Let players control more characters
In the vein of trying to get players to use the portal more, I think allowing them control over more than just their character would help. In my campaign I let every player give some personality to their mount: https://gaximplague.obsidianportal.com/characters
I wanted to give them full control to add more background on their mount but to my discovery when I gave a player ownership of their mount, they lost ownership of their character. So apparently a player can only own one character? (Please let me know if I am wrong!)
To keep it all tight, I put a . in front of the names of the mounts so they are close to the players. (They have stats too so I don't want to scroll everywhere to find them).
As a player I have wanted this too. I play as a warlock that has a familiar and summons lots of fey:
https://vikings-jaa.obsidianportal.com/characters/gudmund-brynjarsson
I put the pictures and backgrounds of my familiars and summoned beings in my char bio, but it makes for a LOOOOOONG bio. I would love to have these as seperate characters that I control as a player.
So my suggestion is to not only let players own more characters, but have some mechanism where they are bunched together or form a family tree so you can see who is related to who. like:
Frak 
___Thumper 
. |__ Bryanjar 
. |___Diado 
This could also help in gaems like Dark Sun where you HAVE to create 3 characters as they die so often and you can switch them around depending on who is needed for the quest. Saves the DM havign to change ownership of a character form player to NPC and back when a switch or death happens.
twitter: @Frak_Lou_Elmo
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Thanks for the suggestions!
In your Campaign, I'm seeing that both the PC "Obelix de G'Aul" and the mount NPC ".Asterix" have an "author" of "Convict_XIII". So both Characters are owned ("author") by the Player Convict_XIII.
What are you seeing or not seeing that makes it look like they aren't? (Maybe there's a bug?)
One option for keeping the related Characters together is to put links to the NPCs in the PC's Bio. And also a link back to the PC from the NPCs' Bios. So you can easily jump back and forth as needed. Does that help with what you are trying to do?
Obsidian Portal Developer
Thanks! I notice now that I was confused by whether it worked because when I gave the mount ownership to the player, it changed the picture on the front screen of who the players controlled, I guess it defaults to the last one.
Now all the mounts are controlled by the players! :)
I have made links within some mount bios to connect them with each other, as you advised, but it would be nice to have some visual representation showing the relationships. For example something like this, if a dropdown menu would not be possible to stack them under each other:
I am probably the only person insane enough to make enormous backgrounds for followers but maybe it would bring players more to the obsidian portal if they can create followers that stack under their main character and not get shunted into the enormous pile of NPC's the DM creates.
thank u!
twitter: @Frak_Lou_Elmo
You're definitely not the only person, but I would say it's an elite few that go to that length, so kudos to you!
One option is to mark the mounts as "Player Characters", so they are up in the PC section, and then "prefix" their name with the name of the PC...so in this case something like "Obelix's Mount Asterix"...so it will sort with them all in the same area.
We are definitely looking for ways to bring Players to OP more, so I appreciate the suggestion.
A bit back I did an analysis of which features Players used, and which ones were used by Players that logged in frequently (active), and by Players that did not login frequently (INactive).
From that, I would say if you want to get your Players to login more frequently, then you should liberally use the Player Secrets. You can put them on Wiki pages as well as NPCs and PCs. From that analysis, a Player that had a Player Secret created for them by their GM was 37% more likely to be an "active" Player.
Also the new-ish Secrets tab will help them see in one place all of the Player Secrets you've created for them, as well as help you keep track of all the ones you've created.
Obsidian Portal Developer
Thanks! knowing tht the secrets page makes them go to the portal more is really handy. I will include that more.
twitter: @Frak_Lou_Elmo