Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Table-Top Role Playing 2.0

Written by Justin Mason

You’re the Game Master, it’s game night, and you have all your notes ready. From world design, to the contents of the dungeon, non-player character and monster stats, and treasure lists -- it's all there at your finger tips. So, the question is, how organized are you, really?

More and more Game Masters are loosing the thick wire-bound notebooks chocked full of scribbles and sticky-notes and stepping into the age of the internet.

Yeah, I know, the internet has been easily accessible for over dozen years, so it’s not really a “new day.” The internet is integrated into just about every aspect of our lives, but it’s taken a long time for table-top role-playing community to really catch up to standardizing the technologies use in our campaigns and game sessions.

Obsidian Portal is the service that should be destined to usher in this game-table upgrade. It’s free, it’s expansive, it’s user-friendly, and most of all -- it’s cross-platform compatible. Meaning, all of the services and standard features are of use to both Game Masters and players regardless of what game system, game world, or genre they may be using.

I could write a lengthy, detailed description of what Obsidian Portal is, but since they’ve gone to the trouble of already compiling a video that does just that, how about I just share it with you right here:



As a Game Master who has used the Obsidian Portal service to run a weekly, 56-game-session campaign, I guarantee you that it makes it fun and easy to keep track of your campaign, setting, characters, storyline and game session notes.
Also, involve your players in the wiki function of the service and you will witness a dimension and element to your setting that’s totally new as you also get to see, for the likely the first time, your game world through the eyes of the players/characters.

I highly recommend you check it out. It’s a worthwhile 11-minutes.

1 comment:

  1. at first, i thought this was just a wiki like any other, but the organizational tools are pretty interesting.

    like other wiki's and online tools, the benefits are arguable for the time spent. personally, i find it annoying to have a laptop on a table that is already crammed with books and papers and dice and pencils, and beer bottles and pop cans...

    i guess my biggest gripe is that it seems D&D centric. yeah, it's the biggest and most well known game out there, but that is only because products like this promote it.

    anyway, i'll probably use it for a short period of time until i get bored with it or find something better :P

    ReplyDelete

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