Blog Archives
OBSIDIAN PORTAL CAMPAIGN OF THE YEAR 2021
Congratulations to our COTY 2021 winner:
HEROES AS A SERVICE –
GM: Nuadaria (FEB 2021)
and to our runner up:
GAXIM PLAGUE –
GM: Frak_Lou_Elmo (JAN 2021)
FIRST PRIZE includes:
– Digital copies of both Kobold Guide to Worldbuilding and Kobold Guide to Plots and Campaigns from *Kobold Press*,
– Digital copies of both Starfinder and Pathfinder Second Edition Beginner Boxes and/or Core Rulebooks from *Paizo*,
– Physical Copies of Traveller Core Rulebook Update 2022, and Paranoia Starter Set from *Mongoose Publishing*,
– 1 Year Ascendant Membership from *Obsidian Portal*
RUNNER UP PRIZE includes:
– Physical Copy of Seas of Thieves Starter Set from *Mongoose Publishing*,
– 1 Year Ascendant Membership from *Obsidian Portal*.
ENTRY PRIZES
Congratulations to all other campaigns entered into the draw. Each GM will receive free Ascendancy time from Obsidian Portal and will be contacted separately.
A special thanks to our Prize Sponsors!
Obsidian Portal Campaign of the Month December 2021- “Le Sang versé d’Occitanie” (The Spilled Blood of Occitania)
Bonjour, and welcome to The World of Darkness within December’s Campaign of the Month, “Le Sang versé d’Occitanie” (The Spilled Blood of Occitania) by Orion_JdR. Set in the south of France, this supernatural, dual-campaign features a GM running for two rival groups of players — a Werewolf pack and a Vampire coterie — who discover each other’s blood-stained activities within a region full of history and mystery. Read on to discover how it is done in this month’s interview. And for those of you who only spent one point on your real-life language skills, click here for an English translation of the campaign.
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Before we ask about “The Spilled Blood of Occitania” we would like to know more about you and your players. Who are you and how did you meet?
Of course, with pleasure! I am Orion, a french role-player and blogger, and I have been a game master for thirty years. Half of my players are close friends, while the other half are friends I met on social media during the lockdown and had good feelings with – and I don’t regret it!
What was the inspiration for your campaign and what kinds of stories do you want to tell?
The Spilled Blood of Occitania is an original creation inspired by (and sometimes identical to) pretty old scenarii from World of Darkness or Ars Magica. Through this campaign, I wanted to reach my players and make them live adventures in a universe close to us (contemporary France) yet extraordinary : Europe destiny, nothing less. Thus, the world we believe we know is full of beauties (landscapes, Cathar history, the magnificent Toulouse), dangers (pollution, crime, corrupted politicians) and mysteries (history of France, magicians alliances, etc…).
The concept of this creation is to have two competing campaigns : a Werewolf Pack with opposite objectives to a Coterie of Vampires, in the same area and the same temporality. Each group (Wolves and Vampires) is aware of the other group’s progression via Obsidian Portal. Thus, the players find out more than what their characters do, and understand the general pattern while the characters can only get small parts of it.
The campaign is set in the World of Darkness in France and includes vampires, werewolves, mages, and more. It is rich with information. How do you stay organized with so much material? And how does your gaming group use apps like Discord and the Miro whiteboard to help
Obsidian Portal is helping us a lot to organize all of this stuff. Through links to the characters, labels assigned to each page, a player willing to find a vampire in Toulouse or a magician living during the Middle Ages will easily sort and find what he needs. I also use colors and icons a lot (tribes, packs icon, etc.) as a visual aid for players.
To conceive the campaign, I use OneNote. During games, we use Discord with a bot for dice rolls, and Miro to display characters sheets, game rules and pictures. And after each game, we publish an adventure log to describe what happened on Obsidian Portal: it can give ideas to the players and game masters from other role-playing gaming tabletops, but above all, it gives to the players from the other group (Wolves or Vampires) the possibility to be up-to-date with the general pattern (and see what the other players have discovered).
The writing in your Adventure Logs (Stories of the Ages) is exceptional and really adds style to the story. Who does the writing in your gaming group and how much time do they spend on it?
Yes, I am really grateful to the authors of these adventure logs, and always give them credit at the beginning of the texts. Moreover, they get extra bonus Willpower points for their characters as a thank-you gift to their efforts and the quality of their texts. In each group, a player volunteers (always the same in the werewolf pack, and in turn for the vampires) and spends several evenings writing a high-quality adventure log from simple note-taking. The aim is to publish it before the next game, to help us recall what happened last.
Your Obsidian Portal pages are very beautiful and easy to navigate. Do you have any advice to share about designing websites for games?
I think you need to put yourself into the skin of a player reading: he wants a simple, good-looking website where he can easily find the information. I took inspiration from the most beautiful campaigns I found on Obsidian Portal to create The Spilled Blood of Occitania, for I am not a graphist nor a web-designer myself. The result is a clean, colorful campaign, with a clear visual identity for each group, vampire, werewolf, etc.
You have several beautiful campaigns on Obsidian Portal — Shadowrun, Pathfinder, Legend of the Five Rings, and World of Darkness. What is your favorite game system and why?
The game system I prefer between these four campaigns is the one from Legend of the Five Rings, for it is epic and light at the same time, very close to the game’s universe. Lately, I have resumed the campaign “Les Fragments du Vide” (The Void’s Fragments) on Obsidian Portal (https://lesfragmentsduvide.obsidianportal.com/), which was stopped due to the pandemic. My players are really excited and have a lot of ideas for the next games – you’ll be able to read it on Obsidian Portal!
What have been the most interesting or challenging moments within “The Spilled Blood of Occitania” so far?
The Werewolves players offered me beautiful roleplay scenes, when their Pack had to ally with the Pack from Narbonne despite the fact that they hated each other at first, or when they stole a thousand years old fetish to use it instead of giving it to the arrogant Silver Teeth pack.
The Vampires players, on the second hand, are always surprising me and it is not simple to anticipate where they will lead the story. I really like it, as it is always an adventure for me to master them. Happily, I managed to schedule unexpected twists to get my revenge!
What part of your campaign or your Obsidian Portal pages are you most proud of?
I am really proud of the adventure logs, those are very pleasant texts to read. I am also proud of the “Characters” webpage, for it is functional and pretty nice to browse, just as I wanted.
What parts of your game do your players enjoy most?
Every game starts with a reading of a small introduction, which describes a small part of the general pattern that the characters ignore, but that enlightens the players about the entire story. I also think that they like to meet eccentric non-player characters. I am giving my best in those encounters…
Can you give us any hints about the future of the campaign without giving too much of the story away? Or, do you have other, upcoming projects?
Some hints? You mean, like the daunting battle of the Werewolves against the Wyrm’s Forces? Or the merciless fight of the Vampires against Sabbat? Oops… No spoilers!
Otherwise, in addition to Les Fragments du Vide (L5R 4e) resuming, I have other projects for campaigns which will be logged on Obsidian Portal, but it is too early to tell you more yet. Stay tuned!
Finally, Obsidian Portal always wants to know if you have any advice to share about gaming or being creative?
Giving advice is the aim of my blog (Autour d’Orion: http://orionjdr.fr), but if there is only one to keep, it would be this one: be welcoming to new players. They are the future of roleplaying games, we need to attract them and fulfill their desires, even if we are not used to those kinds of desires.
Thank you very much for these questions and for the Campaign of the Month Award! I am really pleased and touched, especially by the fact that you granted the award to a non-english campaign, this is even more impressive. See you soon on Obsidian Portal!
As we bid bonne soirée to Occitania and thank you to Orion and the players, the Campaign of the Month Committee would also like to thank everyone on Obsidian Portal for sharing their creativity throughout 2021. Be certain to check back often on the blog, forums, and Discord for more wonderful campaigns like this one, news about voting for Campaign of the Year, and to nominate campaigns that you love (especially your own!) for consideration.
Translation from French by @Kapryss (thanks to her)
Cross-Classing to Game Publisher — Group Beta Games
Hail, fellow Obsidian Portal GM’s and Players! My name is Steve, also known as Jynx001, and for several years now I’ve been a Content Creator, Support Sorcerer, and Maker of Many Things here on OP. I’m very happy to announce that I’m taking my next level in the Game Publisher class as I begin the quest of launching “Group Beta Games!”
Vote for Campaign of the Year – 2019!
Make Your Voice Heard
It’s the beginning of a new year, so you know what that means! That’s right, it’s time to take a long, nostalgic look back at all of the featured campaigns that came before, and pick our collective favorite! “But wait” I hear you say, “Isn’t this 2021? Why are we looking at the campaigns for 2019 when we should be looking at those for 2020?”.
While we could make a joke (or two, or a thousand) about how rough of a year 2020 was, the truth is that we need to set right a certain wrong before we can get to 2020’s featured campaigns. You might not have noticed (and frankly, who could blame you), but we never got to crown our 2019 Campaign of the Year – and that’s just not right! This being the case, the Selection Committee has decided that the best way to give 2019’s contenders their due recognition is to give them the distinct CotY vote they should have received (instead of a ‘double header’ style vote like we did the last time we got behind). Having said all of that, let’s take a moment to look back at 2019’s featured campaigns!
Savage Worlds Campaign Spotlight Contest
CONTEST COMPLETE! – WINNER: “The Color of Night” by The_CDM – CONGRATULATIONS AND THANKS TO ALL FOR PLAYING!
Salutations, Savage World-builders! As we build up to our Campaign of the Year voting events, which will occur in the next few weeks, we thought we might get everyone in the voting mood with a special contest. We’ve chosen 5 Savage Worlds campaigns and will post about them on our Facebook and Twitter pages at Noon (Eastern). Vote for your favorites by sharing or re-tweeting the posts containing the campaign(s) you like best. The post with the most shares/re-tweets wins!
Pinnacle Entertainment Group, publishers of the Savage Worlds system has graciously donated a $25 store coupon as a prize for the winning campaign! Huzzah!
Obsidian Portal has a Discord!
Special thanks to Keryth987 and the many users who promoted the idea and gave their support – we now have a Discord server for OP! Use this invite link to get in, talk about games, promote your projects, and chat with the OP team. See you there!
