Blog Archives

Beta Testers Wanted – Dynamic Character Sheets

Dynamic Character Sheets was our #1 requested feature in our poll a while back, and we’ve had a chance to do some work on it. It’s an exciting time, but we want to get some feedback and iterate a little before we push it out to everyone.

Ultimately, we don’t want to be in the business of maintaining a character sheet (or six) for every game system we support. Besides consuming way too much time, we haven’t played all these games, so we’d probably get the sheets wrong anyway.

To combat this problem, we’re trying to lay the groundwork that will allow for user-submitted character sheet templates, called Dynamic Sheet Templates (DST). A DST is composed of the following:

• An HTML file laying out the markup.
• A CSS file that corresponds to the HTML, styling it up to look nice.
• (Optional) Some image assets that are used by the CSS (or directly in the HTML)
• (Optional) A javascript file for auto-filling values on the sheet (ie. calculate BAB from STR and level). Note: Some knowledge of jQuery will probably be required, but only the very basics.

What we need right now is a handful of beta testers who are skilled in HTML/CSS (and JS/jQuery, if possible) to start playing with the underlying system. We need a couple people to make simple DSTs and tell us how easy it is to work with and toss out ideas of what we could do better. We’ll be releasing a “developer’s kit” (a handful of files + a README…) in a couple days and we’d like to line up some testers to run through the process.

If you’ve got the skillset, and you’re interested in helping out, please send me an email and make sure to note how much experience you have with HTML/CSS. Creating a DST isn’t all that hard, but if you want it to look good then you’ll need some basic positional CSS skill.

Update: The response has been exciting, to say the least. I think we have enough beta testers for now, but if you’re still interested, come to the forum thread and join the discussion.

New System Thursday: All Flesh Must be Eaten

It’s New System Thursday! The day of the week where we add a new system to our list of over 145+ RPG systems and settings! Today’s new system is a cult classic. It’s….

All Flesh Must Be Eaten is a role-playing game set in a world of survival horror. A world where the dead have come back from their graves. You have no clue as to why they have returned… but one thing is certain…

They crave living flesh!

So what are you waiting for? Get some ammo, grab your gun, find some survivors, and make an All Flesh Must Be Eaten campaign now!

Videos in your campaign

We announced this in the newsletter, but in case you missed it you can now embed videos in your campaign!

You can embed any video hosted on YouTube, Vimeo, or a handful of other 3rd parties. Just look for the little film icon in the editor toolbar. Put in the URL to the video, and you’re good to go!

Please be judicious about your use of videos. A campaign trailer or intro video on your campaign homepage is a great idea. Cramming your favorite music videos onto every page? Not so much…

Free System Friday, Newsies & Pickpockets

Extra, Extra, Read all about it! It’s Free System Friday, and that means that we’re bringing you the best new thing in free to play RPG systems. Today’s offering is a limited time one my friends, as it is the Beta release of Newsies & Pickpockets!

Being a game of imagination, role-playing and wonder by Miguel de Luis, on the
adventures of a bunch of kids earning their pluck by their own in an Edwardian
world filled with crazed inventors, fagins, strange conspiracies and exotic
foreigners from countries you never heard about and an ounce of steampunk.
¦ Try by accident a flying machine and check if the moon is on fire!
¦ Dodge bullies and pickpockets.
¦ Expose corrupt politicians.
¦ Find the true story of your real family.
¦ Look for treasure in the sewers, mind the living statues.
¦ Live at the Newsboy Lodge.
¦ Travel to exotic locations.
¦ And more, much more.

So what are you waiting for kid? Get out there and Sell those papers!

P.S. Since this is a beta test, please send Miguel your feedback and thanks!

Welcome to the Real Time Web

Today Obsidian Portal joins the Real Time Web, with full support for PubSubHubub for the Adventure Log Atom feeds! We’re pushing the Adventure Log feeds to Superfeedr, which then relays them in (near) real-time to any interested subscribers.

What does that mean for you? Well…probably not all that much. If you subscribe to the Atom feed for your adventure log via Google Reader or another PubSubHubbub enabled reader, it will update much faster. Other than that, you probably won’t see any difference.

So if it doesn’t have a huge impact, why did we do it? Simple: We’re geeks and we like to do geeky stuff. I’m sure all of you understand 😉

Campaign Backups – A Happy Ending

This should be the final chapter of the campaign backups saga (see Part 1 and Part 2…or don’t, it doesn’t really matter).

After implementing the basic version, I posted a challenge to the community to come up with an XSLT for the backup to make it look like something other than computer vomit. I think it was well under 24 hours later that Kyle had a working stylesheet that did an awesome job of formatting the backup.

Now, when you download your backup, it comes as a .zip file that contains everything you need to view and navigate locally. Just unzip the file and load the .xml file from there in a browser. Voila! A totally slick local copy of your campaign.

This closes the book (for now) on the campaign backups, as they now cover the main functionality (ie. you get your data), with the added bonus that your data is actually in a usable format. In the future, we may revisit things to see about adding images and maps, but for now, I’m going to put a big check in the win column.

Thanks again to Kyle for all his hard work. If you download a backup and like the way it looks, drop by his blog and tell him thanks!