The "Review my Campaign" thread

Unknown

@Bortas - Was digging around on your campaign a little more and I actually have a couple more things to toss out for you.

First of all, I see you have snagged a few of the suggestions I kicked out (hope the more responsive parchment works out for you - it isn't perfect but it seems to do the trick), specifically on the CSS page you have setup. Since you are now using the "pre" tags might I suggest adding this to your CSS:

pre {
height: auto;
max-height: 200px;
overflow: auto;
background-color: #eeeeee;
word-break: normal !important;
word-wrap: normal !important;
white-space: pre !important;
}​

That will style your "pre" tags to go into a handy little box. Keeps the page smaller, and more importantly it keeps the contents from spewing out of the page area as it does with the default style on that tag.

Additionally, I noticed you snagged a bit of the code for your links that I was using for making content push down. I don't think it works out so well with it set to the a:hover selector (it seems to make a major impact on the Character Listing with the ones that have an icon along with the name). You may consider moving it back to a:active for an on click feel to it or drop it altogether. Alternately you could try fiddling with the CSS you use to toss the icons on so that they don't act as part of the link itself (an should thus prevent the odd reaction to the code pushing that down too).

I also have another recommendation for you, and it is a back end one. If you want to make your Campaign Page load properly under the HTTPS protocol that OP has the pages load in (and not get the warning icon in the address bar on browsers - and possibly some loading issues of some of the content in some of them), on the spots where you call images in your CSS you can slap an https: in front of the // you have starting most of them off (this is specific to the content you have uploaded to OP or that you borrow from others who upload to OP). You should be able to call through HTTPS to any content you use assuming they have an SSL setup on their server (which a lot of site tend to have available these days - specifically any commercial ones).

Hope that is clear enough and makes sense, pretty late here and insomnia has me in its clutches so my mind is a little mushy at the moment.

--
Alex
"Dragon Age: Requiem":https://da-requiem.obsidianportal.com/

Bortas

Oh wow, I don't even know where to start. I grabbed the re-size bit, and I like that as an overall improvement, so much so that I will likely NOT build browser specific CSS. I was just browsing around on your site, dinking around with interesting CSS tags I found, plugging things in here and there - great stuff!

I added in the pre calls, that makes sense to me. I'm trying to format my CSS in such a way that I can just direct cut&paste to my CSS wiki page, but... I don't think its going to happen. Oh well. You are right about my coding habits; I've always been pro-comments and anti-white space, which.... does make it hard to read to others, unfortunately. I always told myself I was the only one looking at it anyway ;-)

Good feedback on the wiki - I agree, it's a dry, fact driven read, with not much for flavor. Something I want to add, and on my agenda before I had any intention of submitting my site up for review ... tehe. I'm pleased you like the pics of the minis - we started off with player chosen artwork, and the same for the NPCs, but we play only 6 or so times a year, so people were constantly forgetting who was who. Minis and character page matches has really helped them keep things straight.

I'd love to do the items area, but am reluctant to spend much time, as OP says they aren't really supporting it anymore. Ideally, I'd like the items page to look just like my character pages. Once I tackle the CSS of handling that, I'll add in some of the nifty trinkets they have happened upon.

Thanks for the kind words, I appreciate them alot. This is my first (only) campaign, and I really enjoy terrain building, mini painting etc. I feel very strongly this adds to the feel of the game - I don't think my table truly appreciates the effort that it takes, or how uncommon it is.



I liked your changes to the parchment for scalability, I added a bit of my own: background-size:contain to help this process along (this helps me see the right hand side of the parchment).

I like the feel of the 'push', and historically, I've enjoyed it on :hover. I agree though, it mangles my character index, for those that have special icons on them. I have some fiddling to do here, but I haven't tackled it yet.

Admittedly, I never paid attention to the warning icon. I did add the https as you suggested, to every place I call a URL in my CSS, particularly my image library. I believe I'm still seeing the warning though, and not really sure how to tackle that.


I really appreciate you taking the time for the feedback and suggestions, not to mention the kind words. Cheers!

-bort
"Morwindl":http://morwindl.obsidianportal.com

Bortas

Figured out the security - was the links to my custom cursors.

-bort
"Morwindl":http://morwindl.obsidianportal.com

Unknown

Glad you are finding some helpful bits and bobs in the posted CSS, that is why I kicked it up there (an effort to give back to all the folks who I raided CSS from in the process).

Regarding cleaning up the CSS a bit, there isn't much of a way to do it beyond what I was describing in most instances. Some of the code you may snag from folks around OP can sometimes be cleaned up a little beyond what they have, but for the most part things are written fairly well. Granted, the process is a pretty easy one to be honest, you just look for key bits to toss in a line break on. This usually amounts to dropping a line after the { to start your declarations and then after each ; at the end of a declaration. There are some other little things you can work on, such as making each commented section flow alphabetically to more quickly find the items you need when editing.

As for the Wiki, don't worry on it being dry too much. Flavor and spice are things you can keep kicking in over time, and may even be something you can eventually convince your players to participate in as well. There is no harm in having a focus be placed on your troupe as opposed to outsiders just looking in, but you will likely get more of those outsiders the more spice you add into the mix (can be nice if your players don't appreciate it as much as you would like).

As for the Items area, my impression on how OP seems to be approaching that is they have no intention to fix anything broken with it or further develop it at this time. I have not seen anything personally that leads me to believe that they would take that away wholesale at present. As such I would not stress too much on getting it setup since you are intending to use it. I may be able to provide some help there if you need, finding classes and ids that you can use for making the modifications if your are not too comfortable doing that yet on your own.

No thanks needed for the kind words, you have made one heck of a page to be honest. I know it can be rough to have players not quite getting how much effort that extra work can be, but as a fellow GM I can appreciate all that you have done for your troupe to have the best possible level of immersion that you can muster.

That is awesome that the background-size:contain worked out for you on that. I did the same on my end but got some odd display at some of the resizes of the screen so elected to drop it for the time being until I can come up with something a little more elegant to handle that.

For the push effect, I would probably need to see just how you have that set up in order to help ensure that the added icons don't cause such a disruption. I should think we could get it working the way you desire it to, just will require a bit of fiddling like you pointed out.

In fairness, the security deal is not such a big thing, but awesome that you got it resolved. Most people don't pay too much attention to that, but seeing the warning can scare off people who do and reduce viewership for no good reason. Not too shocked it was the cursors, sites like that tend to make their default links back run to HTTP as opposed to the HTTPS (even when they have the SSL setup).

--
Alex
"Dragon Age: Requiem":https://da-requiem.obsidianportal.com/

Unknown

So, for those who are hoping for me to keep making progress on the responsive parchment pages, you are in luck. With my old modified code for it you would get some odd issues at different resolutions like the tap part pulling away from the body or the bottom sliding up into it. I have now corrected this issue, but a new one is back. The right side of the images are cut off again. I am going to keep working on that and see if I can't get it responding exactly as desired here. The updated parchment code is this now:

/* PARCHMENT PAGES */
.parchmentTop {
position:relative;
max-width:100%;
top:25px;
line-height:normal;
-webkit-background-size: contain;
-moz-background-size: contain;
-o-background-size: contain;
background-size:contain;
background:url(https://db4sgowjqfwig.cloudfront.net/campaigns/57369/assets/377938/Parchment-Body.png) !important;
}

.parchment {
position:relative;
top:-25px;
max-width:100%;
height:38px;
-webkit-background-size: contain;
-moz-background-size: contain;
-o-background-size: contain;
background-size:contain;
background: url(https://db4sgowjqfwig.cloudfront.net/campaigns/103824/assets/412593/top_large.png?1421445455) no-repeat;!important;
}

.parchmentBottom {
position:relative;
bottom:-18px;
right:-6px;
max-width:99%;
height:38px;
-webkit-background-size: contain;
-moz-background-size: contain;
-o-background-size: contain;
background-size:contain;
background: url(https://db4sgowjqfwig.cloudfront.net/campaigns/103824/assets/412592/bottom_large.png?1421445441) no-repeat;!important;
margin-bottom:40px;
}

.parchmentBody {
max-width:100%;
padding: 1px 60px 2px 60px;
}
/* END PARCHMENT PAGES */

*EDIT:* Scratch that, I think I have a resolution, I just need to investigate it some more. Results pending in a little bit.
*EDIT 2:* Nevermind, go with that for now but I will keep at it, there seems to be some kind of padding at play somewhere that is jacking with things a little bit but I should be able to figure it out eventually.

--
Alex
"Dragon Age: Requiem":https://da-requiem.obsidianportal.com/

saethone

Hey guys, looking more for input than feedback with this one. It's still in early stages of planning, but I feel like some pages are just kind of lacking and I'm curious how you think I can improve them. I do plan to add some more pictures in which will help a lot, and I've got plans to redo the social link page still...but the main one I'm concerned is my main wiki page that links to all the others...any idea of what I can do to add some interest to that page?

"Persona: Nightmare Online":https://fate-core-persona.obsidianportal.com/


---
*Saethone*

"Age of the Dragons":https://age-of-the-dragons.obsidianportal.com/ - D&D 5e Dark/High Fantasy

"Theophagie":https://theophagie.obsidianportal.com/ - Houseruled d20 in Alternate History Earth

"Zeroed":https://zeroed.obsidianportal.com/ - GURPS Cyberpunk-Sci-Fantasy

Unknown

Well, I can see what you were going for with it which is interesting, but I also see what you mean about it lacking a level of visual stimulation. I am not too familiar with the content you are basing the world on which makes it a little difficult to try and address this as I would think you would want to do something that is fitting for the content. From what I have seen in a quick Google Image Search on the subject matter, it looks like you have actually conceptualized that off of the UI in at least one of the games.

I suppose you could add some kind of image that could float on the right side of the menu (where you presently have the most space). You could then use some CSS magic to make it so that every other line goes over the picture while the others go behind it. Just an idea, like I said it looks like you were trying to make it look like some of the game UI which in and of itself might actually be enough if your players are familiar with the source material.

--
Alex
"Dragon Age: Requiem":https://da-requiem.obsidianportal.com/

saethone

Ah i hadn't thought about having some of the lines go over...thats a good idea..wonder how to do that......w3schools here i come!

Unknown

I think it would mostly relate to the z-index of the items, though I could be off on that (might take a little more to ensure that the floating image doesn't cut them off in any way).

--
Alex
"Dragon Age: Requiem":https://da-requiem.obsidianportal.com/

HumAnnoyd

Hey, guys. I finally got my Fate of the Jedi campaign off the ground and just had the second session. I would love to hear what you guys think of it. As usual suggestions are welcome.

https://fate-of-the-jedi.obsidianportal.com/

GamingMegaverse

HumAnnoyd- Don't have time for a full review, but yellow text on white is hard to read.

HumAnnoyd

I am not sure where the text is yellow on white. I have yellow and white text on black though.

GamingMegaverse

On firefox it is a white background- I see the black on Chrome.

HumAnnoyd

Hunh. That's messed up. I will have to try and figure out how to fix that. Grrr. I hate Firefox.

Unknown

I will second that, but I see it seems to only be done on the Front Page really, so overall it doesn't detract from other areas of the campaign. For a little fun with your Star Wars text, might I suggest doing something along these line - "Star Wars Scroll":http://www.sitepoint.com/css3-starwars-scrolling-text/

That uses just CSS3 and HTML, though you will likely want to toss it into a containing div and give it a space like background again to make it able to be read. Would be a nice effect to have on a Star Wars game obviously. If your Ascendant membership is still rolling I would also probably pull the OP dragon and the campaign title they manually toss in out since your banner alone can cover that (and the dragon just doesn't really fit your game).

The Wiki seems to have a good flow to it, and the images you have in place all seem to be fitting (and a lot of them it is clear you have tweaked a little to make them campaign fitting as well). All in all it seems pretty well set in there. The Adventure Logs could probably do with having the link removed on the banner images, all they really do is reload the page you are already on and don't serve much of a purpose. The Character Pages could probably stand to have a little tweaking done to them to make them more visually appealing. Everything kind of just runs down in a massive wall of text, mainly on the PC pages.

All in all I think it looks great and is shaping up nicely. Like any good webpage there is always some room to improve on things, but take your time and it will become an amazing page in time. You have a clear vision and it is coming together well.

--
Alex
"Dragon Age: Requiem":https://da-requiem.obsidianportal.com/

Unknown

To fix those across browsers try kicking an !important tag onto the CSS. Looking at it with Inspect Element I see that your changes are being overridden by some of the core CSS from OP.

Alkorahil

Hi Gang!
We wanted to share the successful culmination of a long running 14 month long DM conspiracy in our games.

A little background.
We have two 4E D&D campaigns that our playgroup is going though. One has been running about 4 years the other two and a half. Our group manages to play several times a month despite family work and busy schedules. We will go through sections of one campaign for a few months before taking a break and switching off to the other for a while. This gives the DM’s a break to collect their wits, recuperate and plan out things for the future and also keeps the players from getting bored. I play in the forgotten realms campaign and the other DM plays in my campaign so it is nice for us both to get to play as well instead of spending all the time behind the DM screen.

We did a character crossover between the characters in my D&D 4E campaign https://worldoferda.obsidianportal.com/ and my friends Forgotten Realms 4E campaign https://heroes-of-impiltur.obsidianportal.com/

Myself and the GM of the Impiltur campaign started planning this idea in late October 2013. It started out as a GM discussion on a long car drive about our campaigns and how it would be funny to put the characters from one campaign into the other campaign and see how the roleplaying would go. As the conversation in the car grew we came up with the idea to crossover the two separate adventuring parties, putting the party from my campaign into his and the one from his into mine. Then at the end mixing up the characters having some from one and some from another team up together as strangers that have to cooperate to get back to their home worlds. The roleplaying possibilities of these situations were great!

We started to set it up, getting together a few times to write down our ideas and how this would work and flow. It was difficult at first to get things in line with each other as each group had its own separate history and character types. What started out as a ‘what if’ was becoming reality. We got together for several excellent brainstorming sessions together, discussing plot devices, dialogue, back story, monsters and game mechanics. Once we got the ideas down, back story and plot as well as the mechanics of this undertaking, we slowly started to introduce hints in both campaigns to the players such as symbols, phrases and other hints and clues that didn't add up to them at first. It was amusing sometimes to see them try to make fit these clues into what they were immediately questing and adventuring for. Some of their interpretations were interesting, though wrong.

We put the players though the crossover in December and January. The looks on their faces when they figured out what we were up to and that we had been setting it up for so long was nice to see.

We ended the crossover in a 16 hour D&D gaming climax at the end of January. It was very interesting to see two separate groups come together at the end.

"worldoferda":https://worldoferda.obsidianportal.com/

"heroes-of-impiltur":https://heroes-of-impiltur.obsidianportal.com/

HumAnnoyd

Yeah. Its odd. The CSS in the Fate of the Jedi campaign isn't working like I expected it to at all. I try to stay away from Important tags when possible. I thought I had rid myself of the OP logo for example. I Will have to play around with some stuff and see if I can fix this. Glad I asked. Because I thought everyone was seeing the same thing I was seeing in Chrome. Which is what I would suggest you check out to get an idea of what I am going for. I will hopefully be able to fix this shortly.

HumAnnoyd

I will certainly look over that Star Wars crawl idea. That would be cool if I can get it to work.

Unknown

For the crawl, I think you will be ok if you swap id for class in the HTML and the # for a . in the CSS. OP does not like users using the id attribute it seems like. I feel you on the important tags, sadly to get cross browser support you have to use them on some things. FF (which I use) is letting OPs CSS override your changes, so the only way to get around that will be the important tag since you can't modify the OP style sheets. I have found on most things you can avoid that tag, but there are a few small areas that remain that have the issue.

I checked it out in Chrome (as a developer I have most browsers installed on my machine to check browser support) and it does look much better though I do see some content having issues still in a couple spots. I think this has to do with the page loading in HTTPS while some of your content is not being called that way. Chrome is notorious of not even displaying unsecured content on a page that is loaded securely to help add back in security for the user while other browsers will overlook this and display the content by default but still show the warning in the address bar. I would check your CSS for addresses that start with HTTP rather than HTTPS and test quick to see if they still work with HTTPS in place instead. If they do switch it over so that you can try to eliminate that error as well.

HumAnnoyd

OK. I redid almost all of the code and I think it should now work more or less as I originally intended across all the various browsers. That said IE and Firefox are definitely not the optimum choice and it looks best in Chrome. Thanks again for pointing out that it didn't work in the other browsers.

alex_redeye, I put the links on the banner images so when you are in the main Adventure Log page you can click on the banners as well to go to that particular page. If I use the image banners I kind of feel like I have to have them be linked. So it is not really for use on the actual Log pages but in the Log Index.

Unknown

Looks much better, kudos. And that makes sense with the banner. Might I suggest something along these lines for it, I do something similar though I have not tested it as a link:

@@

Then in your CSS you can do this so it only appears in the main summary area and not the actual post:

/* INDIVIDUAL TEASER ICONS */
/* SET SPACE FOR ICON */
.teaser .adv-summary {
width:80px; /* ADJUST AS DESIRED, POTENTIALLY USE PERCENTAGE */
height:80px; /* ADJUST AS DESIRED, POTENTIALLY USE PERCENTAGE */
float:left;
margin:15px 5px 5px -20px; /* ADJUST AS DESIRED */
border-radius:5px; /* ADJUST OR REMOVE AS DESIRED */
background-size:contain;
}

/* HIDE ICON IN FULL POST */
.full .adv-summary {
width:0;
}

/* DEFINE POSTING ICONS */
.special-logo { /* ADD MORE AND CHANGE SPECIAL WITH ANOTHER WORD TO DO CUSTOM ICONS ON VARIOUS LOGS, REMEMBER TO CHANGE IN THE HTML TOO IF YOU DO THIS */
background-image:url(https://db4sgowjqfwig.cloudfront.net/campaigns/103824/assets/402110/GM_Post.png); /* REPLACE URL WITH THE ONE TO YOUR IMAGE */
}

That should make it work I believe. Would be a slick little addition if it pans out correctly.

HumAnnoyd

I will give that a try. Thanks Alex.

saethone

Alkorahil - man those adventure logs are great!

The wiki could use a little bit of organization, just slapping everything on there in a giant list may be very easy for the players, who know what they're looking for, but for the rest of us is just a bit daunting

Keryth987

Well, its that time again. Working on a new campaign. Basic layout is done, and alot of the NPCs are up, though they're taking time as it is all photoshopped images

Anyhow, I would really appreciate some input on the site, the look, the feel, the new rules, and the images (except the one that appears multiple times at the bottom of pages, its a placeholder in most cases). video on the first page is also a placeholder.

Oh, and its a Savage Worlds campaign taking place in a universe where Stargate SG-1 (and Atlantis), Farscape, and the ORIGINAL (1978) Battlestar Galactica all take place together. The premise is the players are members of the first ship built and developed by the alliance of Earth, the Colonials, and the Peacekeepers. The ship has a joint crew as well.

anyhow, you can find it here "Phoenix Rising":https://phoenix-rising-1.obsidianportal.com/

Thanks all

Keelah Se'lai,
Keryth
"Shadows Over New York":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/shadows-over-new-york
"2013 Campaign of The Year":http://blog.obsidianportal.com/2013-coty-shadows-over-new-york/

Unknown

I think it is shaping up rather nicely. Everything follows a consistent theme and format (which fits the context of the subject matter nicely), the color palette you are using is pleasing enough and easy on the eyes for extended viewing periods, and you have a couple of rather unique looking design principles in place (at least I don't recall seeing them elsewhere on OP offhand). All in all it looks like you have things nicely in place to get rolling.

I don't see any of the NPCs you mentioned, the only things in the Characters section appear to be the test characters which essentially have no content present on them so it is hard to comment on that area. I do like the layout of the Wiki section though--smooth and intuitive. For the Adventure Logs I am not sure how I feel about the session banners presently, they feel a little out of place in the full view to me--might just be the image sizing or spacing.

Been awhile since I have played with Savage Worlds, honestly I only really ever did Deadlands (and even that I did back in the Weird West 1st edition), so I will refrain from commenting on any of the rules you have adjusted or added. I will say with your premise though that it sounds like it will be one interesting Campaign to play in/run.

--
Alex
"Dragon Age: Requiem":https://da-requiem.obsidianportal.com/

pencilneckgeek

Phoenix Rising is looking great (as usual)! I did notice that each of the individual dramatis personae pages veered to the right on my tablet. They may be missing a at the end. Other than that, things are looking good!

--Pencilneckgeek

"Shadows of the Rift":https://shadows-of-the-rift.obsidianportal.com/

Keryth987

Thanks for the comments.

Alex, the NPC's are not in the Characters section, that's for PC's only. You'd have to look under the Dramatis Personae section off the main Wiki

pencilneckgeek, Thanks. As my players and I all use Tablets, I'll look into it. So far, everything has been done on the PC and they look right there, but as we all know, that doesn;t mean much :)

Keelah Se'lai,
Keryth
"Shadows Over New York":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/shadows-over-new-york
"2013 Campaign of The Year":http://blog.obsidianportal.com/2013-coty-shadows-over-new-york/

Bortas

Looks great, I enjoy the look and feel of it!

-bort
"Morwindl":http://morwindl.obsidianportal.com

Unknown

Ahh, that explains it, I just didn't dig into the correct area. If you need any suggestions on mobile support just let me know, that is something I have been doing a lot of with my own campaign.

--
Alex
"Dragon Age: Requiem":https://da-requiem.obsidianportal.com/