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Bryn Mawr

I’t s an exciting new month here at Obsidian Portal, and we’re starting it off with a bang! Ready? BANG! Ok that was fun. Now let’s move on to this month’s Featured Campaign, Bryn Mawr, a fan favorite by poet warrior, Dra8er.

Dra8er was kind enough to give us a small interview about his game, his players, and share some of the wisdom he’s collected over the years as a gamer. Let’s read on, shall we?

Obsidian Portal: How much of the campaign/system is original content developed by you and your players?

Dra8er: We are using the D&D 4th edition rule set with a fair amount of homebrewed rules. This is my/everyone in the groups first time playing 4th edition D&D. I was hard pressed to make the switch from 3.5 & figured a dungeon crawl would be a great place to start. I’d like to think that the campaign itself is all original, but I draw influence from my years of gaming and many things are inspired by those experiences I’m sure. I would be unable to point directly to any source. The whole idea is to have fun and create a great story together…

Obsidian Portal: Your campaign looks great; can you tell us more about it?

Dra8er: I wanted to do an “old school” dungeon crawl for 4th edition; I already had a theme in mind (Abandoned Dwarven Citadel) and went about fleshing the mechanics. It has slowly evolved over the last year as I crafted pieces of it. Its fluid as well, in that not everything is set in stone, it will evolve more as the players interact with it. I also wanted the small town to be fully fleshed out, giving the players another area to “role-play” should they need a break from the delve, so it will be an integral part of the campaign as well, not just a base of operations.

Obsidian Portal: Where do you get your inspiration the story?

Dra8er: I had crafted Bryn Mawr and the area as part of another storyline/campaign. In that campaign it is not an abandoned citadel, but a bastion for good in the savage north. During its use I had the idea, what would happen if this place was abandoned for a few decades? Tons of insidious thoughts began pouring out; I actually had to work hard to whittle them down to a logical point.

Obsidian Portal: How well do you know your players?

Dra8er: One player is my son, another is a friend from work (a newbie to table top RPG’s but Vet of World of Warcraft), another is an old colleague, and the others are new friends recruited for this campaign.

Obsidian Portal: What kinds of challenges are you faced with in your campaign?

Dra8er: Currently my only real challenge is time, or the lack there of. I have put a lot into it but there is always tons more that can be done & I never have that “phew OK finished” feeling. I also have spent a lot of time assembling and crafting 3D terrain for this game. I’ve always used miniatures, trinkets, battle-mats and the like, but I’ve never truly crafted an entire campaign with 3D scenery. I’ve bought and commissioned a lot of work for this and hoping it pays off in the end, so far so good! But this has presented itself to be difficult in that I can’t always find what I need and have had to “rewrite” a few encounters to fit the “scene”.

Obsidian Portal: What aspects of your campaign are you really proud of?

Dra8er: How well it has paid off in terms of outright fun so far, we’ve had a blast so far and everyone is always pumped to return. Just hope I can keep up the excitement. There are a few other “things” I’m particularly proud of, but I can’t discuss them yet as they would be spoilers, mwa ha ha ha…

Obsidian Portal: What have been the highlights of the campaign according to your players?

Dra8er: The overall flow of the game and our ability to not get bogged down in mechanics, I must admit I’ve lucked out and wound up with an excellent group of gamers!

Obsidian Portal: Where can we get more information on Savage Sorcery?

Dra8er: The “official” website is still being built and should be up soon (fingers crossed), but you can keep up to date on what we’re doing over on Facebook – Savage Sorcery.

Free System Friday: Bump in the Night

It’s Free System Friday! Tired of your current RPG system? Try a new one for free. Today’s system is Bump in the Night.

The time is now. The place is Earth, specifically New York City. They say it’s the city that never sleeps, and that’s true – though not in the way they mean it. You see, there are two types of people that live in the city. There are the day people who get up in the morning, have their coffee and go to work or to their classes and try to get by. Occasionally they become alarmed by the violence in the local news but when they get home they have their dinner and forget about it. Sometimes, when it gets very bad, they wish to God they had stayed in Ohio.

There are also the night people. They are the homeless, the prostitutes, the criminals. They are junkies too strung out to find a shelter to crash in, or the people who sell to the junkies. And sometimes, they are dinner.

Dinner to the other night people – the beasts in the shadows, the spirits of violence and blood. The hidden night predators spoken of in myth and legend, hiding in alleys sharpening their claws and flexing their wings. In Bump in the Night RPG, you’re one of them. What are you eating tonight?

What indeed. Grab the rules and play something new right now!

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!