Obsidian Portal

[Maltese Falcon]

Has anyone sued Obsidian Portal to help shape there game?

I am about to start my RPG and I have several people playing some deaf some hearing so I am looking for a way to make the game play easier.

Here is the link to what I am talking about.

http://www.obsidianportal.com/

[Becq]

I had a GM give that a try.  I think it has a lot of potential, though we didn't end up making much use of it.  I'm not sure how it would help significantly with a hearing barrier at the table, though -- you'd still need sign language involved, I assume.

[Crimson Overcoat]

I'm currently using it in my PBP game, and it is very effective for that medium. We had 14 forum pages worth of data, and we were able to condense it into useable format. The link to my site is in my sig.

As the game goes on, I'm able to add new stuff. It is a good tool.

[Arcteryx]

I liked it, but got frustrated at what was there vs. not there for pay / not pay - which is fair enough, they have to make money - but I ended up going with Wikia. I do like a lot of the pages I've seen there. Some of them have a ton of love happenin' in their designs.

[Maltese Falcon]

I had a GM give that a try.  I think it has a lot of potential, though we didn't end up making much use of it.  I'm not sure how it would help significantly with a hearing barrier at the table, though -- you'd still need sign language involved, I assume.

Well yeah, among the hearing players 1/2 of us are fluent in ASL.
I was thinking of this as a quick reference so the summary of the cities and PCs and known NPCs can be accessed easily prior to game time.

[Maltese Falcon]

I liked it, but got frustrated at what was there vs. not there for pay / not pay - which is fair enough, they have to make money - but I ended up going with Wikia. I do like a lot of the pages I've seen there. Some of them have a ton of love happenin' in their designs.

Wikia is that designed for RPGs or a generic Wiki generator?

[Arcteryx]

Generic. I'm also playing with Wordpress.com and y'know... it's not a bad way to write up a setting. Having a ton of themes to choose from is pretty cool as well. A wiki's major advantage though is links & new pages are a snap. I'm kinda torn...

[trubrujah]

Not sure that obsidian portal will help much at the table, but we use it for my dresden game and a few others and it has been wonderful for both working on a campaign as a GM and for helping to give character refreshers of what happened last session.  My group meets twice a month if we are lucky, so its been wonderful to get us right back to where we left off by writing up journals of our chars under the wiki section and the GM's adventure log, and reading them before the next session.  There are a few older games that got put on hiatus that I really wish had been put up on Obsidian so we can pick them back up easier.

You can view how we set up our dresden game at http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/22034

[jb.teller4]

I've used it before and I'm using it for my Las Vegas DFRPG campaign starting up today (http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/welcome-to-las-vegas -- there's not much up yet except a teaser blurb). 

I agree that the adventure log as a quick refresher is the most useful piece for the players.  I like using the wiki as a convenient way to sort and look of notes, but my experience is that players usually don't really care that much about the wiki* (there are exceptions, but I think that's the norm), so the GM should use the wiki as a tool for themselves and focus on what's helpful and not bother with the rest.

(* Interestingly, I'd say that the more content you have up in the wiki, the less likely players are to look at it...)

-John B.

[Arcteryx]

It depends on the players you have, I'm sure, but with the group I usually game with... yeah, definitely, a wiki or resource like that is a personal conceit Its definitely a resource I wish they'd get excited about, but ah well.

[Lanir]

It depends on the players you have, I'm sure, but with the group I usually game with... yeah, definitely, a wiki or resource like that is a personal conceit Its definitely a resource I wish they'd get excited about, but ah well.

The couple times I've had a GM put up campaign info on a webpage I don't think most of us used it. It was a D&D game and I read up the descriptions on races and whatnot after a few sessions. The easiest way to handle this is to information on webpages the same way you would when talking to your players. I think the basic way to handle it is to give a short blurb at first, maybe a half a page to a page at most to get the atmosphere and a few details out there. This is basically your pitch for the setting although there should be some info in there that you didn't mention in person to reward reading it. After a couple sessions you can add extra info on as you see what people are interested in. This should help reward them for being involved while not demanding it. Ask for feedback now and to keep things on track with what your players actually want to read about. Just remember it's a side dealie and won't ever garner the same interest as what happens around your game table, no matter how much effort or talent you put into it.

I think most other ways of doing this end up with nobody reading it (ie, dumping too much info too early, writing about things the players aren't too interested in, or dropping a little info and then ignoring the webpage yourself).

[Arcteryx]

Wikia just had a facelift so they're looking very pretty all of a sudden. Their last round of look & feel was very functional but... ugly. This new version is quite a bit prettier.

[Saedar]

In the game I was in, we used it quite a bit. We loved having the central location for game info.

http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/mortal-terror

The game is on indefinite hiatus due to life but it was good.