Topic: Help and Tips / ADDED - Seeing Fans

And it turns out that in my whole group only my wife is a fan of my The Tide campaign. Sheesh.

Let the beatings begin!

Topic: Help and Tips / ADDED - Seeing Fans

It’s there now in the sidebar. I’ve wanted to get to it for a while, and now it’s done! :)

Cool, thanks Micah!

Topic: Help and Tips / ADDED - Seeing Fans

I am just wondering which of my group to chastise because in my current campaign there are 5 out of 6 of us on OP but the campaign only has 3 fans.

Your only real option for now is to go the profile for each of your players and see who’s got your campaign listed under their “Favorite Campaigns” on the right hand side below Friends & Friends’ Activities.

Not that I condone such things. ; )

Topic: Help and Tips / ADDED - Seeing Fans

You’re trying to see who your existing fans are, right? Unfortunately, they have not added that functionality yet.

I asked about it way back here so I suppose that the feature is still in the ‘to-do’ queue.

Topic: General Discussion / Featured Campaign - Beldon

@redstar: The world of the Thief games seems perfect for a roleplaying campaign, period – and for an all-rogues game it’s probably untouchable.

@Flatscan: Don’t worry, I intend to. ; )

Topic: General Discussion / Featured Campaign - Beldon

The seed for Cold Blood was planted when I first read about the copy of Sigil that the baatezu were rumored to be building outside of Dis. It seemed like the perfect thing to spur a campaign, and almost nothing was ever written about it, so I felt like it would be easy to make mine. (This just came out in the last session, if you’re wondering why you haven’t read about it yet.)

Who’s in charge of building the thing? What do they have to do to make it work? Can it work? Who wants to see it fail? What would they do to stop it? Are the PCs gonna want that kind of help? Coming up with some answers for these questions early on provided me with a framework.

After that, it was really a matter of going through the Planescape adventures and sourcebooks (and the v.3.5 books as well) in search of inspiration and things to steal, then moving those pieces around until it resembled something like a story. Connecting the dots with original material, and weaving in the stuff my players have provided, has created the semblance of a cohesive, finished product, as long as you don’t look at it too closely.

As for why, I was a player in Jennifer’s game who wanted to get back in the DM’s chair, and pay her back for the good times in the process. And since her game was on OP already, I had the site to help me pull everything together.

Topic: General Discussion / why is no one looking at my stuff :(

I think most of us are busy with our own campaigns, yeah.

But don’t feel bad, even my own attempt to pander to the internet’s bottomless appetite for drow porn hasn’t generated any buzz. Mind you, I also tried to get ready for the demand for tiefling porn that I remain sure 4E will bring.

Topic: General Discussion / Cream of the Crop?

So I see that the front page’s Top 5 has been replaced with a “Cream of the Crop” feature. I was just wondering how it works. Does it show a different campaign every time the page is loaded or something?

Topic: General Discussion / Weresharks

\m/ o.o \m/

Topic: General Discussion / "Evil campaigns"

I’ve never participated in an evil game, but I’ve considered it. In particular, I’ve always wanted to run a dark side Star Wars campaign, which only got worse when they released the Dark Side Sourcebook (and it’ll come back around when The Force Unleashed comes out). Here are some of the things that crossed my mind the last time I worked on the idea:

There are many roleplayers who use evil PCs as an excuse to act out against the other characters, but hopefully you can see them coming. ; )

I think that “evil” campaigns would best be designed as short, finite affairs, so there’s an immediate goal that is demonstrably easier for the PCs to achieve as a group. If the campaign’s a success, you build a second arc, and so on.

If there are several evil factions or groups for PCs to belong to, conflict will likely result if they belong to different factions. Of course, a single patron is no guarantee – the PCs may compete and conspire to become her favorite minion, or to replace her themselves. If the players won’t budge, a common cause might help with party unity issues.

And I’ve thought about the character development issue as well. The Dark Side Sourcebook suggests ending the campaign by either 1) redeeming the characters, or 2) letting them go out in a blaze of glory. The latter, though you don’t particularly see it in Star Wars, was mandatory for gangster films & the like in the days of Hollywood’s Production Code, and usually seems to make for a memorable finale.

I, too, wonder if anyone’s ever pulled this off successfully.

Topic: Feature Requests / New Feature - The Big Map - easily find games in your area

That’s… wow. Just wow. Very cool, Micah.

Is there a link to it from the front page, or anywhere else?

Topic: Help and Tips / Tips on formatting and style of a campaign?

The “read the rest of this entry” tag is:

<!—more—>

Those should be double hyphens on either side of ‘more,’ not long dashes. Textile formatting keeps putting a strikethrough.

It’s totally invisible when you’re viewing the complete post, so you can drop it in the middle of a paragraph if that’s more dramatic.

Topic: Bug Reports / Ratings Bug(s)

Thanks to Micah and Ryan both – the site’s rising pokiness was bothering me too, and keeping that under control is a lot more important than the ratings system anyway.

Topic: Feature Requests / What's going on with the rating system?

I think something is wrong with the ratings, as I reported here.

Topic: Bug Reports / Ratings Bug(s)

The NPCs I’ve voted for are also listed as items I’ve voted for. Take a look.

Now, take a look at Olena. Under ‘User Ratings’ on the right hand side of the screen, you can see the rating I originally gave her. But it’s not part of the score at the top of the screen. The same thing is true for Kyrian and Demaris, for example. It also won’t let me re-rate any of these characters.

And when I first went to look at my profile, all of the ‘items’ listed under items were NPCs, not items. So I navigated to an item I’d voted on before, Spellreaver, and found no rating there. I was able to apply a new rating, but when I returned to the profile, Spellreaver was listed as a rated NPC, as well as an item.

Help!

Topic: General Discussion / Superhero

If Hellboy counts as a superhero, mark me down for Hellboy. He’s perfectly suited to the kinds of stories Mike Mignola likes to write – and I like to read.

Topic: Introduce Yourself / Hello, and Welcome to Tonight's Programming

It seems like there are a lot Sigil/Planescape games around here. I’m beginning to suspect a conspiracy…

That’s exactly what the Illuminated sect wants you to think. They just don’t want you looking in their direction. ; )

Your game looks great, DW; I’ll be keeping an eye on it. It may have only been a sidebar in the DMG but I’m relieved that Sigil is part of the 4E cosmology. It’s such a magnificent setting – I’m pretty sure my next campaign will be Planescape as well.

Topic: Introduce Yourself / Hi there

The sled he lost when he was a boy is made of people – and it’s also his father!

Topic: General Discussion / Seen on OP

I really like zero’s 4E template on his Shadowfell campaign site. I will have to ‘borrow’ that code when I get to 4E.

Topic: General Discussion / Weresharks

Try Lost Empires of Faerun; the WotC website says that they should be in there. If I were at home, I could confirm that…

Topic: Feature Requests / New Feature - PC/NPC quick lookup

Hey, that is cool. Thanks Micah!

Topic: Introduce Yourself / Should we start a Texas gamer thread?

Sweet! Pflugerville’s not too far from SA, if you’re using the overland movement rules. ; )

Zero’s in Austin, too, IIRC.

Topic: General Discussion / Martin Ralya of Treasure Tables returns to the blogosphere

It just seems that there isn’t really that much to say about GM’ing, and it’s all been said before.

It’s true that most (if not all) of what they’ve covered has been done before, on Treasure Tables or elsewhere. And I’ve been hitting several different RPG blogs and podcasts of late, so I can’t say that the Stew is really standing out from any of the others.

But this is the first time that this stuff has come up while I’m actually running a game, so it all seems fresh enough to me. And I do read the comments, even if I’m terrible about commenting back on them.

Topic: General Discussion / DnD 4th

I just wanted to let people know that you can get the three core books from amazon as a set for something like $55.

I pre-ordered the set from Amazon at least three weeks in advance, then got an e-mail the day it was supposed to ship out telling me that my order was gonna be delayed by at least two weeks.

So, yeah, my FLGS got (a lot more of) my money instead.

Topic: General Discussion / DnD 4th

I think it’ll be easier on me and the group than v.3.5, once I figure out how to play it without a battlemat, or else figure out how to use a battlemat in a chat-based game. The online Game Table might be the solution, depending on the cost.

I also need to figure out if I can use the Great Wheel cosmology with the 4E rules – I’m running a Planescape game, so that’s important to me – and if not, how I can transition it to the modern cosmology.

At least Sigil’s still around, somewhere.