Wyrm’s Turn: Interview with Obsidian Portal

Two weeks ago I mentioned one of my favorite gamer blog sites, ObsidianPortal.com. If you didn’t catch that article, you can find it here. So I was able to wrangle an interview with co-founder Micah Wedemeyer and pick his brain on the origin of the site, his own gaming habits, and possible prognostications of the future of tabletop gaming; and here it is for your further edification.

Stygian Jim: First, thanks Micah for taking the time to answer these questions. I’d like to start by asking you when you started Obsidian Portal and what were the details of its inception?

Micah: I love to tell the story of why I got started, as I think it’s a good tale of greed, loss, and redemption that we’re all familiar with.

Since I don’t want to bore anyone, I’ll give the short version. Essentially, I thought I would make the “MySpace of D&D” (this was 2006, when MySpace was still the new hotness) and somehow get super rich off of it. Why not?

Fast forward a couple months. Nobody signed up, no one was interested, and we didn’t get acquired for millions of dollars. It was depressing, but I used Obsidian Portal to manage my D&D campaign, so at the end of the day, I knew we’d always have at least 1 user. Plus, I had a lot of fun with the programming. Somewhere along the line, my get-rich-quick scheme turned into a hobby that I really enjoyed.

Finally, we started attracting the attention of some bloggers, and with their endorsements the users started trickling in. The trickle steadily increased into the nice sized stream that we have today. My hobby started to be profitable, and now I’m looking forward to the day where it can be my full time job.

Moral of the story: Do what you love, and money will follow. No, that’s not really true. But, you may find that working on a project you love may turn out to be worth more than money.

SJ: How many people are involved in running and maintaining the site?

MW: There are 3 of us. I (Micah) and my co-founder Ryan have been on it from the beginning. He and I are both programmers, and we played D&D together in college. Our third guy is Dan, who we brought on a couple months ago to help engage the community. I love dealing with the users, but it started to take up so much time that I didn’t have time to program anymore.

SJ: How long have you been playing RPG’s and how did you get started?

MW: I started playing in middle school, which was in the mid 90s. My friends and I played D&D at my house on Sunday afternoons. One of my friends had to lie to his parents and say we were playing video games. They were fine with him playing video games, but D&D was a big no-no.

SJ: In my own life I’ve found that as I get older, it gets harder to make time for games. Do you have a regular game that you play?

MW: I game roughly once a week. It has gotten harder as I’ve gotten older, but the group I’m with is pretty dedicated, so everyone makes sure to set aside the necessary time. In general, all time management comes down to prioritization. Spend less time watching TV or video games and you magically create time that can be used in other places. I’ve had to give up some hobbies, but tabletop gaming is my favorite, so it’s definitely worth it.

SJ: Where is your company based?

MW: Technically, we’re based in Atlanta, Georgia, but the nice thing about being a website is that our main presence is online. Our main community presence is on Twitter (@obsidianportal) and on Facebook.

SJ: What’s your favorite game (campaign, setting, rules system), what has been one of your favorite character to portray?

MW: I’m currently in love with Dark Heresy. The rules are pretty good, but the setting is fantastic. It’s so dark and gritty and gruesome. I hope my players enjoy it as much as I do. They seem to have a good time as they carve a bloody path through all my NPCs. If you like it bold and bloody, I can’t recommend Dark Heresy enough.

For characters, my favorite is a Champions/Hero character I made a while back. He’s an ex-juvenile delinquent who rides a motorcycle and wields a whip. I don’t want to subject people to too much character description, but I would like to make a personal plea to the GM of that game to start it up again. Jordan: Please run more Champions!

SJ: Do you prefer to GM games or play in them?

MW: I love both. When I’m a GM, I want to be a player, and when I’m a player I can’t wait to take the reigns and put together my own adventures. I think everyone should play from both sides of the GM screen in order to understand all the dynamics of running and playing games. If you’ve never GM’ed, it’s time to start. Seriously, start planning your first adventure right now. It’s time.

SJ: Being a part of the new wave of electronic gaming, do you have any predictions for where the future of RPG’s is going? Do you think it’ll ever move out of the pencil and paper tabletop arena, or get swallowed up by board and video games?

MW: I really hope it never becomes fully digital. I think that will be a sad day, as there’s just no substitute for the versatility of pencil and paper. If you can dream it, you can do it.

My main fear is that the video games are so good these days that it will be tough to lure younger gamers into trying tabletop RPGs. I know that if they can just get a taste of it, they’ll be hooked, but getting them to try it the first time instead of going on a WoW raid will get tougher and tougher.

SJ: What’s your ultimate goal for the site, where would you like to see it in 5 years, 10 years?

MW: I want Obsidian Portal to be as integral to tabletop gaming as the books and the dice. The site will be so useful and make the GM’s life so much easier that choosing not to use it would be like choosing not to have running water.

Our ultimate goals are ambitious, but it’s a long journey of small steps. We don’t want to revolutionize the way you play. Instead, we want to handle all the drudgery and bookkeeping and let you just play the game. Spend less time worrying and more time playing.

SJ: So here we are at the end of our interview, is there anything you’d like to add, a cause, organization, or game you’d like to plug other than Obsidian Portal?

MW: As I said, Obsidian Portal has kind of consumed my life, so it’s rare that I come up for air and have time to consider other things. However, I will say that we are happy to have sponsored the Childs Play Charity that provides toys and video games to sick children in hospitals.

SJ: Any final words you’d like to give to your sites fans and users?

MW: I’d like to thank all the users who have created all the great content on the site. I did my best to program a useful tool, but I’m like a guy who makes canvases. It’s all of you who do the actual painting who deserve the real credit.
The Wyrm’s Turn is a weekly column that discusses all aspects of tabletop gaming — and beyond.