How do you do, OP?

JonathonVolkmer

Dear OP

Salutations! It seems I have been remiss in failing to introduce myself here despite having been a member for nearly nine months. While that's a fine gestation period for a human being, it's a bit on the long side for an online persona. So: hi, how are you all? I've been lurking and poking about, and I may just start speaking up a bit more as I get ready to use Obsidian Portal in an active campaign for the first time this fall.

I've been playing pen and paper RPGs since my freshman year of high school and running them for my friends since the year after that (which comes to about 10 years now, if you're curious about my age). We started, as I'm sure many others did, with Dungeons & Dragons, specifically Editions 3/3.5. I converted to Savage Worlds almost exclusively somewhere around 7 years ago, although I have played the occasional 3.5 or D20 Modern game (and, briefly, a lone 4E game) since then.

I prefer running games in SW for bookkeeping reasons (and also out of habit and familiarity, at this point), although I like to learn new systems and then heartlessly scavenge the best bits of them for my own dark purposes. A game run by me (or a character played by me) generally means a gray-scale of morality, as opposed to black and white good versus evil, and I hope that that feeling shows through in my writing about those things.

Well, that's my history as a gamer in a fairly large nutshell.

Sincerely,
JTV

arsheesh

Welcome to the Portal Jonathon (hey, and better late than never)! I have heard of, but am unfamiliar with Savage Worlds. Aside from it's being somewhat ethically gray, what type/genre of a campaign will you be running? Once you get your site set up and feel that it is ready for an unveiling, you should post a link to it. There's a solid group of regular contributors to the forums who I'm sure would enjoy taking taking a look at it and perhaps offering a helpful critique. Also, if you have any questions don't hesitate to ask.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

JonathonVolkmer

Thanks, Arsheesh, I appreciate it!

The campaign I plan on running this fall is called "Beyond the Pale":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/beyond-the-pale, and the site/wiki are just about as good to go as they can be without characters or plot spoilers. If nothing else, I'd like advice on how to improve the graphical appearance/functionality of the site. I've got the basics of Textile and HTML down, and I've flipped through a few tutorials, but all I have thus far are my own opinions.

Thanks,
JTV

P.S. Congratulations on having the Campaign of the Month last month! Your site looks fantastic, and the campaign sounds like a lot of fun.

gaaran

Welcome Jon! I just checked out your site and I've been impressed with the amount of information you've put up for a campaign that hasn't even started yet. It looks pretty good and well organized too! Two things that i find really make a page pop are graphic banners. Nothing fancy, even just some stylized text, or text with a background or picture, all with a coherent theme really bring out the page. Also, just images in general, in the brief look I took, it looks like some of the game takes place in New York? You can find some pretty amazing images on google for the big apple, and they really bring it to life for the players, to be able to see what they're imagining. That's just my two cents, but you're well on your way already, when I have more time, I'm going to look through your wiki some more, looks like interesting stuff!

sandman

Welcome Jonathon!

If you are interested in graphical appearance of your site, I invite you to check my campaign: "Las Cr

JonathonVolkmer

Thanks gaaran - I have a tendency to go overboard on the details sometimes, as much for the pleasure I get from writing as for the chance a player will read it. I can tell that's good advice, because I don't know why I didn't think of it myself; I'll have to spend some time looking around for good eye-catchers. Oddly enough, I was actually just looking over your wiki because I saw that arsheesh had nominated it for CotM - creepy timing. Very impressive, by the way, I can definitely see what you mean about stylized text and backgrounds making things easier to read.

And thanks to you as well, sandman, I'll check it out! I can always use another chance to practice my own Spanish, even if it's just reading and not speaking (4 years of high school study, and 2 years of college, and I'm still no more fluent than a drunken five year old). At a glance, it looks like you've got quite a bit going on, so I'm sure it'll keep me busy for a while.

JimTriche

Welcome welcome! As far as a graphic style, I'd say go with a really flashy banner of some sort then work the HTML and textile around a theme that matches. Your campaign is set modern so you have a ton to choose from. Click view source often, and see if you can't pick out the code you want from other people's wikis. Also, if you know kinda what you want to do, but not how to do it, ask here in the forums. They sometime move a bit slow, but the advice quality is top notch. I would have had nothing had it not been for early help from others here. My first attempt at putting graphics in the background made my campaign nearly unreadable, but again asking for advice here helped immensely. You have a good sidebar there already so I know putting the code in correctly won't be an issue for you. (I can't read Spanish either, but sandman's site is one of my favorites, it's gorgeous no?)
Happy day!

sandman

bq). And thanks to you as well, sandman, I'll check it out! I can always use another chance to practice my own Spanish, even if it's just reading and not speaking (4 years of high school study, and 2 years of college, and I'm still no more fluent than a drunken five year old).

Hahaha, don't worry Jonathon, I just thought you might enjoy looking at some nice images (at least I think they look pretty decent for what I was going for). As for the language, well, I also found learning english difficult at first, but after studying it for 10 years I think I'm ok now.

bq. I can

arsheesh

Hello again Jonathon. See what I mean? "Ask and you shall receive." I just finished giving your new site a casual once over, and am intrigued by its premise. As previously mentioned, I am unfamiliar with Savage Worlds. Is it a modern supernatural horror game? Also, you write like a scholar (I'm referring here to your description of the Church, and your use of words such as "metaphysical" and "co-terminus"). What is your background? Are you a student of history, philosophy or theology perhaps?

On another note, regarding your query about graphics, in my campaigns I have made extensive use of "GIMP":http://www.gimp.org/ to manipulate, among other things, text graphics. You can do allot of cool stuff with this program, and the best part is that it is absolutely free to download. Of course if you have access to Photoshop, even better. There are literally tons of online tutorials on how to use GIMP to get you started if you are interested. Well, God speed on your new campaign!

erwin

Welcome to the forums, Jonathon!

Digging the fall campaign page, man.

JonathonVolkmer

JimTriche: Thank you much - View Source is actually one of the main reasons my sidebars display at all! I'll definitely be using it to figure out how to make other things work better.

sandman: Oh I do, thanks! Yeah, languages seem to be a matter of regular practice - I haven't had much call to use it, so I've started to lose it.

erwin: Thanks, I appreciate it.

arsheesh: No kidding, eh? Thanks again. And Savage Worlds is just the core system of rules and mechanics - this campaign and setting are a mishmash of things from my head and ideas I've borrowed from far and wide. Supernatural horror/mystery, set in the modern world, is the theme, and I'm doing my best to leave room for anything and everything in terms of big bads and plot developments. As far as sounding like a scholar, thanks, I think; 16-odd years of private schooling with a healthy dose of philosophy/theology topped off by an English degree will do that, I suppose. I'll have to take a look at GIMP. I'm certainly no visual artist, so a few good tutorials sound about right - are there any you would recommend?

FrankSirmarco

Welcome, Jonathan.

I did the same thing - I kind of laid low for a while, read various posts, and mined the wealth of knowledge that "ChainsawXIV":http://forums.obsidianportal.com/account.php?u=11693 and "gnunn":http://forums.obsidianportal.com/account.php?u=9280 left throughout the forum. After seeing what Chainsaw, gnunn, "JimTriche":http://forums.obsidianportal.com/account.php?u=33798, "arsheesh":http://forums.obsidianportal.com/account.php?u=22192, "gaaran":http://forums.obsidianportal.com/account.php?u=11943, and others were doing with their campaigns, I found a lot of inspiration to update "my own campaign":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/cthulhusupremusest.

Like everyone else, I'm really impressed by how much prep work you've done. I'd only be rehashing sage advice you've already received, so I'll try not to get too philosophical. A well-organized page doesn't just interest you or your players - it can capture the attention of someone who has never played your game system, and it may even go as far as providing the impetus for them to give your game system a try. And we all know that more role-playing geeks in the world is a GOOD thing.

Keep up the good work!

arsheesh

Hey Jonathon. The great thing about GIMP is that you don't have to have a tremendous amount of artistic skill or talent to be able to manipulate images. To be honest, most of my knowledge of GIMP comes from two sources: (1) the "GIMP User Manual":http://docs.gimp.org/en/ (which I read thoroughly), and; (2) various map tutorials I found at the "Cartographers Guild":http://forum.cartographersguild.com/index.php?referrerid=15127 (a very helpful site dedicated to the hobby of fantasy cartography). I pretty much read through the users manual and played around with a couple of the Guild's tutorials trying to figure out how to create a fantasy map from scratch. In the process, I learned a lot about how to use GIMP. So unfortunately I can't give you much advice about which tutorials would be good to begin with (unless of course you are interested in making some maps; in that case I've got several suggestions). My advice would be this, if you are interested in GIMP, read through some of the basics in the user's manual and then spend some time browsing the web for tutorials.

One other thing though, if you do download GIMP, you should also download the "Layer Effects":http://registry.gimp.org/node/186 plugin for it over at the GIMP registry (I think you need to register to do so). I have found this to be the single most useful tool GIMP has to offer with regard to manipulating text. I use it to create the appearance of three dimensional text by adding styles such as "bevel and emboss" and "drop shadow" (see for instance the "Navigation Buttons":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/tales-of-darkmoon-vale/wikis/main-page on my ToDV main page).

JonathonVolkmer

Glad to hear I'm not alone in that, Frank. There is so certainly no small amount of useful information just lying about around here. I have to tell you, the newspaper headlines and custom documents strewn about your pages are going to be haunting my dreams until I can come up with something similarly cool. And hey, I've got to love supernatural horror in New York!

Thanks arsheesh, I'm now very much looking forward to playing around with those tutorials this weekend - if I can work up to anything half as fine looking as your buttons and text effects, I might reconsider calling myself an artist.

If anyone else has any advice on spicing up pages without cluttering them, I'm all ears!