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Campaign of the Month April 2026: Alien
My mommy always said that there were no monsters – no real ones – but there are. It only took us a little over two thousand years to find them in the cold dark of space, where no one can hear you scream.
Our Campaign of the Month for April pushes us down the frightening and lonely space lanes of 2189 through the eyes of the crew of the USCSS Sherwood as they encounter MU/TH/UR, Weyland-Yutani’s better worlds, and, of course, the iconic Xenomorphs in Adoraith’s awesome Alien Evolved campaign setting.
First off, please 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?
My wife and I live in New Orleans with our dog Maggie. We have 4 kids, but they have all grown and moved on to bigger and better things. Aside from gaming, most of my free time is spent indulging in everything that New Orleans has to offer. Music, food, art, and festivals are a constant in the Big Easy.
I do have a couple of “professional” social media accounts that I used to peddle my 5e adventures and supplements. They can be found on Instagram and Youtube as The Pickled Dragon. I still pop on weekly but don’t post nearly as much as I used to. I had a few bestselling 5e books that can be found on Amazon, Drive Thru RPG, and the DMs Guild. Kelsey Dionne (of Shadowdark fame) and I wrote a monster manual together called the Monstrous Lexicon. The Days of Blight trilogy (DMs Guild) was another series that I was particularly proud of. Around 2021 I took a step back from publishing to focus on my home game and the things that made me happy.
Your campaign is set in the Alien Universe. What was it that fascinated you with this setting enough to create and run a campaign in it? Was it the roleplaying game from Free League itself, or is there a deeper underlying fascination with the expanded franchise? What’s your favorite movie from the franchise that inspires you the most?
Alien was one of the first movies I remember seeing when my dad took the family to a drive-in double feature. The body horror of a parasitic creature smothering the victim but keeping them alive to incubate its young, still shakes me to the core. Follow that up with the horrific birth of the alien and you have the literal stuff of nightmares for years to come.
I have tried to recreate the alien experience several times starting with Star Frontiers in the mid 80s. I took a stab at designing the xenomorph for DnD in the 90s with AD&D 2e. It wasn’t until DnD 3.5e that the design really coalesced into something that was inspired by rather than pure rip off of the xenomorph. By the time 5e rolled around, I was happy enough with the design of the hive demon to include it in the Monstrous Lexicon.
Free League’s Alien RPG perfectly captures the experience in gruesome detail. They have created one of my top 3 favorite games of all time. I love that the system is fairly rules light and easy to learn. The rules are elegant and can facilitate a faster pace of play (Aliens) or be used to create an atmospheric horror experience (Alien). My absolute favorite mechanic is the stress dice. What a stroke of genius.
My favorite film of the franchise really depends on my mood. The first two films are far and away, the best of the collection. However, Alien and Aliens are very different movies. For a slow burn suspenseful sci-fi horror experience I go to Alien. Aliens scratches that itch for the sci-fi blockbuster action film with a dash of body horror.
Tell us about your players and your typical gaming sessions. How often do you play? Online? Tabletop? Who does what in any typical session?
My players and I meet at my place every Sunday from 1 to 6. I have tried online gaming a couple times and just couldn’t get into it. In my opinion, the essence of the roleplaying game experience is human interaction which goes beyond simple conversation. There is no substitution for the tactile feel of dice, miniatures, a hug, handshake, the celebratory high five, and the all-important breaking of bread together.
I will let my players speak for themselves.
Scott – I’ve really enjoyed getting to play Alien RPG with Matt and the
rest of the crew. I usually play fantasy RPG’s so this game was brand
new in a lot of ways for me as I journey into space. One thing I love
the most is the “panic” dice. Your stress response can either fuel you
or have you fall apart under pressure, masterfully mimicking fight or
flight. Space travel was really interesting and had me thinking about it
in the real world. Distances are vast and injuries are real; there’s no
magic and death is always around the corner. Alien is a top tier RPG and
I’d definitely recommend it for a thrilling Sci fi game.
Courtney – I’ve enjoyed jumping into a new system between longer
campaigns. I was initially concerned that I’d be a bit lost since I was
not well versed in the lore, but most of the events from the movies are
classified or only rumored. We watched the first two films as a group
which also got us into the world with the right lingo and vibes. I’ve
been playing Dr. Beatrice Mott, a young xenobiologist straight out of
university. I wanted a palate cleanser from playing a barbarian, but I
didn’t know how lucky I would be with shooting my service pistol after a
short training session with one of the marines. ‘One Shot Mott’ is
racking up kills at a faster rate than my barbarian ever did. Another
surprise is how much fun it is to be tech savvy, even if it’s just
make-believe. I can’t wait to see if any of our characters survive this
campaign. I tend to get attached to my PC’s over time, but we knew how
likely a TPK would be this time around. If she must go, I hope Dr. Mott
has a glorious end.
Jeremy – I’ve never played Alien before and to be honest, I tend to not
really get into Table Top games where the PCs are closer to real life
humans than not and get pitted against entities that can easily squish
them. I went into the game expecting we had good potential to TPK in any
given encounter much like people got squished and tossed around in the
movies. I settled on trying to be a space mechanic that enjoyed
conspiracies and had his own literal tin foil hat just in case. I tried
to be a coward in the beginning for survival while also aspiring to be a
Colonial Marine. Events eventually led my character to mentally just
being done with anything alien or alien-involved scientist related (saw
his in-game ‘Buddy’ die to a face hugger and then survived an alien grab
by punching and screaming until the team arrived).
Alien’s Stress/Panic system has been enjoyable for me in helping to
shape my character and add to roleplay overall. Out of character, I
accepted Stress Dice as super powers all the way up to my character
panic freezing every action. It was fulfilling to test limits in a new
system and see how things would develop or occur. Even started offering
Coffee in game to party members that pushed their own stress (it adds
more stress heh).
Despite my initial expectations of easily squishable, the Alien system
does a good job with character options (given you survive a few sessions
for EXP) to build into enhancing one’s survivability and/or
intractability with the world around them.
Tell us more about the crew of the USCSS Sherwood! What roles do they play, and how do each of the players contribute to their game personalities.
I do love the assortment of characters the players have brought together. My group has always been excellent at filling in the gaps of their party composition without sacrificing roleplaying. Just as an example, our last DnD campaign ran four years without a dedicated healer. Anyway, the crew of the Sherwood.
The captain (Gordi Boudreaux) and lead engineer (Hooper) were both NPCs which actually gave me a ton of flexibility when orchestrating the storyline.
Courtney plays Dr. Beatrice Mott, a fresh out of college xenobiologist looking to kick start her career. Ms Mott was a little shy to start but her confidence quickly grew as the Sherwood was plunged into corporate intrigue and sabotage. Her nickname, One Shot Mott, was earned when she managed to shoot and kill a facehugger as it was hurdling through the air at her captains head.
Scott plays Phil Baxton, a colonial marine gunner with a heart of gold. His strong belief in the general good in people has been challenged but remains strong after witnessing what corporate strongmen are capable of doing in the name of the bottom line. Perhaps, his faith was bolstered by the terribly grouchy Hooper sacrificed his life to save Phil.
Joe plays Kipp Sanchez, a true believer in the Colonial Marine ethos. That was until he learned that Weyland Yutani was the de facto commander of the corps. After learning of Captain Demien Brackett’s splinter group of marines actively working against WY’s effort to weaponize the xenomorph, he ceased sending colonial marine command covert messages on the activities of the crew.
Jeremy plays Rufus Barker, the assistant engineer (roughneck), coffee aficionado, and stress magnet. Hooper and Rufus were best buddies who were both avid conspiracy theorists. Of particular interest was Robert Morse’s account of the Space Beast and his encounter with a woman named Ellen Ripley. To say that there is not enough tin foil for his hat would be an understatement, but he might just be onto something!
Amariah plays Amber, professional stowaway and kid with no home. Amber has lived a very tough 10 years but finds joy in the small things. Her rainbow bright doll is among her favorite possessions and believes that the 20th century doll will make her rich if she can find the right buyer. In the meantime, she is content to chain smoke her Pall Malls and offer sarcastic barbs at the worst possible time.
How closely does your game adhere to the canon of the movies and ttrpg? What embellishments have you added? I noticed that you have added several corporations into the mix of those from the core manual that I don’t recognize! Tell us a bit about what inspired them.
I love the canon lore of the Alien Universe and made it a point not to do anything that would contradict or change the underlying story. There is a website that shows all movies, graphic novels, and even video games that are officially canon to the Alien Universe. Fortunately, I already owned nearly all of the material and went back to reread everything. I pulled concepts, story lines, and ideas that I thought could have gone so much further and ran with it. If I were to ever run a long-term campaign of Alien RPG, I would want that to be the Alien Earth War series. This incredible collection of comics and graphic novels is not canon, but the setting would make a great campaign!
All of the corporations I have on the page come from the canon material found in movies, graphic novels, and video games. As a GM, I want to make the game as immersive as possible so I wrote down every detail I could find.
Your campaign has a captivating retro-80s sci fi design, appearance and feel. What tools did you use in setting things up? What advice can you give for new GMs who want to do what you have done?
I love the low tech feel of the original Alien film. That is the esthetic I wanted for the Alien campaign page. I used Adobe Premier Pro to create the GIFs and Adobe Photoshop for the images. Getting a free font that was close to the Alien font was difficult, but I eventually tracked it down. Overall, I took the stance that less is more and ran with it.
There are probably easier ways to do the design of the page, but I am familiar with Adobe products which is why I went in that direction. I would say use the tools you are comfortable with and focus on making the information accessible to your players. I have seen some beautiful websites that are a trainwreck to navigate. Start with accessibility and then adjust to make it pretty.
You post several of your play videos to YouTube in your adventure logs. I find them very instructional in learning more about the game’s mechanical aspects! Were they meant to be such?
Honestly, the videos are just a fun way to remember the events of the session. Any educational benefit they provide is completely accidental!
Okay, as a last question, we always ask for the GM’s “pearls of wisdom”. What GM insights would you like to offer the community this month?
I am a huge proponent of homebrewing just about everything. I love to create new aliens, talents, and abilities that the players do not have access to or knowledge of. RPG’s has been around for 50 years and there are very few surprises coming out of published material.
I also love the fact that Alien RPG is not a D20 system. There are some brilliant mechanics, like the stress dice, that would brilliantly fold into other games. Don’t be afraid to adopt, adapt, and combine different systems to make your game unique.
Thank you to the community for making this campaign of the month possible! That’s all for now, join us on our next adventure May 1st, and don’t forget to nominate your favorite campaigns for our next Campaign of the Month!
OBSIDIAN PORTAL CAMPAIGN OF THE YEAR 2024- WINNER’S ANNOUNCED!!!!!
A HUGE CONGRATULATIONS TO OUR WINNERS!
FIRST PRIZE:
KERYTH987 WITH WRATH OF THE HIGHBORNE!!!
RUNNER UP: HUMANNOYD with CYBERPUNK 2077:FATE ACCELERATED!
(winners will be contacted by OP staff to connect you with your prizes)
It’s about that time again- time to celebrate some of the very best of our OP Community! 11 great RPG sites, each awarded the prestigious “OBSIDIAN PORTAL CAMPAIGN OF THE MONTH” award in 2024, stand in line to be considered for the OBSIDIAN PORTAL CAMPAIGN OF THE YEAR 2024! And YOU get to decide!
THE DETAILS:
Voting will open Monday December 2nd, is open to ALL, and will close Monday December 9th. The winner will be announced on Friday December 13th. Check Obsidian Portal, Facebook and Twitter for further details.
THE CONTENDERS:
January 2024: More Things in Heaven and Earth
February 2024: Cyberpunk 2077 Fate Accelerated
March 2024: Wrath of the Highborn
April 2024: Season of Strife
May 2024: The World of Elurah
June 2024: The Planewalker’s Guild
July 2024: Ars Magica, Umbra Quercus Saga
August 2024: Freeing Phandalin
September 2024: Echo of The Mists
October 2024: Aloft!
November 2024: Dark Conflagration
THE PRIZES:
This year we have some AMAZING sponsors including Paizo, Killjester, Crit Academy and Syrinscape!
1st Place
- 1 year subscription to OP
- Paizo: Digital copies of Pathfinder Second Edition and Starfinder First Edition Beginner Box PDFs as well as a PDF of Abomination Vaults (Pathfinder Second Edition or Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition, winner’s preference)
- Killjester: A physical Copy of Sanctimonious Slimes vs Expired Epicures
- Crit Academy: Digital Copy of Memorable Monsters
- Syrinscape: A subscription (Supersyrin trial vouchers, each for two months x 2)
Runner Up
- 1 year subscription to OP
- Killjester: A physical Copy of Sanctimonious Slimes vs Expired Epicures
- Syrinscape: Syrinscape: A subscription (Supersyrin trial voucher, for two months)
OBSIDIAN PORTAL CAMPAIGN OF THE YEAR 2023!
WINNERS FOR 2023:
First Place: Elvathadrin with Torg: Rise of the Storm Knights
Runner Up: Lord_Sam with Esomor Prime
It’s that time of year again- you guessed it, it’s Obsidian Portal’s Campaign of the Year 2023! It’s the ultimate showdown between some of the best of the best Obsidian Portal has to offer: The winners of our Campaign of the Month 2023! Voting is open to anyone who wishes to contribute- be sure to keep an eye out on the OP Community Forums, the OP BLOG, Facebook and Twitter for more information!
We have some great prizes in store for both the first place winner and our first runner up! In addition to winning Free Ascendant membership time, this year we have some AMAZING prizes generously donated from some of the best in the industry, including Paizo, Frog God Games, Limitless Adventures, Crit Academy and Mongoose Publishing!
FIRST PRIZE includes:
– Digital copies of both Starfinder and Pathfinder Second Edition Beginner Boxes and/or Core Rulebooks from Paizo,
– Physical copies of Traveller Core Rulebook and the Paranoia Core Book from Mongoose Publishing,
– Digital copies of Limitless Encounters 1, Limitless NPCs 1 and Limitless Monsters 1 from Limitless Adventures,
– A gift certificate worth $200 to select any digital items in store from Frog God Games,
– Physical copies of Bountiful Bounties and Aelx’s Bombastic Oddities from Crit Academy,
– 1 Year Ascendant Membership from Obsidian Portal
RUNNER UP PRIZE includes:
– A gift certificate worth $100 to select any digital items in store from Frog God Games
– 1 Year Ascendant Membership from Obsidian Portal
A huge thank you to our sponsors for this years prizes!:
OBSIDIAN PORTAL CAMPAIGN OF THE YEAR 2022- Winner Announced!
Congratulations to HumAnnoyd and crew for a well deserved win of our 2022 Campaign of the Year! Check out the winning campaign, Emerald City: Requiem here.
Prizes include:
– Memorable Monsters and Extraordinary Expeditions from Crit Academy
– Tome of Adventuring Design by Mythmere Games
-Remarkable Inns and Remarkable Shops from Loresmyth
– Wally DM’S Journal of Puzzle Encounters from Wally DM
– 1 Year Ascendant Membership from Obsidian Portal
Obsidian Portal Campaign of the Month September 2022: Merovia
It’s that time again, another month and another opportunity to celebrate some of our amazing community! This month we take you to the world of Merovia, where GM rappt0r and his party explore a complex world of magic and adventure. Created and refined over several years- and several campaigns, our interview barely scratches the surface of the mysteries to be uncovered. Read on to find out more about how rappt0r and crew have built an incredible, evolving world and the stories that lie within.
I have to start by asking who does the coding for this campaign- it is really unique!
So, all of the coding is done by me. I spent a lot of time with the tags because I feel like it helps me keep track of events and smaller threads. I created a google sheet that actually auto-builds the code once I have all the parameters in place. I would like to add even more, but I think I’ll need to go back and thin out the code where necessary. I also recommend w3.school and textile-lang.com/doc/definition-lists.
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?
I am originally from the US, but I moved to Sweden 6 years ago. I’m a Swedish Citizen now and it’s been a very rewarding experience. On Instagram, I am @Rappt0r.
Apart from gaming, in nearly all forms, I would say attending metal shows. With all the different kinds of gaming and designing I do, it can be difficult to get outside. I sunburn easily 😉
You run D&D 5E- What do you like about it? Are there any things you dislike about it?
I started DMing during 3rd edition. I loved the crunch of that edition, but for many, it was daunting. I found that new players struggled to find the class combinations that were actually worthwhile as well as the magical items necessary to lift some into a decent tier of play.
5th edition offers a streamlined system that is much more accessible. Yes, each class peaks at different points, but generally under level 15, I have found it’s more balanced than the previous editions. I also find that Homebrewing for it feels very comfortable. I use 3rd edition as a backbone for some of my rulings that fall outside the RAW.
My largest complaint would be how long it’s taken for the Psion (Mystic) to get its final version.
How regularly do you play?
My last campaign lasted 57 sessions and we met generally once a week. That took about a year and a half given people going on vacations or illness etc.
How did your group meet, and how long have you been together? You have a group of 11- how do you manage such a large group?
Many of my players were in my previous campaign (In the same realm), but the new players are coworkers of mine who heard that I was DMing and wanted to give TRPGs a shot. So, my group is technically 6, but I have had sessions with 11 people. Those were all-day sessions back in college and the best way was to group them for different encounters.
The balance is taking that group to an event, explaining the issue, and then bouncing to the other while the first group makes a plan together. This makes it difficult to counter any silliness, but it also keeps you on your toes and can be quite exciting. If one group gets into combat, without the others, group enemies with the optional rules and switch back to the other group every 2 rounds.
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?
Obsidian Portal has been an amazing host for the content that I am making. It feels like my own little corner of the internet alongside many other brilliant DMs. Some have contacted me and we have had excellent conversations about planning and world-building.
My players don’t normally write anything on the Merovia site. They have access to their character’s page, but everything else is strictly me. This has been daunting and a lot still remains up in my head, but I try to create relevant pages as soon as possible. I will often make pages in advance, make them DM only, and then open them up after an interaction with an NPC that explains the details.
Where do you draw inspiration from when preparing your game?
Oh geez, alright this will be a big list. However in order to clarify, remember that when designing, remember that most fiction can be translated by changing aspects of the setting. My inspirations are generally every piece of fiction that I enjoy.
Anime & Film: Blade Runner, Ghost in the Shell, Seven Samurai, Curse of the Golden Flower, Pulp Fiction, Steins’ Gate
Games: Dark Souls 1-3, Bloodborne, Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Metal Gear Solid 1-5, Mass Effect 2.
Novels: The Dark Tower series, Dune, Dracula, Frankenstein, The Dunwich Horror, At the Mountains of Madness, The Well World Series.
Music Lyrics: Kamelot, Amorphis, Machinae Supremacy, The Sword, and Rush
How much time do you usually take to prepare for a session?
So, for my weekly 3.5 hour session, I prep for about 5-7 hours. This includes brainstorming, fact-checking, and dungeon building. Streamline your process by using real-world maps and reading about the history behind them.
Aside from DnD I’m sure you have played other systems too, what are some others you enjoy?
I have played GURPS, d20 Modern, Mutants & Masterminds, Pathfinder, Starfinder, The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, Shadowrun, Vampire V5, and Wrath & Glory (before the rewrite). I have enjoyed each
one of these systems in its own right, but my heart is with 5E.
What would you say has been the best moment your table has had thus far in your game?
I would say that the final session of my last campaign was the best moment. Essentially, the party had gotten to the Shard of Creation(the MacGuffin crystal) within a flying city, “The Last Bastion of the Giants”. The cursed Druid accidentally pulled aggro from the Giant King which dropped his HP down to single digits. He ran and took the crystal which prompted the King’s legendary action. By “light spearing” the druid, he was overtaken by the cursed wolf pelt which brought forth a fallen angelic being.
Now the room held a furious fallen angel, a giant mage king, and the other members of the party. On top of all that, the flying city was now falling into the valley below given that the crystal was no longer in place.
In desperation, the Rogue Phantom was able to communicate with the Druid’s spirit and looted a single coin from the body. That coin was a gift given to the Druid for a good deed in session 2. The coin was received in session 16.
With a flip of the coin, time rolled back 24 hours allowing them to correct their final encounter. It brought everything full circle, it was an amazing moment that sat with them for months now.
The full Adventure Log is available for viewing on the Merovia site.
Okay, before we get out of here, give us some of your best GMing pearls of wisdom..
Plant seeds. So, for me, the most important thing for making the world feel dynamic is by mentioning ideas, npcs, scenarios, and items that MAY become relevant later. Mention them early.
As any seasoned DM knows, there is always the chance that the players will go off script and pursue a lead that, to you, was irrelevant. You make those moments pivotal for these odd times by bringing something back that you mentioned previously. Maybe they met a throw-away NPC near the beginning of the game, bring them back if they would be great for that scenario. In a way, it follows Chekhov’s gun. Hopefully, this will make it easier to plan for follow-up sessions.
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 August 2022: In Over Their Heads
“To admit defeat is to blaspheme against the Emperor.” ~Imperial Army Doctrine
Welcome to the 28th Chalkydrian Drop Regiment! Often outnumbered and outgunned but never outmaneuvered. Troopers of the Imperial Guard fight and die facing the many horrors of the Spinward Front. They are often In Over Their Heads so they rely on comradery, black humor and as much firepower as they can muster to see them through the bleak universe of Warhammer 40k.
Charge up your Tri-plex Pattern Lasgun, check your grav-chute and get ready to give your life for your Emperor! Continue reading for our interview with GM JayDoubleA to learn more about the exploits of these brave soldiers of the Imperium!
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?
Answer
First off, thanks for this award. I know there are a lot of amazing campaigns on Obsidian Portal, so to be selected from all of them is quite the honour!
I’m a veteran RPGer, in my late 40s now, and been enjoying this great hobby of ours for some 35 years or so. I was born in Liverpool, but grew up in the Netherlands, moving back to the UK in my 30s. And back here I met an amazing woman who happened to feel the same way about me – we’ve been married for over 12 years now, with four kids (one of whom is a player in In Over Their Heads).
Outside of this, I’m a web developer in my day job (which will be relevant later on in this interview), I play guitar and bass (currently between bands), and I try to run and hit the gym a couple of times a week.
I don’t post on Twitter, and my Facebook is pretty locked down (unless they’ve reset the privacy settings again), so your best bet is to message me here on Obsidian Portal.
Tell us about “In Over Their Heads” in a nutshell. How did it come to be? What drew you to Warhammer 40K? How have you hurdled the issues of rank that often plague a military campaign?
In a nutshell? It’s a squad of Imperial Guard, and their adventures – or rather the mission they are sent on and the moments of R&R in between. There are “on base scenes”, where they try to navigate base politics, rivalries with other platoons, and getting shouted at a lot by their drill sergeant. And then there are the “on mission scenes”, where frightening amounts of firepower get deployed on either side.
I played the original Wahammer 40K back when I was a teenager, and kept semi-in-touch with the Games Workshop hobby since then. When I came across a link to the totally amazing All Guardsmen Party (http://www.theallguardsmenparty.com/), I was inspired to try my hand at running one of the 40K RPGs. My regular player group was up for giving it a go, so I started prepping.
Handling the chain of command has proven to be fairly easy so far. Their platoon commander is woefully inexeprienced, but is smart enough to actively seek the input of his NCOs, which includes two of the PCs. And these PCs’ players are then able to take input from the rest of the group, to steer their Lieutenant in the “right” direction. The more senior officers assign the mission and objectives, but are otherwise smartly avoided by enlisted troops not wanting to get into any unnecessary trouble!
How regularly do you play, and where do you play? Tell us about your current group of players.
Since I also run RuneQuest at the moment for my main group, and one of the players in IotH has his own campaign he runs, we aim to play Only War every third session. In an ideal world, that would be every third Friday. Obviously things come up every now and then, but we are doing every third game, rather than every third week.
Some of the group are people I originally met through playing AD&D back in Holland, around 25 years ago. Others are friends I have made since. The old crew from the games back in the day got a Mage game (not run by me) and a 3rd Ed game (which was run by me) up and running about 12 years ago, after reconnecting through Facebook. We used Skype, as that is what there was back then. Force of habit has kept Skype as the main platform, though I have recently been introduced to just how much better Discord is. I sense a change might be imminent for us..
We’re a pretty mixed group, spread out across the UK, the Netherlands and Israel – we’ve got computer programmers, a maths teacher, a Games Workshop store manager – but we all share a love for both the storytelling and the social side of things. I’ve found pre-game banter needs about an hour to be factored in when planning the sessions, as we’ve got a whole week to catch up on with each other before we kick off.
Alongside Skype, IotH uses Owlbear Rodeo for the maps, Google Jamboard for quick diagrams, and a custom charactersheet/diceroller that one of the players and I built in .net/javascript/sql.
Your campaign is notable for its many design innovations, with lots of CSS usage! Lots of boxes and custom buttons, which adds to its look. Where did your design knowledge come from and what advice can you give to new GMs wishing to improve their sites in similar ways.
This is where I have to give a LOT of credit to Frak_Lou_Elmo, who’s one of the players in this campaign. He jumped on the Obsidian Portal site as soon as I created it, and much of the original look and feel comes from him. He’s also added a lot of content – I told the players they should all feel free to add any stuff they liked regarding people, places, etc., as long as it didn’t contradict canon. Several of the major NPCs and the entirety of their regiment’s home planet, are player created, and I love them giving this input to the game.
As I mentioned before, I am a web developer by trade. Although my qualifications are all in server side programming, I have been doing the job for well over a decade, and have worked around some very talented and helpful people. I’ve picked up a lot of css and other bits and pieces over the years, and it’s been great having this opportunity to show some of it off just for fun. Doing the IotH pages all in css, without being able to just launch piles of custom javascript at every problem made it a very interesting challenge.
For anyone looking to tune up their sites, I’d say to ask – I’m happy to answer questions – and look at how other people have done things, e.g. grab the css from my site (https://inovertheirheads.obsidianportal.com/custom_css) if you want to see what I did – and find some online tutorials on the basics of css and the DOM if you are a total beginner. But most of all, don’t be afraid to ask someone how they did something.
How valuable do you find being Ascendant? What do you find to be the best features?
You know, I wasn’t sure what the specific benefits are. I “ascended” ages ago, because I wanted more image storage space for a previous campaign I was running. When I started on IotH, I already had the benefits, so took them for granted… Knowing how unhelpful this answer must be, I went and looked them up.
Undoubtedly the custom css, alongside the increased storage. Without the facility to let my creative side run wild, the IotH site would be functional, but nothing that really stood out.
How much time is usually spent preparing your game sessions? Describe a typical session.
There are ideas being considered, scenes pre-emptively being played through, all kinds of things going on in my head well in advance of play. Usually I will sit down for a couple of hours the evening before the game and put down notes, maps, find ambience and sound effects, stuff like that. A lot of my prep gets revealed in adventure log posts after the mission is completed. I have learned not to overprepare, though. Nothing ever goes exactly to plan in any RPG session, so having ideas for scenes and moments that can be put into the story however it might unfold is more useful than mapping out an entire session that will never end up going the way you thought it would, in my opinion.
We’re only a few missions in, so I don’t yet know exactly what would be typical, though I suspect the format of the current mission may be repeated a few times. Starting on the base, I have a number of scenes prepared for the PCs to interact with others on the base, either solo or in pairs. These are often continuations of previous interactions, e.g. a lieutenant from another platoon trying to get cooperation for some illicit trading of materiel started in the first session, whilst still on board the transport ship to their deployment. All these scenes are time-boxed to a few minutes, to prevent this part of the session from taking over the whole evening (with several bored players being reduced to spectators for hours at a time).
After that, there would typically be an on base scene or two involving everyone (e.g. a training montage, a night at the bar), then the mission briefing… and then we get to the shoot-y, kill-y, die-y, explode-y part, where tactics and dice rolls take over and the bodycount increases at an alarming rate.
In a way, it’s probably not too dissimilar to a session in many games, whatever the genre. You do stuff around your current base of operations, you find out what the mission/quest/job is, you hit the action. The most significant difference, given that this is a military game, is that a lot of the planning is taken out of the PCs’ hands. They get given the plan by their commanders, but still need to figure out an effective way of implementing it and coming out of it alive.
There are some amazing design aspects in your campaign (e.g. altered images, music videos for the different characters etc.) Who is responsible for this, and what words of advice can you give to aspiring creators on Obsidian Portal, who may not have a design background, but are wanting to improve the look of their sites?
Frak_Lou_Elmo has to take a lot of the credit for that. He had a lot of these initial ideas, which I was then able to use my technical knowledge to build upon. The theme songs section was entirely him, as well as much of the layout, the military font, and a load of other input. His hard work inspired me to put in more work of my own, and we have built off each other since we got going with this. To be fair, can we accept this award jointly? He deserves at least as much recognition as I do for this!
The advice, once again, is to ask. I am more than happy to help people, and if I don’t see your forum post, message me directly!
https://www.w3schools.com/ has some great tutorials for the basics of html and css – and a lot of what makes the IotH site work is that I wrote custom html, rather than using the text editor and its own markup. Once you’re comfortable with the basic html tags and assigning them classes, you can start messing with css. Trial, error and have fun! Oh, and learn how to use your browser’s developer tools so you can experiment with changes in real time.
How long have you been using Obsidian Portal? What brought you to the site and what keeps bringing you back?
I’ve used it and dropped it (laziness, there is no excuse) for past campaigns I have run, and used it as a player in friends’ campaigns. It was initially a friend’s game that introduced me to it, but I keep coming back now because we’re making something special with IotH, I feel. And I’m having fun doing it, adding to it, and see how far we can push the boundaries of what can be done with the Obsidian Portal platform. Getting player input (such as rotating the adventure log write ups) goes a long way to counteracting the laziness factor, too!
If you had to pick just one thing, what would you say Obsidian Portal helps you with the most?
One thing? It helps me get the ideas out of my head and somewhere where they are more accessible to my players, and where they can be looked up without having to personally remember every detail. It’s like the most glorious notebook a GM could ever wish for.
What would you say is the biggest highlight of your game so far ?
As I mentioned, we’re only a few sessions in, but we’ve had a couple of memorable moments. I am going to invoke GM’s ego prerogative here, and say that for me, the highlight has been playing the NPC Sgt-at-Arms Williams. He is entirely and unashamedly a genre transplanted version of Battery Sgt-Major Williams from the old BBC sitcom “It Ain’t Half Hot, Mum”, complete with shouting, abrasiveness and deep baritone Welsh accent (which I do extremely poorly, but very enthusiastically). It’s great fun (and somewhat liberating) having an NPC like this that you can be really over the top with, totally hamming it up, and the PCs just have to take it, because he outranks them.
Okay, before we get out of here, give us some of your best GMing pearls of wisdom.
Accents – develop a few. It doesn’t matter if they are any good (most of mine are truly terrible), as long as they are consistent. It adds so much to a recurring NPC if they have some kind of distinct voice. Even more so in games running online.
Listen to your players – often they will plan for something, or mention something. And sometimes this something is actually a far better idea than what you had planned. Which leads us to…
Be flexible – no plan survives contact with the enemy! And even though the players aren’t your enemies, they will scupper your plans in a multitude of creative ways. Roll with it, ride it out, have fun, just never fully take your hands off the wheel. You are still the final arbiter of what happens; just remember that the story is fluid, not set in stone.
Timeboxing – one on one (or two) scenes can add a lot to the story. But remember that means the rest of the players aren’t involved. I try to limit scenes not involving the whole party to a few minutes each, with an onscreen stopwatch to keep track of time spent. Obviously developments can take you past that limit, but try to stay within it wherever possible, to keep the game moving for everyone.
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!
