Blog Archives
d20Monkey Caption Contest – May 11′
Update:
Wolvensense has won with: “Next time, I need you to be Johnny-on-the-Spot with those Goodberries.” Be sure to check the final product out at d20Monkey.com
April Showers Bring May…Murderous Demonic Clown Doors?
Alright everyone, here’s the strip for the month of May! Submit your captions, though/word bubbles below in the comments and may the hilarity ensue! Remember if you’re chosen you get 3 months of Ascendant time and your comic will get posted on d20Monkey for all the world to see!
FSF: Call of Cthulhu Quick-Start
It’s been a while since the last Free System Friday so I thought I’d toss another one your way this week. Let’s keep it short and sweet shall we? Chances are most of you know a thing or two about Cthulhu mythos and if not then you can definitely get started here.
You might also want to read a short story or two by H.P. Lovecraft himself before diving into the Cthulhu game to help set proper mood and tone, think of it as awesome homework if you will.
The Call of Cthulhu s about to celebrate it’s 30th year as a tabletop RPG, so if you haven’t gotten in on the action yet (like me) now would be a great time to do so! Head on over to the Chaosmium website and pick up the Call of Cthulhu Quick-Start package – a game that can only end in tears, and by tears I mean insanity and/or a horrific demise for the PC’s and perhaps the entire world.
Until next time my fellow curious investigators…if there is a next time.
Cthulhu fhtagn!
Looking for a game in San Francisco
My day job has me travelling to San Francisco from 4/9 to 4/16. I looked on the big map, and there are plenty of campaigns listed in that area. I’ll have some free time in the evenings, and I’m wondering if there are any gamers in the area who would be willing to entertain a guest.
Is this near you?
I’m willing to put myself to work, and I’d be happy to run a 1-shot. I love Dark Heresy, and I’ve got a 1-shot that I’m planning to run at GenCon. Otherwise, I’m happy to run a guest PC, an NPC, or even just sit and observe.
If you’re a gaming group in the San Francisco area and interested in having a guest, shoot me an email. I’d love to meetup and do some gaming!
The Spelljoined: Campaign of the Month
Today we bring to you guys, a truly awesome showcase of campaign depth and intricacy. The very dedicated and friendly DungeonMasterLoki shares with us a bit about his game, his players and gives us some sound advice. The Spelljoined campaign has been going on since before some of us were born! So ‘ave a seat cutter, and stop rattlin’ your bone box for a just minute and park your ears right here!
New Feature: Case sensitive tags
Many of you have noticed that your tags aren’t fully case sensitive. In fact, the chosen case of a tag often seems very random. I can assure you that it’s not…but that’s not really what you want to hear. What you really want to hear is that now we will be respecting the case of your tags, so “cleric” and “Cleric” will now be distinct and you can choose your casing however you want.
The downside is that all existing tags will remain. This means that if you have a lot of pages tagged with a particular case, then switch to a different one, you will end up with two different tags. In other words, you can now end up with tags for both “cleric” AND “Cleric”. That’s probably not what you want.
That’s why we recently released DragonTagger, the bulk tag editing tool that works with our API. With DragonTagger you can quickly rename your tags to match whatever case you want. It’s not exactly fast (or pretty) but should do the trick.
Enjoy!
Are we too D&D?
We try to stay neutral, like the Swiss
The beginning
When I first started, I knew there would have to be sacrifices made. Either it would be completely neutral, and therefore useless to everyone, or it would be biased toward one system or another. There’s a wide spectrum in there, and I decided that whenever a question came up, I would bias the system toward D&D, which I was playing at the time.
The best example I can think of is that we added race and level to the character sheets. They were freeform fields, so you could type “Elf” or “Dwarf” if you wanted. Or, if you were in a totally different system you could type “Eldar” or “Metahuman” or just leave it blank. It was up to you. Still, the concept of race and level is admittedly a D&D centric concept.
The shift to neutrality
As I migrated away from D&D to other systems, so too did my views on how Obsidian Portal should work. I realized that the central elements to all RPGs were the characters, adventures, and campaign world. As such, I focused on making those entities the core of the site. We politely declined requests to add more detail and fields to the character sheets and instead added things like the quick select popup to help you more easily interweave your story and characters. When the time was right, we released the Dynamic Character Sheets, thereby saying “Make the characters what you want!” Subsequently, we removed race and level from the character sheets, instead deferring that to the DSTs where it belonged. We want characters to embody the story, not the stats.
The commitment to neutrality
I started out thinking we would bias ourselves toward D&D, but I’ve become much more committed to overall neutrality. I’m convinced that the future of RPGs does not belong to any one company, brand, or game. Likewise, the future of Obsidian Portal, in supporting the RPG community, does not belong with any one game. So, when I’m told that we’re being too D&D specific, this is a cause for concern. What do you think? Are we too biased toward one game or another? Or, on the opposite end, are we trying too hard to please everyone all the time, and therefore offering a mediocre experience? We feel like we’ve charted the correct course so far, but I’m curious to hear what others think.
