1
Dec

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.
———-

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)

Award Winning!

Gold ENnie for Best Website 09'-11'


Silver ENnie for Best Website, Best Podcast 2012-2013
Petrified Articles
Categories
© Copyright 2010-2024 Words In The Dark. All rights reserved. Created by Dream-Theme — premium wordpress themes. Proudly powered by WordPress.