Campaign Websites ... Ideas?

Angelsboi · Mar 19, 2002

I want to do a campaign website. I have to use something like Fortunecity and just keep linking things as i go. I suck at HTML but i am looking for ideas on what should go onto a website.

Davelozzi · Mar 19, 2002

My friend set up a part of his website for my campaign and we use if to post home rules, info on the campaign world, links to character sheets, and a discussion board which we use mostly for scheduling sessions and announcing issues of interest to the whole group. We just switched to the 3e rules from a set of home rules that we were going to use so much of it is currently out of date.

Once the campaign starts (3/30), I'm hoping that it will get a bit more active and that there'll be more discussion about the sessions and what people liked/disliked. If I do a story hour, I'll probably post it both here at EN World and there on the other site. I like to think of EN World sort of as a DM's resource site and the personal website as a resource for my players.

bushfire · Mar 19, 2002

Well mine is humble and only gets updated about once a month but you are free to check it out.

Adventures in the World of Wearth
http://www.angelfire.com/rpg/wearth

It is a place to post campaign logs, world information, what little home rules I am using, and character stats/experience.

Since we can only get together about once a month to play it also serves as a way to remember where we left off from the last game. So there are fairly detailed campaign logs written by me (as DM). It is not built as a site for the general public really, but as a resource for my game. Most of the players re-read the previous game logs the night before a game.

Some of the stuff I have besides game logs are things like:
- history of the game world
- what little house rules I am using
- write-ups of the various areas of the world
- write-up of the villages/towns they have visited
- short listing of npc's they have met
- listing of rumors
- an ongoing "unanswered questions" list at the end of the write-ups
- listing of pc's, current & dead
- listing of the gods of the world
- a download page with some reference stuff for the players to d/l
- and of course a link page to my favorite spots!

Eventually I plan on adding other things like new magic spells/items they have found. Also new PrC's/feats/skills (if we decide to use any beyond the core). I also plan on adding a new section with 25 years of "dead character" sheets that I have accumulated over the decades. Just for a blast from the past.

One of the things the players seem to like is that I tend to hyperlink a lot within the game logs (and elsewhere) to other parts of the site. For instance if I mention a village or god/temple somewhere in the session log I will link to whatever page has that information. I also include any pics from the module that I used as player handouts and any maps the players may have made. I have a scanner and am not afraid to use it.

One piece of advice is to link heavily. If something can be hyperlinked to another page with more information you should always do it. this way it encourages your players to explore the site more. IMHO

The entire site is built using FrontPage98, a simple wysiwyg editor. I don't muck much with html much myself and as long as you keep it simple FP works fine. I am using Angelfire because it is a) free b) only has a single annoying pop-up and c) allows 50 megs of storage, more than I will ever use.

I have a bunch of default "template" pages that I modify for the various areas. Hard part is always figuring out what info you want to include and figuring out how to present it and link it.

Good luck and have fun.

Mallerick · Mar 19, 2002

Just a thought

My friends and I have a website based off our campaigns. Check it out.

www.infinitelands.com

Under our campaign section we have all sorts of info.

barsoomcore · Mar 20, 2002

You can check out my site for ideas. Mostly bad, but there you are. Link's in the sig.

HTML is a walk in the park -- dead easy and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. I'd never even looked at HTML before and coded all my pages by hand in a text editor (still do). It's so easy I don't even know how to tell you.

Have fun.

UniversalMonster · Mar 20, 2002

What I did recently was add a blogger type feature (You can use Livejournal or any number of 'group journal/log' type free websites. I made all of the campaign members 'team members', and we use it to post stuff in the days between sessions.

For the rest of my campaign website the most used areas have been 'items', the campaign map, and the camapign gods.

See my campaign log right here!

Kichwas · Mar 20, 2002

Just put in everything you need the players to know before they make characters.

Then as the game goes add to it things that come up in the game.

If your world is very solidified to you then go beyond this. Put everything you've got for your world up there.

The question really comes down to "what do I need to detail to make a campaign world". Not "What should I put in the website". Because the answer to the two is the same.

The only thing that differs is that a game runs you can post characters and a journal.

But then if you weren't using a website you'd probably be keeping character sheets and a journal in some kind of DM notebook anyway.

My own world's site is featured in my sig. It's undergoing a major transition right now as I change the focus away from a core nation to detailing the world as a whole. I'm also removing the core d20 magic system so that's sparking a whole round of rewrites of it's own nature.