Obsidian Portal
By Lawrence “darth_kwan_doh” Grabowski
Obsidian Portal is a website that assists in many (all?) aspects of running an RPG in a huge variety of systems. You can locate other people or groups, keep track of the development and running of your game, and save it all for posterity. Additionally they have a blog, a monthly caption contest, and a variety of other features, such as a campaign of the month.
I forget how I found Obsidian Portal (OP) originally. I think there was an ad for it somewhere. Anyways, I signed up and started watching the video tutorials of the various tools, such as the wiki, and ultimately decided to give it a go. The first thing I found was that it was much easier to start a campaign from scratch on OP than to move one onto the website. Creating entries for everything I had sitting in a word document was kind of a pain. After I had gotten past that, I found it quite easy to add new entries into the wiki, both during planning as well as during game-play, and to cross reference them to other entries.
One of the most interesting tabs on the campaign manager is the Adventure Log. It allows people to make posts other people can read. In my Legend of the Five Rings game, we used it not only to get a summary of each adventure from different characters’ perspectives, but also to advance character agendas that didn’t warrant a whole sidequest (passing on secret information for example). I also used it to show the characters the fruits of their victories, a shrine and feast in their honor, or consequences of their failure, an unsuccessful investigation resorting to torture in an effort to find a criminal.
Aside from the Wiki and the Adventure Log, the two tabs I found most important were Characters and Items. You can write-up all your relevant characters and items, slowly making them public as the game progresses. It also allows, if you paid for an Ascendant membership, (which you should do since it’s only 40 dollars for the whole year and helps support Obsidian Portal), for secret information that only the GM and the player who controls the character can see.
For those who are more artistically inclined, there is a great deal of potential for customizing your campaign page: banners, pictures, etc. (here’s one I found recently, http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/star-wars-knights-of-the-old-republic). I am neither artistically inclined nor patient enough to wander around the web finding cool things to post, in addition to being of rather bland taste, and have made very little use of this option. However, the Campaign of the Month is almost always visually as well as narratively interesting. You can also get custom artwork done for your campaign through Obsidian Portal’s partners at AvatarArt; you even get a discount!
I found myself using the Map function least. Conceptually I like it; I just haven’t been in a situation where I needed a permanent map yet.
The utility of Obsidian Portal extends well beyond the aforementioned Campaign Editor and general RPG website bits. You can search for and friend players as well as games being played under a particular system. This allows you to search a much larger database of players than your local store as well as find games in specific systems to play in or simply read for enjoyment. Remember that Adventure Log tab? I got a kick when I discovered I had a few people following my campaign and experiencing it through what me and my players were writing. It’s on hiatus at the moment, but you can find it here: http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/chipkugan. A critique here, however, while you can search geographically for games, you can’t actually see what system is being played, (since it displays the campaign title rather than the system name), unless you actually click on the link.
For me, the most interesting parts of Obsidian Portal are related to campaign management, but there are several other features on the website. There is the previously mentioned Campaign of the Month, which highlights one of the campaigns on the site and features an interview with one of the participants. There are also a variety of articles relating to RPGs and using Obsidian Portal, such as ways to encourage players to use the Obsidian Portal tools. There is also a newsletter that nets you discounts on different PDFs from DriveThruRPG.
Obsidian Portal is the sort of website RPGs have needed for some time. It allows the construction and running of campaigns in a plethora of systems. It allows you to find other players to game with. It allows you to share your game with other people. They even have a deal with an art company who will produce portraits for your characters. My recommendation, drop the money for an Ascendant membership and go to town.
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