This week's Thursday Feature is a little different than our offerings up until now, as it kicks off a series of articles that will be written by our own "Keryth987":https://obsidianportal.com/profile/Keryth987. So pop on over to the Blog and check out "Creating a Merged World - Part 1":http://blog.obsidianportal.com/creating-merged-world-part-1/.
As for me, I'll definitely be interested in seeing how Middle Earth turns out with its new Dark Lord...of the Sith!
Thanks Keryth, and I particularly suggest this may be good for any newer members starting up their campaigns, or about to start new ones. Looks like there will be some useful advice throughout Keryth's whole series of articles.
twigs
"I met a traveller from an antique land....."
CotM May 2016: Mysteria: set in Wolfgang Baur’s MIDGARD.
Previous CotM Aug 2012: Shimring: High Level Multiplanar Campaign
Man... Thursday tried to sneak right past me this week. Hopefully you guys won't begrudge me a few hours and we'll all just pretend that it's still late late Thursday night. That said, this weeks' article "Happy Gamers, Rewards, and your OP Campaign":http://blog.obsidianportal.com/happy-gamers-rewards-op-campaign/ comes your way from "NikMak":https://www.obsidianportal.com/profile/NikMak - and is now live on the blog.
As for me, I definitely need to work on ways to make my players help me with my campaign sites. Hopefully some of this stuff will work out for me.
- - - - - -
In other "news", if anyone is better with graphics than I am, this is your opportunity to help out the blog! I've been working on trying to create a small graphic for the Thursday Feature listing and I could really use some help (trust me when I say you don't want to see my attempts). If you're interested in offering some much needed assistance, drop me a line and we can talk some more.
FYI I tried to reply to the two comments on the blog page, but neither one was posted for some reason.
Here it is again for all of us herein the cheap seats
Glad you enjoyed it twigs!
For the comparison to how a god rebuilt is run AZ rune:- I am blown away by the comparison, many thanks! Though to be fair I asked on these forms for advice on how to encourage player participation and so was directly advised by KillerVP, and a bunch of other good people on these boards.
@NikMak, your comments were there, they were just in the que pending approval. I'm not sure what the criteria is that sends comments to the que or not, but I'll try to find out. I approved them, so they are now showing.
It's Thursday once again, which means it's time for another Thursday Feature. This week's article comes to you from an author outside of (and thus new to) our OP community - and so (for the time being at least) they will write under the handle of [Redacted].
"Puzzle Solving Challenges - Part 1":http://blog.obsidianportal.com/puzzle-solving-challenges-part-1/ is now live on the Blog, so stop on by and have a look see.
Oh, I _like_ that. I will incorporate that Uncharted puzzle into a dungeon someday.
A few years back I created a puzzle-filled, pirate-booty themed dungeon that I was quite proud of, and that my players had a blast solving. There were tangram puzzles, sudoku, word puzzles, and riddles to solve. Good times. :-)
"Please pay attention very carefully, because this is the truest thing a stranger will ever say to you: In the face of such hopelessness as our eventual, unavoidable death, there is little sense in not at least TRYING to accomplish all your wildest dreams in life." - - Kevin Smith
having way too many traps never sat well with me either, I tend to have a fair amount of traps which have either a) stopped working given the depredations of time, b) already gone off / had no reset (e.g. the hallway blocked by skeletons that have been shish-kaboobed by spears that came out out of the walls)
I agree Tau. The way I see it there are two types of room suited for trapping - one you need to get in and out of from time to time (temple treasury?) and one to be sealed for all time (the God-Kings Tomb?)
one or two traps that can be easily avoided and / or reset whilst the temple is still in operation seems ok to me. Once the temple is abandoned the laser-sharks will quickly starve to death when there are no ninja-priests left to feed them.
as for the God-Kings Tomb one 'everyone dies instantly trap' is all you need - large numbers of poison dust bags hurled about just before you seal the entrance with a 250 tonne block of granite should do the trick!
I took inspiration from The Goonies, Treasure Island and other pirate-y tales for my idea. And yeah, there was a specific reason why the puzzles and challenges were incorporated into this particular dungeon crawl. "The first challenge was to FIND the secret lair of Kurrigan the Blackheart.":http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?322339-The-Quest-for-Kurrigan-s-Gold-a-puzzle-to-whet-your-appetites
"Please pay attention very carefully, because this is the truest thing a stranger will ever say to you: In the face of such hopelessness as our eventual, unavoidable death, there is little sense in not at least TRYING to accomplish all your wildest dreams in life." - - Kevin Smith
Despite the issues resulting from the site update, it's still Thursday, and with it comes another Thursday Feature.
This week's article comes to you from "ketherian":https://www.obsidianportal.com/profile/ketherian and covers "Correspondence in Role Playing":http://blog.obsidianportal.com/correspondence-in-role-playing/
Generally speaking, letters always seem to be a tool to move the plot forward. I can think of many game modules where the final discovery at the end of the boss' lair, you find a letter from his boss - which sets up the next module. It's nice to think about letters as a tool for world building rather than just setting up the next target for destruction.
i have half a memory of a letter writing table top game... is it Polish or something? any way was this article inspired by that game, or am i just hallucinating again?
You're thinking of "De Profundis":https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Profundis_(role-playing_game) I think.
Harn has a lot of polish fans, so I've heard lots of good things about that game.
It didn't inspire the article, so much as the fact that I've heard of letter writing as a good way to connect the character with their background (world building).
--
Ketherian
"Signs & Portends":swtwc.obsidianportal.com - The family is found; but a mystery remains.
"Dwarves of Koldukar":dwarves-1.obsidianportal.com - Trunau!!
"In a certain realm":inacertainrealm.obsidianportal.com - Where Faerun meets Russian myth.
Kallak, I appreciate your efforts, especially in trying to get the news of the update published before it happened. Too bad they were not listening.
killervp
"A God...Rebuilt":https://a-god-rebuilt.obsidianportal.com/
The team is aware of the issue with the blog today and is investigating. It appears unrelated to other transition work that is on-going by the infrastructure team.
Greetings all, It's Thursday, and you know what that means!
This week, we continue campaign-building Vader's conquest of Middle Earth with "Keryth987":https://obsidianportal.com/profile/Keryth987 in "Creating a Merged World - Part 2":http://blog.obsidianportal.com/creating-merged-world-part-2/
With both Sauron and Palpatine defeated, and the Nazgul acting as his new imperial guards, Vader's got it going on. Frodo's going to need a lot more than the fellowship if he's going to have any chance of destroying the ring; Leia stands as the rebellion's only hope, and Luke has only just begun his Jedi training under Yoda...
“A fox passing through the wood on business of his own stopped several minutes and sniffed.
'Midi-chlorians!' he thought. 'Well, what next? I have heard of strange doings in this land, but I have seldom heard of midi-chlorians gathering out of doors under a tree. So many of them! There's something mighty queer behind this.' He was quite right, but he never found out any more about it.”
Comments
As for me, I'll definitely be interested in seeing how Middle Earth turns out with its new Dark Lord...of the Sith!
- Kallak
twigs
"I met a traveller from an antique land....."
CotM May 2016: Mysteria: set in Wolfgang Baur’s MIDGARD.
Previous CotM Aug 2012: Shimring: High Level Multiplanar Campaign
Inner Council Member
As for me, I definitely need to work on ways to make my players help me with my campaign sites. Hopefully some of this stuff will work out for me.
- - - - - -
In other "news", if anyone is better with graphics than I am, this is your opportunity to help out the blog! I've been working on trying to create a small graphic for the Thursday Feature listing and I could really use some help (trust me when I say you don't want to see my attempts). If you're interested in offering some much needed assistance, drop me a line and we can talk some more.
Thanks guys.
- Kallak
Here it is again for all of us herein the cheap seats
Glad you enjoyed it twigs!
For the comparison to how a god rebuilt is run AZ rune:- I am blown away by the comparison, many thanks! Though to be fair I asked on these forms for advice on how to encourage player participation and so was directly advised by KillerVP, and a bunch of other good people on these boards.
- Kallak
"Puzzle Solving Challenges - Part 1":http://blog.obsidianportal.com/puzzle-solving-challenges-part-1/ is now live on the Blog, so stop on by and have a look see.
- Kallak
A few years back I created a puzzle-filled, pirate-booty themed dungeon that I was quite proud of, and that my players had a blast solving. There were tangram puzzles, sudoku, word puzzles, and riddles to solve. Good times. :-)
Ptolus, City by the Spire - 2016 Campaign of the Year
"Please pay attention very carefully, because this is the truest thing a stranger will ever say to you: In the face of such hopelessness as our eventual, unavoidable death, there is little sense in not at least TRYING to accomplish all your wildest dreams in life." - - Kevin Smith
do any of you ever think about the justification behind these increasingly elaborate traps?
one or two traps that can be easily avoided and / or reset whilst the temple is still in operation seems ok to me. Once the temple is abandoned the laser-sharks will quickly starve to death when there are no ninja-priests left to feed them.
as for the God-Kings Tomb one 'everyone dies instantly trap' is all you need - large numbers of poison dust bags hurled about just before you seal the entrance with a 250 tonne block of granite should do the trick!
Ptolus, City by the Spire - 2016 Campaign of the Year
"Please pay attention very carefully, because this is the truest thing a stranger will ever say to you: In the face of such hopelessness as our eventual, unavoidable death, there is little sense in not at least TRYING to accomplish all your wildest dreams in life." - - Kevin Smith
This week's article comes to you from "ketherian":https://www.obsidianportal.com/profile/ketherian and covers "Correspondence in Role Playing":http://blog.obsidianportal.com/correspondence-in-role-playing/
Generally speaking, letters always seem to be a tool to move the plot forward. I can think of many game modules where the final discovery at the end of the boss' lair, you find a letter from his boss - which sets up the next module. It's nice to think about letters as a tool for world building rather than just setting up the next target for destruction.
i have half a memory of a letter writing table top game... is it Polish or something? any way was this article inspired by that game, or am i just hallucinating again?
You're thinking of "De Profundis":https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Profundis_(role-playing_game) I think.
Harn has a lot of polish fans, so I've heard lots of good things about that game.
It didn't inspire the article, so much as the fact that I've heard of letter writing as a good way to connect the character with their background (world building).
--
Ketherian
"Signs & Portends":swtwc.obsidianportal.com - The family is found; but a mystery remains.
"Dwarves of Koldukar":dwarves-1.obsidianportal.com - Trunau!!
"In a certain realm":inacertainrealm.obsidianportal.com - Where Faerun meets Russian myth.
killervp
"A God...Rebuilt":https://a-god-rebuilt.obsidianportal.com/
Anyone know what's going on?
This week, we continue campaign-building Vader's conquest of Middle Earth with "Keryth987":https://obsidianportal.com/profile/Keryth987 in "Creating a Merged World - Part 2":http://blog.obsidianportal.com/creating-merged-world-part-2/
With both Sauron and Palpatine defeated, and the Nazgul acting as his new imperial guards, Vader's got it going on. Frodo's going to need a lot more than the fellowship if he's going to have any chance of destroying the ring; Leia stands as the rebellion's only hope, and Luke has only just begun his Jedi training under Yoda...
'Midi-chlorians!' he thought. 'Well, what next? I have heard of strange doings in this land, but I have seldom heard of midi-chlorians gathering out of doors under a tree. So many of them! There's something mighty queer behind this.' He was quite right, but he never found out any more about it.”
twigs