Topic: Feature Requests / Do we really need...?

... to be able to create a new campaign/item/npc while looking at someone else’s profile?

Topic: Feature Requests / New game system

From what I have been hearing on the podcasts is that GW has a history of killing projects that have a highly positive response to that they feel could threaten sales in their core products. A pen and paper RPG that was wildly popular caused fear that the client base would move away from the entrenched figurine market to the less lucrative pen and paper RPG market.

Topic: Feature Requests / ADDED - cuts and comments

Would you be able to create a textile tag that would insert the div tag? As long as the CSS to make it work is added into the page’s template the user would not have to deal with any css.

Topic: Feature Requests / New game system

Especially since I believe the game sold out in the first day or two of being released. I guess someone thought it would be a threat to the core Warhammer 40k business. It is sad I was really wanting to use some of my old Call of Chuthulu adventures as seeds for Dark Heresy.

Topic: Feature Requests / Official discussion of wiki merging

I typically plan on having both the DM wiki and the Player wiki to have the same name when talking on the same subject. When the two are merged instead of producing two pages would it be impossible to put the dm stuff in the dm field and the player stuff in the player field as opposed to creating two similarly named pages? Once this change happens I will be doing just that manually anyway.

Topic: General Discussion / Why do you love RPGs?

It keeps my mind and improv agile. Gaming gives me a chance to interact with people I would rarely see otherwise. Inspires me to research the world I am living in to make my fantasy world more immersing.

Topic: Feature Requests / ADDED - cuts and comments

I thought up a simple’ish hack to get this working. Using div tags you could change the style of the front page so that tags of the “cut” class are hidden and on the style of the individual adventure logs the “cut” class does nothing.

It looks like the editor already allows us to enter div class=”cut” tags already all we need is the style on the adventure log to have .cut {display:none} somewhere in there. Just a thought.

Topic: Feature Requests / Comment Feature

A great feature, but definitely waiting for the comment link on the adventure log main page at the bottom of the post.

Again, Great jorb!

Topic: General Discussion / Need some polt advice

Well the setting is in a desert so trials of endurance are an option. I don’t like them so much because they rely so much on random chance as opposed to rp. But it is an option.

I kind of have an idea in my head of a groups of the priests trying to sabotage the trial, and the rest of the party working to thwart that.

I like the Idea of the fighting of illusionary monsters where the two party members are fighting each other, not quite sure how to pull it off without the players realizing strait off what is happening.

Anything else?

Topic: General Discussion / Need some polt advice

There doesn’t seem to be a good place to post this on this site and I am not currently an active member on any other RPG forums, so I will ask here.

I have recently introduced a plot where a player has taken up the vestments of a long dead hero. The Hero was the champion of a long forgotten sun god (Egyptian style) that was at war with a long dead Jackal god (Sett’ish) who’s champion created an empire a’la the ancient Assyrians (show 17). Both of the gods are now gone and mostly forgotten, the sun has ceased to be worshiped by the majority of the population who tend to see it as a curse.

What remains of the long dead civilization that worshiped these two gods is a few dozen priests, (more like gurus), and ruins of the Jackal Empire. In some of these ruins exist large obsidian orbs that contain portals to the negative energy plane. The energy could be channeled into a variety of necromantic weapons. A group of modern radicals are trying to gather the orbs to use for their own purposes. Eventually the players are going to be instrumental in the conflict with these radicals.

So a player has taken up the vestments of the long dead hero, but unlike the Hero of legend the character is one; female, and two; a member of a druidic order that is marginally opposed to the followers of the sun god. Also the hero of legend is supposed to have a female companion that bears his shield and provides comfort and shelter for the Hero. This roll is being played by the foreign, gay, male, elf.

This has thrown a major wrench in the priests of the sun god’s legends. So now the characters need to prove their worthy of the honor and the burden of carrying the vestments. So I need to come up with some trials for the two characters that not only will prove their worth in wielding their destiny, but also can involve the other party members in some way.

Any body have any thoughts or questions that would help them formulate suggestions?

Topic: Feature Requests / ADDED - cuts and comments

It has been mentioned elsewhere but I couldn’t find it in the feature request forum so I am officially requesting it. I would like some form of cutting mechanism. A tag or something that will cut off the test of an Adventure log on the adventure log page and in the removed text’s place a link to the individual log’s page. In a recent log http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/381/adventure-log/episode-2 the log was three screens long or so. With a few logs like this the front page will get pretty long in a short period.

Also some way of limiting the amount of logs displayed would be nice. Even if you have short log entries, after a few dozen again you get the long load time.

And the ability to comment would be nice. Right now the communication tends to be one way. I post an adventure log, you read it and maybe you send me a message on it. Or post an NPC or Item and perhaps you use it at some point. Unless you send me a private message I have no Idea if anyone has found my work valuable, or helpful, or anything. And it takes 3 clicks and a copy/paste before you can even begin typing the private message.

I request the ability to comment on an adventure log or item or npc, similar to how one does on a site like livejournal or deviantart. On the adventure logs they would only visible on the log’s individual page. Perhaps each entry on the Adventure log main page would have a comment counter similar to live journal tacked on the end of each entry.

Topic: General Discussion / DnD 4th edition

That would be GLEEMAX. I still have no idea why they are basing their “Innovative Online community” of a Magic Card from one of the spoof sets that is a master of mass mind control. Or maybe there was a good reason for the name.

As for the new version, yeah 8 years after 3.0 it is probably due for a new version of D&D. What I am worrying about the most is whether the new system will expand my potential for gaming or constrict it. 3.0 brought me back into D&D after years of being fed up with the constraints of 2nd ed. It opened up the possibility for wildly different stories and characters. It really brought me back to the game table and creative acts in general. Because of it I am writing and drawing more beyond what I do as a DM.

But from alot of what I am hearing about 4th ed, that freedom to create expansive worlds is being diminished. As the transition to 4th takes place innovative games like Mutants and Masterminds and Etherscope may not be joining us in the new version. With some of the licensing changes in 3rd ed we lost some good d20 producers. Avalanche press comes to mind, their Viking age and Celtic age books are so good (cover art non withstanding) they don’t sit on my gaming shelf, but my historical reference shelf. With the tightening of the license and refocusing the mechanics how many off shoot games that have some real value will be locked out?

Dungeons and Dragons has always about killing monsters and stealing their loot. It is what the game was designed for, and it is what almost all of the rules revolve around. With 3rd ed it showed the potential of being so much more, it could support campaigns with depth and emotion. I hope WotC does not decide to sacrifice that for a shiny, streamlined, killing machine of a rules system.

That and I really don’t want to give up my Kobold Shocktroopers

Topic: Feature Requests / Restrict Pages to Players

No the, even with the publish option unchecked I can read through everything in your player wiki, adventure log. Actually this does bring up a good point, not just about copyrighted images but can I publish the stat block of an NPC that I have created using stats from a non OGL book? Lets say I create a Warlock (D&D, Complete Arcane) character with a fiendish symbiont (D&D, Fiend Folio) that has a pair of Acrobat boots (D&D, Magic Item Compendium). If I publish his stat blocks, as well as a description of his abilities, am I violating copyright? If I put up descriptors of his incantations, which are in no way covered under OGL or the D20 SRDs, can WoTC come after me? Or this site?

Topic: General Discussion / A character building exercise

Shen Zhang
haven’t filed his information out yet. But will be in the near future

• Is nervous about climbing trees, while growig up he had a hard time determining branch strength and would often break branches and fall.
• Likes to add a bit of grain alcohol to his hibiscus tea
• Keeps his long hair in a tight braid coiled under his hat. His siblings used to use it as a leash when playing.
• Enjoys the road for a short time, after a few days of travel bemoans the lack of civilization.
• Gets annoyed when people call his practice kata’s “dancing”
• Doing figures gives him a headache. Especially those involving large sums of money.
• Dislikes wearing the same clothing for more than a day or two. Becomes iritable if he does not have a chance to change.

Topic: Feature Requests / Wiki Page is too narrow.

I agree with geekevolved, presenting your request for a feature in a combative tone is not the best way to approach and issue. But I agree that some way to change the width would be handy. The fixed 3 columns design, while very web2.0ish can be very limiting. Unfortunately I have no idea how one would implement a means to change that other than getting the ability to edit your page’s stylesheet. Which is a little more direct control than I think the dev team is comfortable with.

Topic: Help and Tips / What exactly does friending someone mean?

So how many posts before a friending from me won’t creep you out FemmeLeigion? :)

Good to know. thanks.

Topic: General Discussion / How did you get here?

Another who got pointed here from Dragons Landing Inn

Topic: Feature Requests / Headings and anchors

I would like to be able to set header lines. I have tried with textile and for some reason it assumes all text after the header tag is supposed to be a header, I can’t seem to close the header tag with textile. In other wiki software headers are one line affairs where you put a series of ”+ ” signs at the head of the line to set that line as a header.

+ Header 1
this would be plain text
++ Header 2
this would be more plane text
+++ Header 3
this would be even more planar text

In other wikis they have taken this functionality and dropped an anchor at the same time as the header tag when translating the wiki markup to html. That way they can add a table of contents tag ([[toc]] in wikispaces) that generates a table of headings that you can use to jump down the page. there is a good example of this in action at http://art110.wikispaces.com/Syllabus+08s

Just one more thought.

Topic: Help and Tips / What exactly does friending someone mean?

I have gotten a friend request and I am unsure what friending someone will mean. Will it invite them to my game? Or will it just give me an easy way to find their bio?

Topic: Feature Requests / Create a page from a wiki entry

Yay, I have good ideas and am not just nitpicking the developers to death! :)

I kid. I really do like this site and am glad that my thought have had such a great reception on your end Micah.

Topic: Feature Requests / Linking DM and Player Wiki pages

I really like the idea of having two separate pages, one for players and one for DMs. That allows me to have a information for one topic segregated into DM and Player information. If I am detailing a nightclub I want the players to have access to the descriptions of the parts they have seen and some of the NPCs they know that frequent it. I also want a page that details all the NPCs that frequent it, their relationships, the secrets of the night club, and any other DM privileged information. I like that I can have the entry in the DM wiki and the Players wiki have the same name, that way it is easier to reference later. Combining the two into the same wiki would require me to create a taxonomy that will make my DM pages distinct in name from the Player pages.

The only way I can see combining them into the same wiki is being able to mark up text on a page as DM only. In this case it will only render the marked up text when the page is being viewed by a DM. While this would be nice (and probably a bit complex to code) it is not strictly necessary.

In conclusion. I like the current setup. I like that I can have two identically named pages, one for DMs, and one for players. I just would like, as a DM the ability to quickly switch between the two.

And I realize that I really don’t qualify as anyone else. :)
So I hope others will comment as well.

Topic: Feature Requests / Can wiki stubs and pages be made to work in character/item descriptions?

While I can understand the difficulty of creating this functionality it is definitely in the top 3 of most desirable features. I am wondering how the two different systems (wiki/log vs item/character) differ. Are you using a pre-existing system for the item/character half or one you are writing yourself? If the functionality exists on the wiki/log to test if a page exists from an external place would it be possible to add to the text parsing of the item/character page a function that tests the existence of a page in the wiki/log half then add a weblink that points to the appropriate page. It would be kinda cludgy but would be a first step that would automate the process of adding them as weblink.

Of course this requires the testing function to exist in the wiki/log sides api. Also since I cannot see the code I could be completely misrepresenting the possibly of this capability.

Topic: Feature Requests / Linking DM and Player Wiki pages

As a DM I often will create a page with the same name in the DM wiki as the Player Wiki with notes on the topic for just the DM to see. Like location information that they players don’t know, things like that. Would it be possible to add two buttons next to the wiki page title, past the edit and delete buttons that are only visible to the DM. One would be title Players View and when clicked would load the wiki page of the same name from the players wiki. The second would be DM View, and when clicked it would load the wiki page of the same name from the DM wiki. That way if I want to create a page in the DM Wiki with notes on an entry in the players wiki all I would have to do is click the button and generate the page. And vice versa, as the players progress in the plot I can click the players view and generate the page from notes in the DM wiki.

Topic: Feature Requests / Create a page from a wiki entry

Currently I can create a new wiki page in either the adventure log or the player/DM wiki by just putting up square brackets around a word or words I want to create a new page for. I would love it to be possible to do the same with an item or character. Lets say I am writing a journal entry and I introduced a new NPC. Currently I have to stop what I am doing, in a new tab/window create a new character, save it, then copy the slug tag, return to the adventure log, and paste the slug into place.

What I would like to do is just type out the slug [[:shortname|Longname]] or just [[:shortname]]. Then continue typing the entry. Once I am done I save the document and instead of replacing the new slugs with “Content Not Found: shortname” but a red link like a new wiki page does. When the red link is checked perhaps a small popup message window with two/three buttons asking whether the new slug points to a character or item. Then the create item/character (depending on response) page loads with the Name and Url-friendly name fields autofilled with Longname (if present) and shortname respectively.

It would definitely speed up my work flow.

Topic: General Discussion / Paper or Digital?

So I recently joined a new game and have been having fun. We slayed a pyroclastic dragon and to describe the beast’s horde the DM pulled out “The Mother of all Treasure Tables” by tabletop adventures and necromancer games. And the loot was fascinating. Next session while we were waiting for game to start I flipped through it and was immediately impressed. So I asked to borrow it and used it to generate a horde for a dragon in a game I’ll be running soon. After using it for 2 days I decided that I had to own a copy for myself.

Here was my quandary: purchase the paper version, or the PDF version at DriveThroughRpg. While the Paper version is more portable and harder to loose, it is a very wordy book, with lots of descriptions that I would be copying out on a regular basis. I hate duplicating data by hand which this book would require to get full use of. But the PDF is pretty spendy. And until now I had never been comfortable buying gaming PDFs, but this product made it so enticing.

I eventually went with the PDF. But it made me start thinking about PDF gaming books. Where they fit in the DM’s toolbox, and what works better as a PDF or a paper book. What is the rest of your experiences? How do you think WotC’s publishing the d20 SRD’s influenced you in adopting this medium (if you have)? What sort of reservations do you have over the palce of gamingin PDFs in the industry?