ObsidianPortal

Featured Campaign

Horn of the North

Let me introduce you to this month’s Featured Campaign: Horn of the North. This is an unforgettable campaign set in Faerun, a realm divided by war and intrigue. An unlikely band of adventures have united to defeat an evil as old as the world itself. It is a time of destiny, where heroes are forged on the battlefield and villains are born in the space between seconds. Hand of the North is DMed by Wolfhound, a former Reaper Miniatures employee turned Software Engineer. He and his 6 players are a group of lifelong friends from Texas, who now live all over the world. But as life has taken them apart, gaming online brings the group back together every week.

As Wolfhound knows, a big part of getting your players to come back to the table (or computer monitor in this group’s case) every week is incentivizing the players. They want to participate, but you should help them keep that desire with frequent rewards. Wolfhound had his players choose Paragon Paths and Epic Destinies during character creation. If you’re not familiar with these new D&D 4th edition mechanics, they give the players long term goals to complement the immediate goals of ale and whores at the next town.

Wolfhound also rewards players with action points and bennies when players update their character logs. Anyone familiar with Deadlands would be familiar with bennies. They act as persistent action points in addition to offering a slight edge to players when used in boss encounters. Take note fellow DMs, as Wolfhound gives a benny for every 500 words players write in adventure log update, their back stories, or their character pages.

In addition to Horn of the North’s truly epic nature, this campaign is unique in its mastery of tools available on Obsidian Portal. Every page is used to its fullest and must be seen to be believed. This campaign raises the bar significantly for future Featured Campaigns. The integrated Players’ logs are an especially nice touch, providing prospective and insight to the events that occur in each chapter segment. Sure people live, people fight, and people die, all those things are constants in a role-playing campaign. But the input from these players gives those events meaning beyond casual description.

Horn of the North is August’s Featured Campaign because the care and dedication of 7 real-life friends who, despite living thousands of miles apart, are brought together each week though the Obsidian Portal.

—Found and featured by autumnschild