Our Site for Review: The Minrothad Guilds

onsilius

Hi, all. I am the DM of the 3.B D&D campaign (That's a mix of 3.X and Basic rules) "The Minrothad Guilds":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/minrothad

Due to the lack of sort ordering on the Campaigns tab, it's hard to find sites using Obsidian Portal in creative and innovative ways. I'm putting our site out for review to get feedback on how we're doing and to see if anyone knows of sites doing similar things better so we can improve. Feel free to send me a message, reply here, or add a comment directly to our site if you've got some criticism for us.

Thanks!

DM Fred

drubixcube

man - there is a ton of info to go through on the setting. i'll get back to you when i feel like i understand the world a bit better. i never was a classic DnD guy (never cared so much for "high fantasy") but i like what you did with linking magic to destroying the world and the rise of the religious in their place. good stuff.

actual comments coming soon!

abernomicon

Your Minrothad site looks great! I'm a fan. Love the art and the bordering. Cool way to do the adventure logs too by having a section for each player, and a post for each session with links to the player sections. I loved Basic D&D so it's great to see it being merged with something like 3E. And the major history/plot twist to how arcane magic is dealt with in Mystara is truly enjoyable.

It has my vote for feature of the month and year!

Ab

arsheesh

Yeah I'll second Abernomicon's comments. You have a really easy to follow user interface and nice graphics. I've always been curious about Classic D&D, and the world of Mystara-your site has made me doubly so. I am looking forward to reading more about your campaign when I can eek out time between studies. By the way, here's a link to my own home-brew campaign. Much of the world is still under construction, and consequently, so is the site. That said, I have quite a bit of information about my world and our campaign on the site, and I'm not satisfied with the current layout and user interface. I'd appreciate any feedback for ways I might improve the site (which can be found "here":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/age-of-legends).

Cheers,

-Arsheesh

kfrancesconi

It's nice to hear good feedback from the community so far. As a player in this campaign, I've really enjoyed the world that Onsilius has fleshed out. As a DM, he's placed a lot of emphasis on character development. The adventures allow for players to set and meet goals for short and long term development. Our party is very diverse in age and gaming experience (youngest is 18, oldest is nearly 40!), but it has worked out well. I have a further vested interest in the party's use of OP, as one of my informal roles is to help facilitate participation by the players in the Portal. Many of the pages you see on the site, such as Ships, Karma, Shares, Logs and NPCs section are heavily player-driven. When Onsilius built the site here, his notion to me was that he envisioned the use of the portal as a means not only to capture and disseminate game information, but also as a means to enrich roleplay. I personally believe that we've seen success on both counts. Posting logs gives me an opportunity as a player to reflect on the happenings of the previous session, and inevitably has an effect on my character's future behavior. The wiki is also a nice repository that I can review to keep certain details fresh in my mind, and lets Onsilius focus on content and not mopping up details. These are things we practiced to some degree in previous campaigns, usually through the use of spreadsheet, but this has worked out much better.

I hope you enjoy reading our adventures, we certainly have fun playing them.

Ken, aka Sergei, Servant of Halav.

arsheesh

Hi there Ken (Sergei),

Yeah, in briefly looking through your campaign site the other night I could tell that the PC's directly contributed to the site (at least as far as campaign journals go), but I didn't know the extent of it. I am impressed, and truth to tell, a bit envious. I tried to do something similar with the PC's in my campaign, envisioning the site as a place where the PC's could both access background information on our campaign world (historical and geographical info I had already developed), and directly contribute to the creation of that world through the use of campaign logs, updating character bios, and introducing new information to the wiki page. Sadly however, thus far my players have either been too busy, or simply uninterested in this task; hence, my site is pretty much a one man show. In fact, I'm pretty sure that I'm the only one who has even read the adventure logs and NPC bios that I've created. Ah well, we make due with what we have right? I'm starting a new campaign now called "Tales of Darkmoon Vale":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/tales-of-darkmoon-vale and I'm going to push PC participation in our OP site allot more than I have with the other campaign.

Knowing how involved you all are in the Minrothad campaign gives me even greater motivation to read up on your "shared" campaign world. Kudos to all of you for devoting so much care to the world you love.

Cheers,

-Arsheesh

kfrancesconi

Arsheesh,
One of the things Onsilius did to encourage participation was institute the karma system. Players are rewarded with karma points as they contribute. You can see on our karma page what uses/rewards they have.

Ken

arsheesh

Kfrancesconi,

Thanks for the heads up! I've checked out the Karma rules and found them to be brilliant. Onsilius has graciously allowed me to use the rules in my campaign, so I look forward to seeing PC participation increase. By the way, you've got an interesting back-story to your Sergei character.

Cheers,

-Arsheesh

crhaim5

I am also enjoying the minrothad campaign. I am new to the portal, and searching for campaigns turned up very bad results. But this campaign is a great example of what I can do with my own game that I am running. I love the borders that make you feel like you are reading some old sea charts, and the house rules and karma are very cool. I may copy a few things from here, too!

Thaljun

I also am a player in the Minrothad campaign. I really enjoy the karma system Onsilius created. Not only does it provide incentive to participate with the OP site. It also can enhance your campaigns game play. In a gaming system where often your fate comes down to the roll of a D20 it is nice to have something like karma that can be drawn on to save you from a nasty death. After all most DM's are not really trying to kill off their adventurers (right Onsilius?) so giving a character a possible boost in those life or death situations can be handy. I also like it because if there is something I really want to accomplish I can dump my karma into that roll and make it happen. Like scribing that fragile ancient spell scroll into your spell book when you know you will only get one chance.

I also agree with Ken (aka Sergei). Our illustrious DM Onsilius does make our campaign more rich and rewarding because he works really hard to tailor the experience to fit the players short and long term goals. One of the things he asks us to do at character creation is consider our short and long term goals. These goals have to be more than the standard, I want to be powerful or the best fighter I can be. As he would say 'ever one wants to be powerful and the best at their class they can be, so those are not goals'. He encourages us to have goals that help define our characters. What motivates them, why are they doing what they do? In Moridin's case his short term goal is to find the tools, books etc. to help him become a true wizard with out being burned at the stake! His long term goal is to prove that the arcane is not consuming life. That way he can return with proof of this knowledge to his fellow Minrothians and possibly found a new Guild of the Arcane. Goals like that give a character purpose and gives the player more to think about than how to kill the next monster or how many magic items they have.

Daron, aka Moridin, the up until recently normal human.