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ddavison
July 29th, 2014, 18:56
I'm looking into the possibility and interest in creating an export or linkage from Fantasy Grounds to Obsidian Portal. Would people be interested in having some form of auto-export/update to Obsidian Portal at the conclusion of each gaming session? What sort of things would you want exported?

Please feel free to add additional thoughts below. If you already do some of these things manually, I'd love to see a link back to your campaign to get a feel for what it looks like when finished.

Trenloe
July 29th, 2014, 19:11
This could be very useful.

Things that might be handy to export from FG to OP:

Player notes.
Abbreviated chat log to the adventure log section.
Possibly some story entries tagged as public/shared with all.
Certain maps?
PCs?

Items 1-4 would be generic, while item 5 would be very ruleset specific - might be a nice to have... Personally, we don't use the Characters section of OP for detailed statistics, we use it for background info so this, for me, wouldn't be a big requirement.

Griogre
July 29th, 2014, 19:15
I just use a Yahoo or Google group for each online campaign I run. They are typically low maintenance which is important to me since I am usually running more than one campaign at once. If there was an easy update, I would probably look at it, though.

Myrddin
July 29th, 2014, 21:59
I'd love it if there could be something to help export the chat log. I (or one of my players) currently edit the chat log in word, but it's a vefry time-consuming process. That for me would be the number one priority in terms of any integration with OP.

Looking at Trenloe's suggestions, I think it could be useful to allow player notes to be exported too. A nice-to-have would be character sheet export...since we play in FG we don't really need the full char sheet detail in OP.

jshauber
July 29th, 2014, 22:10
What Trenloe said...

I use it for the campaign I run in FG and I am on a couple other OP groups for games I play in, both FG and face-to-face (finally getting the group to use FG for the combat tracker at least to speed things up).

Trenloe
July 29th, 2014, 22:21
I'd love it if there could be something to help export the chat log. I (or one of my players) currently edit the chat log in word, but it's a vefry time-consuming process.
Does the chat log scrubber help any? https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?8133-Chat-Log-Scrubber-released

Blacky
July 30th, 2014, 01:03
I'm using a dedicated website for my campaign settings, usually a Dokuwiki install (it's a wiki so nothing is ever lost, Dokuwiki doesn't need a database so it's easy to set up and maintain, and Doku has a nice integrated access right management so I can create GM or player only areas). Something like that (https://blackhammer.franchouille.fr/) for example.

I'm not fond of hosted services in general. Such services can change from day to day with no warnings, price increase, disappearing, technical issues, and so on. No matter the notoriety of said service the data hosted there are always in danger (look at Microsoft's music several years back). You almost always (Wordpress.com being one exception) have no access to the raw data, and no true knowledge about the backup policies and processes of said service. On top of that, most of these websites have the ad service as a client, you and I aren't client of those website we are the free workers that make it interesting for the ads.

But I have almost no issue with throw away services, for example I use Doodle to set up the game date, once it's set you can throw it away no problem. But for campaign data, I want them safe and secure for a long time especially since I prefer to play long campaigns (as in 2 or 3 years being a short one).

And on top of that, last time I looked Obsidian Portal was English only. I don't personally care, but almost all my players do.

That being said, having an export (and if possible an import) would be nice, although to me it doesn't rank above most voted features on the wishlist (such as map layers, tocken stacking, tocken limited visibility, map user ping, map text labels, and so on) and not by a long shot. Even if it's dedicated to a service (like Obsidian Portal), I'm guessing ultimately that's an XML export, meaning people could write something to change its format for other softwares or websites.

damned
July 30th, 2014, 03:19
Another thought that may have some merit...
It might be easier to launch your own campaign management service expressly for fantasy grounds users - that way you have control of the format that the website/database wants to receive data in too...
Obviously many people already use an existing service so you wouldnt do this if you didnt have sufficient interest...

Dakadin
July 30th, 2014, 03:24
Like Blacky, I use Dokuwiki's to track information I need. I like them because they store things as text documents so I can copy files around to use in different places.

Blacky
July 30th, 2014, 03:57
Another thought that may have some merit...
It might be easier to launch your own campaign management service expressly for fantasy grounds users - that way you have control of the format that the website/database wants to receive data in too...
I suggested this on these forums several years ago. Not because I need it (I don't and probably won't, and it's still a hosted service) but for non-geek it could be a way for SmiteWorks to make more money. With an online backup service, it's something that could be sold on a monthly (or yearly) basis, generating more income.

Find a young (but good) coder to do this on the side, give him a %, and take the rest. Or invest slightly, I think it using the right tools (any decent software that handle farm work, Dokuwiki does, I know Pun/FluxBB can be adapted too for the forum side, just 2 examples on the top of my head) and the right coder it can be done in a month (maybe a little more if you want it real pretty). The hosting costs are almost negligible, and if done right the maintenance cost too and the client service costs not that high.

For example, a few bucks a month to have your campaign automatically (and with history/revision) backed up online on SW servers, and you get maybe a dedicated wiki and forums, both public and private as you want, to host your campaign data and offline (as in out of FG) talks and such.

And if done honestly, have a tool to dump (xml dump, or even sql dump) all the data in one downloadable archive, so people aren't locked in.

Callum
July 30th, 2014, 09:18
I currently use a ProBoards forum for my campaigns, but I'd certainly look at using Obsidian Portal instead if it was linked to Fantasy Grounds. As Blacky noted, these services can't be depended on, though. We lost many years' worth of data held on a Forumer board we were using previously when that shut down without warning.

Valarian
July 30th, 2014, 11:39
The facetious answer: What's Obsidian Portal?
Yes, I know I could Google it and go and look. I'm guessing some sort of campaign/group/faction management, like you get for the MMO market.

I just use a Google group to organise games, with Google calendar and Drive folders shared with the group.

Blacky
July 30th, 2014, 11:47
Free forum farms are one of the worse yeah. Especially since they can generate a whole lot of data (years and years of exchanges between friends, family, etc.) that goes down the drain because of a change in price, because the company goes under (or over) or is bought, or just because of a technical issue and bad backup.

Wordpress.com (beside Autmattic being quite serious guys, on the technical and admin side of things) does it right. In one click you get all your data in a nice package to download. Nobody is locked in. Anybody can backup their own data this way.

Re-reading my post, it wasn't the clearest written message ever :rolleyes:

So, to sum it up. I think a lot of Fantasy Grounds GM aren't geek enough or don't have the time to do this themselves, and could be at least potentially interested in online services (what ignorant people nowadays call “cloud”, don't get me started on this). And it would be a way for SmiteWorks to generate more income, and monthly (or quarterly, or yearly) income at that.

One service could be what's discussed here, meaning a dedicated website for a campaign. Media (images, maps and such) hosting, articles, and yes data (as in characters, notes, campaign stories, etc.) from FG itself.

Another one would be offline (as in off FG, outside FG) talks. Basically meaning forums dedicated to a campaign. Some groups won't use it much, other will do quite heavily. I know several campaigns (or gaming groups) that spend more time gaming outside the gaming table (Amber or Vampire being perfect example, you play what's public around the gaming table, but spend a lot of time outside of it alone with the GM trying to get over one another ;) ). Those two could be set up as public, private, or both. For example a global forum for group talks, and one subforum per player for vicious backstabbing alone with the GM; same for the website some public pages, some privates for the gaming group, and some restricted to one player or the the GM only.

Last idea was backup. It needs to be well thought because of upload bandwith issue, but having FG (for example) automatically save online a campaign (the whole campaign, maybe even ruleset, extensions, modules) to avoid the epic fail of losing a 5 years campaign because of a technical glitch, or allowing people to move from computer to computer and download their entire campaign in one click (kinda like Steam does it with your games) could help people. Especially if there's a history, meaning the GM could go back not only to the last backup but the one from 3 days, a week, a month ago, and so on (up to a point, obviously).

Again, not everyone; for one I don't think I would be interested in such offer… I do my own backup, set up my own websites and forums and mailing list, etc. But I do believe some (if not most) people either can't, think they can't, or can but don't want to be bothered doing this.

Even if priced quite fairly, this could add some butter for SmiteWorks. And generating some money each month would help I guess, since they make money only when they sell software (or extension), meaning only one time.

From the technical side of things, it won't happen just by wishing it, but it's not that big a deal. I believe the website can be done on top of a wiki software (it handle article, pages, and medias, and could hold data formatted from FG), the talks with a forum software, and the backup either on top of a rsync like software or as custom code but it's not horrible to write (although it needs good design, meaning thinking on it first on a blank sheet of paper, to handle connexion issues and small upload bandwith issues).

For example I know that Dokuwiki works for it, being a pretty good wiki software with access management (meaning pages and/or namespaces can be restricted to some users) and can be set up as a farm (meaning one install to serve hundreds or thousands of wikis). FluxBB is one very lightweight (and fast) forum software that has being set up (by a private party, code not released but shouldn't cost much) at least once or twice as a farm. This would do the bulk of the job, still needing a coder to integrate everything with a single common login (Dokuwiki being good at that kind of external auth), coding the shop and payments side of things, coding the server and the client backup thing, an admin to set up the appropriate server, updates and backup processes, and maybe a designer to visually integrate it all (but cleanly, to help reduce the maintenance cost along the way). And it would need some service client to handle payments mishaps, questions, troubles, and so one but such client service would mainly be for paying customer so it shouldn't be an issue. Reusing existing tool has also the advantage of said tools being i18n ready (utf-8, and having a lot of locale and translations already in them); I know i18n isn't a priority for SmiteWorks but some day you'll need to expand here to grow (or survive), it's always good to be ready. Another advantage is that the data format is reusable, meaning giving people their own data would be easy, it's just a zip of the files and a sql dump and they can set up their own dokuwiki, fluxbb (or whatever, mediawiki, vbulletin, whatever) and import those on.

Online tools like these could also in the future link to new FG features. I'm thinking for example of the external media loading (loading a map/image from an URL, and not from the GM hard drive) from the FG wish list.

And the good thing is that it can be a separate project. It has (apart from FG code to link it to online things, that can come later on) no impact on FG, and could be done by someone other than the current 3 SmiteWorks people.

This kind of things maybe make more sense, from a money point of view than investing JPG time into coding for an external website with no income associated. And this way JPG can stay on FG itself, looking at tocken stacking, map text laber and user ping and such :D

This kind of things could also help the marketing. People would link to their SmiteWorks hosted campaign in various forums, and basically leave a trace, a mark of their campaign online (and in Google for the public parts and pages), each one of those trace being played on Fantasy Grounds. It's not the main advantage, but it's probably a small plus. Hell, if these tools are really good, I'm guessing some people not using FG could be interested, and in any cases it's also a good excuse to send press release to various websites and magazines, and have them talk about Fantasy Grounds ;)

Valarian
July 30th, 2014, 12:03
I like the ideas that Blacky and damned have posted for a Smiteworks developed & run campaign portal as a subscription service. I'd be willing to part with $5 to $10 a month to have this functionality.

What I'd like from it would be a method to upload my db.xml and chatlog.xml file after a session. For the portal to parse my db.xml and present the latest character information (could be easily done if the ruleset provides an XSL file for the XML to HTML translation).

Also, to parse the chatlog and add the latest session to the portal for editing (would need a "loaded" and "edited" indicator to avoid older chat log entries overwriting ones that have already been loaded/edited on the portal, based on the chatlog started date/time).

I'd also want a game session calendar.

dulux-oz
July 30th, 2014, 12:15
For what its worth, I think damned and Blacky's ideas are the way to go as well.

Cheers

Mellock
July 30th, 2014, 13:23
I use a Small Machines Forum, which is sufficient for the small game I'm in. I've tinkered with PMwiki for my own games, but decided a simple self-made site was sufficient.

ddavison
July 30th, 2014, 15:15
Great ideas, guys. Blacky, Damned and Valarian <-- all great ideas.

It would make sense to have a third party do that development but make it something in-house, as suggested. Uploading and auto-parsing the db.xml and presenting everything pre-parsed out into different areas of the online campaign manager would be neat. Then, perhaps the GM could further edit those auto-generated entries and mark them as public, shared or private. I'm visualizing that if you already have a story entry with boxed text, a link to an NPC or encounter and a link to a map or image, you could have it rendered that as in-line HTML and/or in Wiki format. The translation wouldn't be too difficult in that case. We'd have to see how that would look as opposed to sharing only a scrubbed version of the chat log.

Stories are more ruleset agnostic. The chat log can be rendered in a stylized text format and perhaps customized further for each ruleset.

viresanimi
July 30th, 2014, 15:50
Obsidian Portal?

I guess that was my answer...

Blahness98
July 31st, 2014, 01:07
When I ran my Dragonlance game, I used a proboard. Still have that all achieved on the board itself along with the first version of the board. It worked for my group as they liked to RP outside of FG.

Mgrancey
July 31st, 2014, 01:50
Mostly goes unused as players had very low involvement and participation, so haven't used in a while. Will probably download campaigns close the ones Ihave open.

Bidmaron
July 31st, 2014, 03:46
I'd part with $5-$20 per month for this kind of feature!

dr_venture
July 31st, 2014, 04:59
I use OP quite extensively. FWIW, if you simply make the data you want to put into OP exportable in simple HTML format (potentially as HTML segments without the HEAD and such), then it can be directly posted into OP pages. You can even get more fancy-schmancy and include CSS rules, which Ascendant (i.e. paid) users can edit on OP... but that might get a bit too involved for some folks. Suffice to say, if you just had HTML export for some of the data structures in FG (i.e., characters, first off), you'd achieve this for OP and any other service that allows users to post simple HTML. It doesn't need to be complicated or terribly feature rich to provide a lot of usefulness to a lot of users across the gamut of campaign management services.

GMTroll
July 31st, 2014, 12:05
I started using OP for the Kingamker AP (PFRPG) that I am running for my group. That started well but as I was not an Ascendant I didn't have access to the calendar and so used Facebook to arrange game sessions. The rest of the group just resorted to posting to the Facebook group and eventually OP was been left behind. I would certainly consider using it again, even picking it back up for this campaign if I thought the group would use it over Facebook.

I guess character sheets, npcs (if these are OGL or similar), player notes, calendar journal entries would be the things I'd be most concerned with exporting to a site such as OP.

Story and Image assets I think may need some careful consideration due to the potential to contain copyright material. What would be the implications to SW of users using FG to export protected material to public websites?

I'm not looking for an answer to this but thought it worth mentioning for consideration.

I think that it goes without saying that FG should continue to protect the commercially available modules by managing export rights to OP (or elsewhere) based on the consent of those that hold the rights to such works.

ddavison
August 1st, 2014, 13:41
Good point GMTroll. I was originally thinking that stories could be parsed out to save portions, such as boxed text, NPCs and treasure with options on which of those items per story (or globally) that the user wanted to export. We would probably need a feature at the front about copyright that would have to be answered first if we allowed that sort of export.

Blacky
August 1st, 2014, 14:02
That's probably why having private areas is a good idea. There's a good chance that if copyrighted material can be computer shared with a group of friends through FG, they can be shared with a group of friends through the web.

A default setup for a campaign could be something like this:



Public area: summary of the campaign, maybe some (original not copyrighted) texts and images to present the world, the game, the campaign, to allow for future recruitment.
Private gaming area: anything shared by and for the gaming group. Could be campaign maps, NPC portraits and descriptions, whatever.

Private area for player A: with the sheet of PC A, and whatever player A and the GM wants to put here. Only accessible to GM and player A
Same for B, C, D, etc.
FG content, could be easily exported here with the same access right that exists within FG. So a Note in FG shared with A and C but not B and D would be here accessible to player A & C only (and GM of course). And just a few exceptions, like PC sheets. Doing something like this in Dokuwiki (I'm not promoting, just taking an example I know) is quite easy to script. Incorporating this FG content into other part (like that same note appear in the Player A Private Area, Player B Private Area, and GM Private Area) is more complex.


GM private area; for GM only.


Then of course, everyone is free to do whatever it likes. So I'm guessing there would be some legal work to do to insulate SmiteWorks from liability (don't know enough about US and International law here to go further, in France that would mean SmiteWorks is not a publisher of said campaign website but a hosting service, the people paying for the hosting are legally responsible not SmiteWorks, and a contract says so).

Having the ACL (access management, meaning public or private for all or just some) also helps on top of this because it means that if SmiteWorks get some kind of complaint about a resource (“hey that's my image used illegally, take it down!”) they can avoid litigation from the complainer and from the gaming group (“hey you took down something that was mine with no cause!”) by making it private instead or just deleting it.

But a good liability shield is probably needed anyway. Just put any and all burden on the people responsible for the campaign site. It's best for SmiteWorks, but it's also the more reasonable and logical course of action here.

As for HTML export (again not promoting, just giving an example I know of) Dokuwiki has an integrated API for any and all parsers, so regular pages can be created with the regular wiki text, but the FG parser code could probably be reused in part and plugged in Doku to parse content from (and maybe to?) FG.

Leonal
August 9th, 2014, 11:20
Voted for the latter two options. I don't currently run a game, but when I do I'll be using Lone Wolf's Realm Works software to organize it.

Nylanfs
August 11th, 2014, 14:11
I've voted, and have been thinking on the grander implications of the question. I think I would REALLY advise against doing it in house. I felt there are multiple reasons for this some of which I'll list

1) Using an existing service/site leverages both communities (more if the exported file suports mutiple sites)
2) Resource allocation, if you use an existing service then you don't have to spend precious resources of Smiteworks to try and duplicate something that somebody else has already been working on for many years.

Blacky
August 11th, 2014, 14:37
1) Using an existing service/site leverages both communities (more if the exported file suports mutiple sites)
True, but is there a real and large Obsidian Portal community? I'm not talking about users, I'm sure most of Obisidian users are just that and won't bother with forums, news, trying out new product, and such.


2) Resource allocation, if you use an existing service then you don't have to spend precious resources of Smiteworks to try and duplicate something that somebody else has already been working on for many years.
But you don't get to charge them for it.

As for resources, it can (and probably should) be done externally. Get someone new to do it on the server side, and give him a piece of the action for example.

Blackfoot
September 1st, 2014, 23:03
I use Epic Words for my games, it has some better tools (loot and XP tracking specifically.. the XP tracking worked GREAT for Champions/HERO as well as Pathfinder) than OP and being a paid user is quite inexpensive ($12 a year). I have used OP in the past as a player and tried it out a bit from the GM side but found I preferred the EW interface and tools. I 'might' use it if it linked up with FG somehow.. but that depends a bit.
Would I use a FG based board? Actually I think I would be more likely to use one even if it didn't have all the bells and whistles I want, just because it would be more accessible to the community here... without creating yet another account somewhere. That is often a bogdown for players when this sort of issue rolls around.

Phystus
September 3rd, 2014, 15:01
I checked "other", my group uses a wiki (mediawiki, I think) to store shareable data for our campaign.

But Blacky and damned's idea is very interesting. Could work out nice for SW.

~P

Blacky
October 3rd, 2014, 00:53
Just something I saw, in case it might help or not.

I was talking about Dokuwiki as an example of software that could be a foundation to do what I described, beside what I already said (like farm capability, simple, easily extensible, etc.) it has a bundled official plugin for MySQL authentication. Basically just a web page with a form where the admin can put the details for the SQL auth, where to find it, the queries to retrieve it, etc.

So, simple, yet extremely powerful and require very little coding (just some understanding of the SQL used by vBulletin for example, which has visible sources).

Coanunn
October 4th, 2014, 16:32
Currently I follow a model set up by Jerrod "Savage Daddy" Gunning via Google. I can create a Google community, invite people to the hangout as events that will show up on their Google account calendar complete with reminders. I set up a section for player "journals" where I allow players to post what ever they want in character and even award additional Bennies (we play Savage Worlds) for updating a log between each session. I can create what ever sections are appropriate for the setting I'm using such as setting rules, any house rules, etc or even OOC if the group is composed of enough people from broad enough an area.

The concern I would have regarding the suggestion of a Fantasy Grounds specific service that accomplishes this is that it would need to be able to replicate the current features I get from Google to be useful. The biggest of which is the reminders for my players who tend to be forgetful. Other things that would be "exported" wouldn't really be useful for my group as we play very verbally and there would be nothing useful in Fantasy Grounds. No offense but Fantasy Grounds is simply used as a table for my group since we don't do very "tactical" combats but instead run most everything as theater of the mind. I reveal images as "setting drops" and will sometimes draw up not to scale versions of a room if there are details the players need on layout but the minutiae of who is where is often handled with a "plot appropriate position/distance" statement while we describe things. Thus most of what is in Fantasy Grounds for us are just the Character Sheets, a few images, and the dice rolls. Everything else is in the hangout.

Cloudancer
December 31st, 2014, 15:44
Currently I'm using yahoo groups for my RL campaign, but am seriously considering just moving it to facebook as that seems like the lowest common denominator at the moment. I think an integrated fantasy grounds solution (inhouse) would be best for your users here as the barrier to entry would be almost zero and you can integrate it as tightly/loosely as you like. I'd use an in-house solution for my games here for sure.

DrakosDJ
January 1st, 2015, 07:47
There is no option for "I don't use campaign tracking tools."

Griogre
January 1st, 2015, 16:21
That would be the last option plus none.

Oberoten
January 2nd, 2015, 07:28
I'd not mind being able to use Obsidian from inside FG, but as things stand I run a wiki on my own.

- Obe

bnickelsen
July 18th, 2015, 17:59
I have setup and tested Obsidian Portal bit I have not used it in production. I have also used Realms Works (https://www.wolflair.com/realmworks).


There are several features in both that I like. But for me the main things I ma looking for are
1. the linkability of different items in a relationship type manner. Organizations an PC / NPC's those organization. You can kind of link things in FG but not everything can be shared with the PC. For example I want my player to see info about every NPC(Major) the run into but only specific info. FG is lacking those pieces. So when I say Campaign managment it or really info management. Who know what about who.

So the answer to the above survey is I would use OP or a FG produced Tool or any other tool that offered easy integration. And Gladly play for it.

malvok
July 20th, 2015, 08:47
I just picked up Realmworks. It seems pretty nice. Since Hero Lab can export to FG then maybe Wolflair can work on exporting Realmworks to FG as well?

bnickelsen
July 20th, 2015, 12:56
I just picked up Realmworks. It seems pretty nice. Since Hero Lab can export to FG then maybe Wolflair can work on exporting Realmworks to FG as well?

Realm Works has a lot of nice features but lacks real time collaboration with your players.
And my two cents on "Importing" is I would much prefer "Syncing"

kylania
July 20th, 2015, 15:30
The emphasis on cloud services and constant charge for RealmWorks is kinda pushing me away from that product. I don't run campaigns that often so having to constantly pay just to occasionally use it isn't good for me.

LordEntrails
August 14th, 2015, 20:57
Couldn't vote, no choice for I don't use a campaign management site. What do I need it for? I'm not familiar with Obsidian Portal, so I don't know what it would gain for my group.

Been playing for many years and the only time I had a site (geocities) was when a ran a play by post on Rondak's Portal 15 years ago. I don't really have an interest in something that would take time away from playing or developing, but perhaps someone would take some time to educate me?

In short, if it's beneficial, fills a need, and doesn't take much time, I'm all for it.

kylania
August 14th, 2015, 21:36
I've ended up using both. Obsidian portal is super quick to setup and easy to use. Problem is most of the features you want are hidden behind the subscription. There's also a lot of blatantly easy things you just can't do without intense CSS scripting. Like you set fonts to make a post look pretty and in the previews it does, but on the actual page it looks like crap. It's basically just a mildly expensive content management system/wiki for tracking stories and whatever.

Realm Works is overwhelming useful. ... If you're creating a world from scratch and if you're playing face to face. It's really odd, because the entire program currently is designed so that the GM creates this intricate world with lots of plots and information and doles out little bits of it at a time to players sitting in front of him watching his second monitor in a tiny, unchangable font. However every plan they have in place is to turn the whole thing into an uneditable web portal instead. So the GM does his work on his PC, then sync's with the expensive cloud service you're required to have in order to interact with non-local players then they use their own paid for apps to view the stuff.

It's pretty, it's expansive, it's kinda cool if you want to track a society, but for online games it's difficult to use at present and expensive and limited to use eventually. I guess I just don't play the kinds of campaigns Realm Works is designed for.

Can't really see the benefits to matching Obsidian Portal to FG though, unless they include it in our Ultimate License already. Then maybe I'd try, but as it is I'm a button click away from canceling my trial on it since it just doesn't give me much that a wiki or email thread can't unless I pay more and more.

Trenloe
August 14th, 2015, 21:59
In short, if it's beneficial, fills a need, and doesn't take much time, I'm all for it.
It's a way of providing players (and the GM) with data and campaign management tools when they're not connected to the game. It can store adventure session blogs, NPC info, PC background info, setup discussion threads, game calendar session management/voting/reminders, display maps, etc., etc.. It puts it all in one place, allows for editing/updates, emails out reminders/notifications.

If does a lot of what you'd do via email or in the forums - but it's all in once place. Allowing players to look up info (background info, NPC overviews, location details, etc.,etc. - depends on how much info you want to enter), remind themselves what happened in the last (or other previous) sessions, list future sessions and indicate availability.

I give small amounts of XP to players who list and expand on their PC background, enter a journal/adventure log, etc.. Any campaign management tool is good for providing info and keeping everyone on the same page - especially if you don't meet for your game every week, or people don't always turn up...

Bidmaron
November 30th, 2016, 00:48
Realmworks

Beerbelly
November 30th, 2016, 01:06
Not sure what Obsidian Portal is. don't use it, obviously.

Trenloe
November 30th, 2016, 01:28
https://i171.photobucket.com/albums/u286/xxbluespade2xx/Thread-necro.jpg

LindseyFan
December 2nd, 2016, 16:23
Wait, does it allow you to sort of do some role playing outside of the session? Kind of like how say someone wants to build a magic item, so the GM an player write a couple of emails about what they want to do and what happens. No dice, just a narrative in the middle of the week. Do you understand what I mean?

Nylanfs
December 2nd, 2016, 17:45
Yes, it's a combination of a wiki and a forum but aimed at game groups.

LindseyFan
December 2nd, 2016, 17:50
Oh my! I might have to check it out and change my vote. I'd LOVE, LOVE, LOVE to have a way to interact with my group throughout the week in little bites. I'm always thinking about my characters and campaigns throughout the week (some one let me know if that is not normal) and could find a place to get my rp out would be great!

Off to look into it, Thanks!

Griogre
June 13th, 2017, 15:46
This poll should be closed. :p