https://forum.obsidianportal.com/categories/general-archive/p4/feed.rss Wed, 16 Sep 2026 13:24:01 +0000 General Archive Discussions on Obsidian Portal Community Forums en-CA https://forum.obsidianportal.com/discussion/3410/active-and-hover-campaign-colors Tue, 29 Oct 2013 10:58:56 +0000 crimsonknave 3410@/discussions
However, I've only found one place that "Hover" is used: the day labels in the calendar. So, the name Hover seems a bit weird to me... "Active" seems to be only used in the calendar widget on the side of the adventure log, but at least it is the actively selected items there.

Does anyone know of anywhere else those are used? They seem pretty useless right now.]]> https://forum.obsidianportal.com/discussion/3418/tags-and-filters Tue, 29 Oct 2013 20:46:56 +0000 SkidAce 3418@/discussions
I check the box for "Falconaire" to limit it to that country, then I check wizard.

But instead of getting the wizards in Falconaire, I get all the Falconaire characters AND all the wizard characters (even those not in that country).

So the tags are functioning as an "either this OR that" filter.

Am I missing something or is there no way to filter things that meet "share this AND that"?]]> https://forum.obsidianportal.com/discussion/3417/lfg-boston-based-player-looking-for-pathfinder-game Tue, 29 Oct 2013 20:33:42 +0000 Halfkender 3417@/discussions
Interested in playing Pathfinder as I have been digging deep into the core rule book.

My time is somewhat limited on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Any games outside those the days/nights would be awesome.

Current location: Boston MA USA]]> https://forum.obsidianportal.com/discussion/3409/thanks-dreadgazebo-basileus-and-langy Tue, 29 Oct 2013 10:02:12 +0000 SkidAce 3409@/discussions
Simple, upfront....thanks.]]> https://forum.obsidianportal.com/discussion/3401/email-notification Mon, 28 Oct 2013 20:32:29 +0000 Ruhar 3401@/discussions https://forum.obsidianportal.com/discussion/3400/character-search-by-tags Mon, 28 Oct 2013 20:12:58 +0000 Ruhar 3400@/discussions
Michelle]]> https://forum.obsidianportal.com/discussion/3397/reforged-basic-site-functions-reading-and-editing-pages-are-now-far-more-difficult Mon, 28 Oct 2013 18:17:28 +0000 dr_venture 3397@/discussions
1) Who in the world thinks it's a good idea to have to edit page code and data fields with white text on medium grey?!?!?! Did you actually spend much time editing page code via the tools on your own site? Please be advised: different monitors have different tolerances for color/tone contrast. Holy crap, it's like 1000% harder to edit pages now!!! The code is incredibly hard to view, which is extremely irritating because there is no functional value, other than to "look cool." Flat out, unless this changes, you just lost my business. There is *no way* I'm going to strain my eyes to update my campaign.

2) The page resizing is a real double-edged sword... on one hand, some of the elements shrink down very nicely to smaller screens. On the other hand, I have a 2 page monitor, and rather than getting more info on many of the pages, I seem to just get gigantic scaled up versions of page elements. Literally, almost *half* of every page is the damn banner and dragon logo and the grey menu bar on the top, no matter what size I make the page! My campaign banner is being blown up about 30% bigger than I uploaded it, so that it is both very blurry and *waaaay* too big on the page. I can't believe that with a 2 page monitor I have to scroll down on virtually every page to see the contents. With a 2 page monitor I am tempted to use the keyword feature to find characters that are off the bottom of screen... and my game only has about 10 characters!

3) The campaign sidebars now have no background - this lets you see more of the background image, but makes the text in the sidebars really hard to read. I suppose there may be hooks in the HTML for using CSS there, but I really didn't want to have to dig that out just to read the sidebar text!

Guys, you made the interface way slicker, and far less useful. The core things I do on OP is to view pages, and edit page code. Both have been made exponentially more difficult. God, please tell me you have a fix in mind, or I just paid to have you guys take a pretty decent campaign management site and flush it down the toilet - I'd never sign up for this as it is.

You know what? The old site wasn't that bad - you got totally carried away with site 'slickness', and lost sight of basic functionality and usability. I don't *care* if the site looks like the control screens on the USS Enterprise: I want it to have features that are useful in running my game, and are easy to navigate (jury is still out on that for me). Jeez.

Hope to hear about some changes in the near future - I'm sure not going to put up with this for long.]]> https://forum.obsidianportal.com/discussion/3395/functional-issues Mon, 28 Oct 2013 15:56:44 +0000 Maesenko 3395@/discussions
First off, I'd like to give a tentative congratulations to the crew working at OP on the Reforge launch. My pages are looking okay thus far aside from my account page.

I've been browsing the site in both Chrome (offline/visitor/unsigned) as well as Firefox (signed in) to get a feel for both public and private views.
So far, my biggest issue in navigation of the new site is the lack of search. So far, I've only come across it in one capacity: within a campaign. Sitewide-wise, it doesn't seem to exist at the moment.

Is this currently disabled/hidden, or has it actually gone missing? I know that some other things have been disabled for the time.

In wither case, I'm in the process of testing some other functions and options, and I'm hoping that some other savvy users will work with with me in testing some of the areas most people have been quiet about on the forums.

Keep it up, guys.
~Mae]]> https://forum.obsidianportal.com/discussion/3286/the-pdq-system Sat, 12 Oct 2013 09:04:12 +0000 ninjazombie42 3286@/discussions
How does weaknesses come into play? And how do I make sense of a weakness being improved through advancing? How does a clumsy limp(-2) for example, turn into a clumsy limp(+2), if a character choose to buy ranks in that quality when he or she "levels up"?

The system seems very interesting and fluffy, just like I like it, so I would appreciate any help with these littke kinks. Thanks:)]]> https://forum.obsidianportal.com/discussion/3331/searching-campaign-forums Fri, 18 Oct 2013 09:33:53 +0000 SkidAce 3331@/discussions
Since we use the forums as the ongoing play, before editing and posting as an ADventure Log, we often need to find info.

And paging backwards is...tedious.]]> https://forum.obsidianportal.com/discussion/3078/a-few-thoughts-on-theming Mon, 24 Jun 2013 20:31:51 +0000 Micah2 3078@/discussions
Here are two different themes that Drew was able to construct by 1) choosing a background, and 2) changing the color scheme.

h4. Outer Space

!https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/145070/color2.jpg!

h4. Zombie Horror

!https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/145070/color3.jpg!

h2. Random Thoughts

* We're hoping to give the option to change the icons as well. We'd like to put together several icon sets to support different genres/themes.
* We will probably pre-create several color schemes and suggest colors to go with specific backgrounds.
* We're hoping to vastly increase the number of pre-made backgrounds available. Several will be available for all, while others will be restricted to Ascendant only.
* *You can upload your own background image*! This has been requested many times, and we finally have a chance to get to it.

h3. CSS Still Customizable

Finally, just as now, Ascendant campaigns will have the option of writing their own raw CSS. However, hopefully with these color and background options, many people will be able to achieve a good looking campaign with minimal effort.]]> https://forum.obsidianportal.com/discussion/3326/kickstarter-com-reaper-miniatures-bones-ii-the-return-of-mr-bones Thu, 17 Oct 2013 10:53:35 +0000 Gilin 3326@/discussions https://forum.obsidianportal.com/discussion/3222/combining-character-bio-and-description Wed, 02 Oct 2013 08:23:13 +0000 Micah2 3222@/discussions
I need some input again. On the list of "things I wish I had never done" is splitting the character text area into bio/fluff and description/crunch. It seemed like a good distinction, but has proved somewhat artificial, and especially limiting how people can choose to style or intersperse things if they want.

So, as part of the reforging, I'm considering just combining the two fields. For existing characters, we automatically take everything in the bio field and append it to the description field, and the description field disappears. For new characters, it's all just one field from the get-go. One goal here is that with natural editing down the road, we're probably going to do something similar anyway.

Before I pull the trigger on it, does anyone have any reason why this is a bad idea? Anything I'm missing?]]> https://forum.obsidianportal.com/discussion/3166/why-so-quiet Sun, 15 Sep 2013 19:23:31 +0000 Micah2 3166@/discussions
I've been pretty quiet for a while, and I just wanted to let everyone know that all is well. I'm just working super hard to get the first part of the reforging launched in early October. It's been much more time and energy consuming than I had thought, meaning it's pulling me away from here and these discussions more than I had expected.

But, I just wanted to let everyone know that we're still working, still making progress, and we're getting close!]]> https://forum.obsidianportal.com/discussion/3223/unisystem-dynamic-sheet-templates Wed, 02 Oct 2013 12:52:42 +0000 MysteryManFromOuters 3223@/discussions
I have developed 5 DTS (Dynamic Sheet Templates). All are for Unisystem games.

The first is for Conspiracy X, the second for All Flesh Must Be Eaten, the third for Armageddon, the fourth for Terra Primate and the last one for WitchCraft.

You may see them all here : "http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/mmfo-s-unisystem-campaign-test/characters":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/mmfo-s-unisystem-campaign-test/characters

I hope you'll enjoy them.

If you do so — or even if you don't — let put some words (questions, pieces of advice, tip-off — no insults please… 8) ) here.

Enjoy.]]> https://forum.obsidianportal.com/discussion/3186/new-pathfinder-dynamic-character-sheet-broken Tue, 24 Sep 2013 11:39:29 +0000 Bondoid 3186@/discussions
So I went to make a new npc on my campaign, and low and behold there is a new Pathfinder Dynamic Character Sheet. Not sure when it was added, but I definitely prefer the coloration of the new one.

There's just one problem, its broken! It looks like the code of the character sheet has an extra /div. Anyone know who to contact to get this fixed.

Comparison,

"old sheet":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/our-legacy-of-fire/characters/test2

"new sheet":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/our-legacy-of-fire/characters/test

Bondoid
"Legacy of Fire":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/our-legacy-of-fire]]> https://forum.obsidianportal.com/discussion/3159/css-question-no-target-or-checked Thu, 05 Sep 2013 20:18:59 +0000 Bondoid 3159@/discussions Without them making tabbed menus is pretty tough/impossible. Has anyone had any luck using these?

Im not sure if its Obsidian Portal being lame or if its my own inexperience thats causing the issue.

For reference im talking about tabs like these
http://csscience.com/css3-tabs/
or

Bondoid
"Legacy of Fire":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/our-legacy-of-fire]]> https://forum.obsidianportal.com/discussion/3150/greetings Mon, 26 Aug 2013 09:09:38 +0000 Counselor_Troi 3150@/discussions
So, just how useful does everyone find the tools offered here?]]> https://forum.obsidianportal.com/discussion/3155/thanks Fri, 30 Aug 2013 14:13:34 +0000 Bondoid 3155@/discussions
I wanted to take a moment to thank everyone on this forum for all their help, in the form of guides and examples! Time and time again i'm amazed by the generosity and talent in this hobby's community.

Thanks Guys!

Bondoid
"The Legacy of Fire":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/our-legacy-of-fire]]> https://forum.obsidianportal.com/discussion/3068/name-generator-preview Wed, 19 Jun 2013 13:19:40 +0000 Micah2 3068@/discussions
See here: "http://opnamegen.herokuapp.com":http://opnamegen.herokuapp.com

A few notes
* Use the dropdown list at the top to select different generators.
* It’s a grammar-based generator, meaning it uses grammar rules to create the names.
* By varying the grammar rules, we can create different generators for different styles of names. The possibilities are pretty much limitless.
* You can play with the grammar rules by adding new rules and changing the weights (probabilities of certain combinations).
* We’ve got a handful of sample grammars in there now, and our hope is to get some good ones from the community.
* I imagine that we will quickly come up with some good best practices for grammar generation and very soon will have some great names coming out.
* It’s all in javascript, meaning it’s pretty damn fast. It has to get the grammar’s from the server, but otherwise it’s all client-side.


The strength of these generators is that if they generate a handful of names, usually 1 or 2 are good enough. The plan is to take that into account when integrating it into the site. In other words, when generating an on-the-fly NPC, there will be a way to quickly generate a handful of names using a specific grammar (like, “quick, I need a Spanish-sounding female name”) and then pick one to be your new NPC. A few clicks and you’ll have a new NPC in your campaign, saved and ready to be recalled in 6 months when a player asks, “So who was that lady again?”

h3. More detail

Here is a more detailed description from Melinda, the lead developer on this:

This is a prototype of what will eventually power the Obsidian Portal Name Generator. Names are generated via a Template that defines the possible pieces of the name. The specific choices for generating any given name are randomly determined. By default, the “Sample 1” template is loaded into the editor. Just click "Generate!" to see the names it generates.

A template is a list of named variables, each with multiple options for how they can be interpreted. Name generation always starts by resolving the "Start" variable. In the case of the Sample 1 Template, there is a 20% chance that it will resolve "Start" to "Vow ConString" and an 80% chance that it will choose "Con VowString". These percentages are determined by the weighting number after each choice.

Let's say it chooses "Vow ConString". From there, the generator looks at each word (separated by spaces). If the word starts with a capital letter, then it needs to keep going. In this case, "Vow" is capitalized, and represents something from the "Vow" variable defined a little bit below, with 20% chance of "a", 40% chance of "e", etc. Let's say it chooses "e", the most likely outcome. Since "e" is lowercase, it knows to just put an "e" in the final word, and that no more evaluation is needed for that part.

Now it moves on to "ConString". ConString is defined as having a 60% chance of being "Con VowString", 20% chance of "Con VowEnd", and 20% chance of "Con Vow". Let's say it chooses "Con VowEnd" this time. Then all it has to do is make a choice from the "Con" variable (let's say it was "n") and make a choice from the "VowEnd" variable (let's say it was "ah"). There's no more capital variables to resolve, so we're done. The resulting name is "Enah".

Note that the only variable that must be named a certain thing is "Start" so that the generator knows where to start. Everything else is named however you like, as long as it starts with a capital letter for a variable, or a lowercase letter for resulting characters. In the case of Sample 1, note that we have "Vow" and "VowEnd". The only difference there is that "VowEnd" consists of combinations that we thought would work well at the end of the word, as opposed to the middle, and we defined our variable "ConString" so that "VowEnd" can only appear at the end of the word.

To get started, try out the different sample templates, and try making modifications to them to see how it affects the generated names!

One more feature: the “Recover Last Valid Template” link at the bottom will try to load the editor with the last template you successfully generated names with. It might help you out if your browser gets closed in the middle of editing a template.]]> https://forum.obsidianportal.com/discussion/3041/player-secrets-user-specific-content Wed, 29 May 2013 14:33:07 +0000 ZacZero 3041@/discussions
I love the option to create information that is available only to specific players using the player secrets functionality.
I'd love to see this expanded upon and refined in the re-forging. Is this anywhere in the roadmap?]]> https://forum.obsidianportal.com/discussion/3112/campaign-forum-thoughts Wed, 24 Jul 2013 12:43:23 +0000 Micah2 3112@/discussions
I call it a forum because that's a word everyone knows, but it's not really what I'm going for. In a traditional forum, you have 1000s (sometimes millions) of people all talking simultaneously, and the software's job is to filter out the 99.9% that's not important to you and get you to what you want to see.

By contrast, in an Obsidian Portal campaign forum, if someone is writing something, *everyone* should be reading it. Examples: "Can we switch game night this week?", "What food should I bring?", "Here are my thoughts on the current plan to attack the underground bunker...", "Hey! The Steam sale is going on and you can get games X, Y, Z for super cheap!" (Yes, that's a real thread from my campaign, and yes, I'm glad he posted it!)

With the exception of gm-only and/or player secrets (which we haven't tackled yet and won't be this time around), there's not a lot that you would write in your campaign forum that you wouldn't expect everyone else to at least glance at. That's a big difference in purpose from a traditional forum.

Put another way, our forums are meant to replace the _reply all_ button in an email thread. With reply all, inevitably someone forgets to reply all, or they reply to some but not all, and the thread gets fragmented and information is lost. By routing all communication through your campaign forum, nobody gets left out and everyone is up to speed.

In the reforging we're trying to examine the forum from this angle and make it easier to immediately see any new posts or messages. Rather than digging around in subforums, new posts should be visible immediately when you come to your campaign (we're putting the latest posts on the dashboard) as well as surfaced intelligently on the forums page itself. Likewise, information like who originally authored a topic or how many total posts are in it are less important. In the end, the forums page may not look much like a traditional forum as we've come to expect it, but I think that will be a good thing.

We're working on some designs right now that I hope to show soon, but I just wanted to toss out the overall idea.]]> https://forum.obsidianportal.com/discussion/3098/public-character-list Tue, 09 Jul 2013 07:24:29 +0000 Micah2 3098@/discussions
We're working on the redesigned character list page (the "characters tab":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/kensing/characters). It occurs to me that it's a pretty simple page right now, and I don't really want to change that too much, as simple is a good thing.

However, if there's ever been anything where you thought, "If only this page did..." please let me know. My gut feeling is that there are probably 1 or 2 small (SMALL!) enhancements that could be done here to make things easier. For example, I'm thinking of adding some kind of search/filter box that allows you to insta-filter the displayed characters by name or tag as you type. We're already doing this with the search bar at the top, but on this page it would make sense to have another one limited just to characters.

As a reminder, we're focusing on enhancements that make it easier to navigate around or quickly find what you're looking for. So whiz-bang new features are of less importance than providing a better navigation experience for the features we already have.]]> https://forum.obsidianportal.com/discussion/3105/the-future-of-the-items-tab Tue, 16 Jul 2013 08:55:12 +0000 Micah2 3105@/discussions
It's not just a question of what we can/can't do to improve the items tab, instead it's a question of what *else* could we spend that time on? A perfect example are the DSTs. They have a lot of potential, but they need to be improved. If forced to choose, I would much rather spend time on improving the DSTs (which a lot of people use) as opposed to the Items tab. Characters are the core of RPGs and also Obsidian Portal. Items...not so much. Plenty of games do just fine without items at all.

We could just leave it as it is, but during user testing it became clear to me that leaving in things that are less-than-awesome is a good way to confuse and irritate users, especially new ones. The less polished features are like land mines. Experienced users know where they are and avoid them, but new users step on them and instantly get a bad first impression about the site. If that happens enough, they decide the site sucks and never come back.

The best solution is to make everything awesome, but reality dictates that we only have so much time, so we have to choose what we will focus on. The next best solution is to remove and/or better hide the land mines to prevent people from stepping on them.

My current plan is this:

* We make the Items page match the new design, but don't really mess with it all that much.
* For existing campaigns with items, they have the items tab in the new design.
* For existing campaigns without items, and for new campaigns, they don't have the items tab enabled. It's an option you can turn on in the advanced settings section, but is disabled by default.

Some have asked if they can choose which tabs are enabled, and we may go that route as well, but I'm not sure yet. It's on our nice-to-have list that we're hoping to get to once we have time.

Some day in the future, hopefully we can revisit the items feature and work it to where it needs to be to match the rest of the site, but for now I don't want to ignore it and allow it to remain as a land mine that people are stepping on.

Also, I'm posting this here because I feel like you all (the inner-circle of the KS backers and OP community) can handle this and understand what I'm trying to say. I'm not really planning on announcing this yet to the community-at-large because I'm still trying to figure out how to phrase it. Most people probably think the reforging is about adding tons of new features, not necessarily hiding existing ones. But, what we're really trying to do is refine and sharpen the existing site so it's always a delight to interact with. Sometimes that requires making some hard choices. I'm glad that I can feel confident in posting this to all of you in that you'll understand what the goals are and how we're going to achieve them.]]> https://forum.obsidianportal.com/discussion/3045/campaign-landing-page-thoughts Fri, 31 May 2013 12:40:44 +0000 Micah2 3045@/discussions
However, this is meant to be a private-facing page, just for you and your players. On the flip side is the public-facing campaign landing page. This is where a visitor to your campaign will end up. Essentially, the current home tab on the campaigns is what we have now, like "the homepage for my Kensing campaign":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/kensing In the current system, this page does double-duty, serving as both the public landing and the private one as well. The plan is to split that up somewhat.

I've been working with Drew and writing up notes about what I think needs to be on that page, but I'd like feedback to see if there's anything I've missed, or if anyone has strong feelings. *Remember!* It's important to understand the distinction between the public facing landing page and the private facing dashboard. What we're talking about here is the public side.

h3. Needs

* Campaign name
* Campaign banner (optional, need to look good without one too)
** If banner is shown, we probably want to hide any text for the name, since the banner is assumed to name the campaign...
* “description” which is basically just a special wiki page (the Home page)
* Navigation to subsections
* Identification of GM
* Players and party

h3. Nice to haves

* Game system (preferably with logo treatment, not just text)
* Where we game map
* Indication of staleness (last update?)
* Indication of popularity (number of fans, something like that)
* Indication of featured (featured campaigns could get a badge showing the date they were featured or something)

h3. Overall Thoughts

* Power users are going to want fewer default modules and/or content items. They will want to lovingly place what they need and hide the rest.
* New users will want something that just looks nice out of the box]]> https://forum.obsidianportal.com/discussion/3110/mobile-sneak-peek Tue, 23 Jul 2013 06:44:20 +0000 Micah2 3110@/discussions
Now we're getting close, and everything is coming together just as we'd hoped. Think of it like getting a free gift as part of the Reforging. A fully redesigned site, with a greatly improved mobile version thrown in as a bonus!

Check out "the video":https://vimeo.com/70636652.]]> https://forum.obsidianportal.com/discussion/3142/campaign-variables Sun, 18 Aug 2013 09:00:33 +0000 ChrisH 3142@/discussions
Thanks in advance,

-Chris]]> https://forum.obsidianportal.com/discussion/3138/default-op-color-codes-please Fri, 16 Aug 2013 01:49:23 +0000 Brimstone22 3138@/discussions https://forum.obsidianportal.com/discussion/3120/character-artist-plug Tue, 30 Jul 2013 10:45:57 +0000 dlaporte7271 3120@/discussions
For those of you who know me, I'm back again..hoping to revive my campaign "violent skies":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/violent-skies. I've been through a bunch of real world stuff that has really taken my energy and time. Things seem to have settled down so I think we are ready to give it another go...anyway

I've got a good friend who is a fantastic artist. He's done character art for many of our gaming characters (his own too) and now he's started a "website":http://crazy8illustrations.squarespace.com/. Thought I'd plug him here. Check out his work. He is in the middle of doing a charity fund raiser at the moment. He'll do artwork for donations. Last year he raised money for the American Cancer Society. 100% of the money he raises goes to the charity. Here's his FB page, "Characters for Charity":https://www.facebook.com/CharactersForCharity

So...if you want a cool character sketch...AND...you'd like to be contributing to a worthy cause...check it out!

Also...feel free to pay him craploads of money to do artwork for you...I'm sure he'd appreciate it.

"dlaporte":http://www.obsidianportal.com/profile/dlaporte7271]]> https://forum.obsidianportal.com/discussion/3111/next-member-of-the-century-club-shadows-over-new-york Tue, 23 Jul 2013 21:13:59 +0000 Leonidas300 3111@/discussions

"Shadows Over New York":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/shadows-over-new-york



"Leonidas300":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/metzger/wikis/leonidas300
"A Manifestation of Chaos":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/metzger/wikis/main-page
COTM - Sept. 2012]]>