and company in this Campaign of The Month: City of Shadows!

1. Tell us about the person behind the GM screen. Where are you from, what do you do outside of gaming, and where can we find or interact with you online?

First off, thank you for the recognition — I’m honored to be selected for Campaign of the Month for a second time. I’m originally from California, but I’ve called Tulsa, Oklahoma home for the last 26 years now. Outside of gaming, I’m a history buff at heart, which probably shows in how I run things, and I love getting outdoors to camp when I can, along with writing in general. Most of all, though, I love spending time with my wife and kids — they keep me grounded when I’m not busy setting terrorizing 1870s Singapore.

2. How did you get into gaming, or what first introduced you to the hobby?

I started gaming 41 years ago, at 13 years old, back before Dungeons & Dragons was anywhere near mainstream — that’s what I cut my teeth on. From there I branched out into GURPS, Traveller, BattleTech, Rifts, World of Darkness, and just about every other RPG system I could get my hands on. In the ’90s I discovered Cyberpunk 2020 and Chill, and I still love both to this day. I’ve had the same gaming group for the last 15 years, and we still play weekly.

3. Give us a nutshell summary of your campaign: what’s it about, and what inspired it?

The base system is Mayfair Games’ CHILL, though it’s been heavily modified from the core rules with a lot of expanded house rules over the years. I’ve also borrowed concepts from Call of Cthulhu and The Dresden Files where they fit. My group and I love period pieces, and we’ve been playing in the same extended universe across several campaigns now — among them another Campaign of the Month winner, Aether & Ashes, along with Yesterday’s Sins, From the Ashes, and SAVE Rome. Each is set in the same universe at a different time and place.

Our current campaign, City of Shadows, is set in 1870 colonial Singapore. It blends Eastern horror, paranormal investigation, a touch of colonial exploration, and some gothic leanings. We’re leaning hard into historical accuracy for the period, and it’s given us a fantastic cast of characters to work with.

4. What is it about this particular setting or world that fascinated you enough to build a campaign around it?

Colonial Singapore in 1870 is a setting that does a lot of the work for you as a GM. It’s a genuine crossroads — British colonial administration layered over Chinese, Malay, Indian, and countless other communities, each bringing their own beliefs, spirits, and ways of explaining the unexplainable. That gives me an enormous well of folklore and cosmology to draw horror from, rather than leaning on the same handful of Western monsters campaign after campaign. As a history buff, I also love the tension baked into the period itself — colonial power convinced of its own rationality, sitting right on top of a city that doesn’t believe in the same rules. That friction between what the empire thinks it understands and what’s actually moving in the shadows of the docks and back alleys is, to me, the most interesting kind of horror: it’s not just supernatural, it’s cultural.

5. What game system and edition are you using, and what guided that choice? What do you like most about it, and are there any downsides you’ve had to work around?

We’re running Mayfair Games’ original CHILL system, though at this point “edition” almost undersells it — it’s been rebuilt from the ground up with expanded house rules developed over years of play. All mechanics run on D10 or D100, which keeps resolution fast and intuitive at the table without breaking immersion to look up charts. I chose CHILL originally because it fit the paranormal investigation tone I wanted  and it was what I already knew from the ’90s .and what I love most about it now is how easily it flexes: the core system doesn’t fight me when I want to layer in something new, whether that’s a piece of period-accurate folklore or a mechanic borrowed from another system entirely.

Honestly, the heavy modification hasn’t created the downside you might expect. Even with all the house rules layered in, we’ve kept things simple enough that new players can pick it up without much trouble — though it’s worth noting we’ve had the same core group for over 15 years, so it hasn’t been tested by a revolving door of new faces. If there’s a real downside, it’s that not a lot of people really know about  CHILL at all.

6. Tell us about your players and your typical gaming sessions: how often do you play, and is it online, tabletop, or hybrid?

There are five of us total, including me as Chill Master. We play in person every Friday night, usually starting with a communal meal before diving into a solid four to five hour session. As adults, real life doesn’t always allow for marathon sessions the way it might have in our twenties, so our campaigns tend to run long — a typical 13-episode arc takes about a year and a half from start to finish.

Obsidian Portal has been an invaluable tool for us throughout. It lets my players go back and review NPCs, locations, and details they’ve uncovered as the campaign unfolds, so nobody’s relying on memory alone between sessions. That keeps everyone focused and engaged at the table instead of spending game time trying to remember who someone was or where a clue came from.

7. Tell us about the central characters (PCs and/or key NPCs) in your campaign. What roles do they play, and how do your players bring them to life?

Our party operates as the Society of Oriental Studies, a name that gives them cover for exactly the kind of poking around dead men’s affairs that gets people killed in polite company.

Joe Gannon is our cowboy — a hardened survivor with a dark past and an instinct for evil that’s saved the party’s collective necks more than once. He’s also quietly running from Confederate gold he brought with him from the war, which has started catching up to him in ways he didn’t see coming.

Mei Lian is the shadow queen of Singapore’s criminal underworld — publicly a brothel manager, privately the real power behind an empire she built from nothing after being sold into servitude as a child. Nobody in the party plays the long game quite like she does.

Nathaniel Blackwood is a smuggler with a gentleman’s polish and a criminal’s instincts, moving opium and secrets through the docks with equal ease. He’s charming enough to talk his way into a room and dangerous enough that you should worry about how he talks his way out.

Phinn Farrington is our legal authority — an English attorney carrying guilt, duty, and a very literal scar from an encounter with something that shouldn’t exist, picked up during his Navy days in the Mediterranean. He brings order and respectability to a party that badly needs both.

Dr. Simon Williams walks the line between rationalist and mystic, a physician who lost everything to disease and was saved by methods Western medicine has no explanation for. He treats what official Singapore won’t acknowledge exists, and he’s usually the first to notice when something in the room isn’t breathing right.

And rounding out the party is Alice Brown, our thief — orphaned young in London and raised in a den of skilled pickpockets who taught her that a well-placed hidden pocket can be as valuable as any lock pick. What looks like simple thievery hides a far heavier truth: Alice serves a master whose nature is anything but human, and whose appetite for treasure has made her one of the sharpest, most resourceful operators in the party. Quick-fingered and quicker-witted, she’s just as likely to spot the ghost in the window as the unlocked door beneath it, and there’s rarely a room she can’t get into — or out of — without anyone noticing she was ever there.

Considering the character descriptions, and the fact that the players have all written their own backgrounds, the flair and creativity the players bring is self-evident.

8. What tools did you use to design or customize your campaign’s layout, banner, or overall visual presentation? What advice would you give other GMs who want to do something similar?

For images, we use a combination of Midjourney and Photoshop, with a lot of attention paid to keeping everything period-accurate. I also lean on Claude to help fact-check historical details and maintain authenticity, making sure the flavor of the campaign reflects the actual history of 1870s Singapore rather than a vague approximation of it. On the CSS side, a lot of what we use was built through trial and error — adapting code from other sources and reworking it until it fit. My wife, who works as a software architect and programmer, has been essential to that process; her help with layout and image integration has shaped the visual identity of the campaign as much as anything I’ve done myself.

My advice to other GMs is simple: details are what sell it. Small, consistent touches matter more than any single big flourish — a complementary color scheme, a visual theme that stays consistent scene to scene, and a willingness to give each campaign its own artistic identity rather than reusing the same look project to project. As for CSS specifically, don’t be afraid to go find something you like from someone else’s work and experiment with it. You don’t need to build from scratch — find a foundation that speaks to you and make it your own.

9. Where do you draw inspiration from when building your campaign, whether it’s literature, film, other games, or something else?

I draw from all sorts of cinematic styles — I actually imagine each campaign as a television season, thirteen episodes with occasional special “pilot” episodes labeled Episode 0. Books have a huge influence too. I’ve mentioned Jim Butcher’s work already, but I also draw heavily from science fiction, mysteries, and classic literature — Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, Bram Stoker, and Mary Shelley all shape how I think about mood, pacing, and character.

I also build a soundtrack for every session. Music does a lot of heavy lifting for pacing and tension at the table, and I lean toward instrumental pieces that fit the tone of the setting — a lot of Hans Zimmer, Ramin Djawadi, and others in that same cinematic vein.

10. What have been some of your (or your players’) favorite or most memorable moments in the campaign so far?

One thing we love doing is fan service — reintroducing a character from another campaign in the same shared universe. At one point we brought back a major villain who had been central to our 1936 game: a vampire lord, old enough and powerful enough that six decades backward was nothing to him. Dropping him into 1870s Singapore, decades before my players had ever encountered him, still landed like a gut punch. They nearly lost their minds when they made the connection.

But honestly, my favorite moments are the ones that build slowly — when the group has pieced together the clues themselves and really had to work for the resolution. We’ve had a handful of those moments over the years, and they’re always the most rewarding for everyone at the table, myself included. There’s nothing quite like watching a table full of players connect the dots on their own and realize what they’ve uncovered.

11. Without giving too much away to your players, what’s ahead for the campaign, or what are you most looking forward to?

Without giving too much away — we’re running several character-focused story arcs concurrently alongside the main seasonal arc, each one slowly building toward its own climax. Every player has a personal thread that’s been quietly developing in the background, and when those arcs finally land, it’s going to be huge. Each player gets their own payoff, I get mine as the one who’s been building toward it all along, and the main thread itself delivers a reward for the group as a whole. It’s the kind of layered payoff you can only really pull off with a table that’s been together as long as we have.

12. How did you discover Obsidian Portal, and which feature do you find most useful, whether for campaign design or for active play?

I’ve been a member since November 18, 2015 — at this point, I honestly don’t remember the exact details of how I first found Obsidian Portal, though it was most likely through an RPG forum somewhere along the way.

My favorite feature is easily the character and NPC pages, especially now that I’ve figured out how to categorize them in ways that actually work for a long-running campaign with a huge cast. The wiki pages have been just as invaluable for tracking places, lore, and ongoing threads. And being able to customize pages with CSS and HTML has been a great feature in its own right — it’s given the campaign a visual identity that feels genuinely its own, rather than looking like every other page on the site.

13. How long have you been a member of Obsidian Portal, and what keeps you coming back?

Asked and answered.

14. As always, what “pearls of wisdom” or GM insights can you share with the community this month?

Give your players real opportunities to contribute — not just choices within a plan, but the chance to genuinely shape it. Be flexible enough to pivot when a good idea comes up unexpectedly and be willing to scrap entire sections of your prep if something better emerges at the table. Details matter, so keep good notes, but don’t let them box you in — sometimes the best thing you can do is let go of the plan and go with the flow. At the end of the day, it’s about friends, fun, and collaboration. Have a blast, and don’t take it too seriously.

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