Obsidian Portal

[teh bunneh]

Has anyone else seen and/or use this? Looks like a basic account is free, or you can upgrade for some amount (I'm just looking at the free stuff so far). I've put up some stuff from my current campaign here:

http://www.obsidianportal.com/campai...ikis/home-page

I think, if you take the time to build and maintain your campaign page, it could be pretty cool. I'm still wondering if I can take the time to build and maintain my page...

[Xavier Onassiss]

I've used Obsidian Portal for a couple of different games, and it was very useful for other game systems (D&D, Ars Magica) but I've found it's not exactly Hero-friendly.

The owner of my FLGS recommended Epic Words as an alternative and I'm in the process of setting up a Star Hero (Terracide) campaign there. The most important difference is that Epic Words offers file storage ($12/year got me 1GB of file storage) so I can upload character sheets exported from Hero Designer. (And 1GB worth of anything else!) Obsidian Portal doesn't offer this service, AFAIK, and characters have to be copy/pasted, then formatted. I didn't have too much trouble doing this for D&D, or Ars Magica characters, but for Hero characters it was a pain in the neck.

Doing a search for Hero System campaigns on Obsidian Portal lead to a short list of campaigns with a lot of blank pages -- it looked like the GM's had started using OP for their campaign, then given up before they'd gotten very far, for whatever reason.

As far as the Epic Words site is concerned, I'm still making up my mind. So far, I'm finding it supports Hero better than Obsidian Portal, but I'm not 100% sold on it yet. Once I've got the new campaign up and running I'll make it open to the public and post a link here.

[Cancer]

We have some D&D4e campaigns that make some use of it, but it has limitations. It's a nicer way than email to push info out. Certain aspects of the interface really annoy me, and don't play well with some browser versions in my experience, so I have had the experience of spending 40 minutes editing up a character sheet and ended up having to flush it.

[Tasha]

There are probably a ton of Hero system games. You can protect your campaigns and only show them to members of the Game. I have 4 different games that are in various states of Postingness. My Urban Fantasy Hero Game Summerlanders is the most complete. I go back there from time to time when I feel like adding stuff to the game. Never needed the Message Boards as one of the people in our group has his own website with a messageboard. So our group tends to post there about Gaming stuff.

I kind of like OP, but don't really enjoy having to use their stupid markup language to post stuff. Fracking around with stupid stuff like that really shuts my creativity off.

[Nolgroth]

I'm just trying to figure out how either Epic Worlds or Obsidian Portal can help me more than the tools that are right here. Any tips would be great.

[Lawnmower Boy]

I'm just trying to figure out how either Epic Worlds or Obsidian Portal can help me more than the tools that are right here. Any tips would be great.

It's very simple. ExplorerOfficeFirefoxChromeiCloudSymantecDropboxGo ogle+WebOSAdobePagesObsidianPortal can do ever so much more for you than you ever imagined. Ever. Just watch this helpful tutorial! Read this stuff! Take that course! It's easy. It'll change your life. Experiment with it. Fiddle with it. Buy more gadgets and install stuff on them. Wait for them to update. Restart. Update some more. Restart again. Why not? Here, while you're waiting, look at ads for other apps that can change your life. They do so much stuff. Learn about them! Install them! Update them! Restart.

And there's more! Your new backup hard drive comes with gratis photograph organising software! Your new printer has access to the cloud! Your favourite browser is now an OS! An OS that's a smartphone! Your smartphone can organise your TV! Your TV comes with a browser! That has an OS!

And all of this functionality is at your finger tips. Just click on the Computer icon on your desktop, find the axil.fdle.didle.xxe folder, type "Smoosh ap.fu/345afld" and then edit the kernel ap000df.34xy7ft9897a4994543 to read ap000df.34xy7ft9897a4994543 and, bang! Dropbox is now Skype! Whch has an OS. That's a browser. That's a smartphone. That stores all your documents on the web. Pictures! It organises them! And it tells you when you're out of milk! Skim, homogenised, it doesn't matter! It's for gaming! THE FUTURE IS HERE!*





*Some people might detect a note of exasperation here. And I bet they used proprietary software to do it.

[Nolgroth]

Oh wow. I think you're holding back. Shouldn't do that. Bad for the digestion.

[bluesguy]

I have found my Obsidian Portal site to be a very powerful way to organize my campaign, using the Valdorian Age material. As for the formating issues - yes it would be nice if they would include an WYSIWYG editor for all the editing capability. I have been using simple HTML for most of my editing. I find the map feature to be fantastic. My players are also finding it very useful as well.

It would also be nice if there was a CSS set up for Hero. I am not smart enough to mess around with that .

I know there are other tools available to do the same kind of thing but they cost quite a bit more.

[Xavier Onassiss]

I have found my Obsidian Portal site to be a very powerful way to organize my campaign, using the Valdorian Age material. As for the formating issues - yes it would be nice if they would include an WYSIWYG editor for all the editing capability. I have been using simple HTML for most of my editing. I find the map feature to be fantastic. My players are also finding it very useful as well.

It would also be nice if there was a CSS set up for Hero. I am not smart enough to mess around with that .

I know there are other tools available to do the same kind of thing but they cost quite a bit more.

The WYSIWYG editor is one of the reasons I enjoyed switching over to the Epic Words site.

[Tasha]

The WYSIWYG editor is one of the reasons I enjoyed switching over to the Epic Words site.

I hate the fracking markup language Obsidian Portal makes you use. It's a real creativity killer. When I run again, I am going to use Epic Worlds.

[Nolgroth]

All good info. Thanks. Looks like Epic Worlds is where to go.

[bluesguy]

The WYSIWYG editor is one of the reasons I enjoyed switching over to the Epic Words site.

Is there a way to 'port' from Obsidian Portal to Epic Worlds site?

[Xavier Onassiss]

Is there a way to 'port' from Obsidian Portal to Epic Worlds site?

Just a quick correction here for googling purposes: it's called Epic Words.

I don't know of any easy way to port everything from one to the other.

[Nolgroth]

Oh thanks for the correction. Appreciate that.