AORP?

[Entsuropi]

This is probably not about AORP but eh.

I followed the link when i read the AORP post, and i see you are intending to put a game on here, for the reason i noted a few days ago.

One thing is for sure... people are posting A LOT more than before the game. It's insane - we usually only have a burst like this after someone arrives, but only then from that 1 person - now we have it from everyone. If you bring your players across... damn. I'm having trouble following you and Jeffe - with another bunch of players, the forum will be... big.

So anyway, are you intending to do this? I would be interested to see if it results in a drop of posts to the oher game, or whether people are happy to post to both. If there is no problem, it makes the forum perfect for RPG game playtests, with lots of RPGers already posting.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

I don't think it will result in problems with the other game. If it happens.

For one thing, there isn't a lot of cross over. Fell (and nominally 42, maybe) and I are the only ones in both games currently. And Fell and I are each running one of the games.

But I think there should be some sort of rule established about the number of games you can be in. I can't see people involved in more than two games able to dedicate enough attention to them both.

But if TWG got as big as predicted, and we built up an even bigger review data base, we'd be a mega-cool, mega-popular web portal. And you knew Fell when! Aren't you cool and indy and ahead of the Joneses!

[Brian]

It sounds great... SE was originally envisioning something like this for AORP itself I think.. sadly I think for the foreseeable future, the AORP dream may not happen if SE moves the game to TWG. But perhaps it can still happen through TWG.

I don't know about limiting to only two games, but I do think if TWG ever became a recognizable hotspot for Play-by-Post RPGs, it would be good to regular games this grows happens TWG ought to figure out SOME way that players can "guarantee" they will post frequently.

There are few things more frustrating than when players have promised to post frequently and then forget all about your game.

I've always thought it would be cool to have a consolidated spot for PbP gaming though.

[Tage]

I've already alluded to this in another thread, and I don't want to start getting anyone's hopes up prematurely, but in the relatively near future the Play-by-Post games should get a lot easier to run on TWG. I'm thinking of designing a forum built specifically for that purpose.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

Yeah, Tage, I have a lot of thoughts for add ins for something like that. Let me know if you want feedback.

[Brian]

Same here. I've actually set to work three times to develop something like this, but always get sidetracked -- and lose interest because I'd have to develop it alone.

I'm really quite experienced with PHP, so if you'd be developing it in that, I'd be interested in helping out, if you needed it.

[Tage]

I will be developing it in PHP, and once I get a framework set up I'd be glad to let you help out. Especially the "posts since you were last here" function.  

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

I was also going to suggest moderated posts. IE, if you want to go with my first idea, where you get xp per post, then you have available a choice (only as the moderator of the forum) to assign each post a value between 0-10 or soemthing. the total xp is available in a separate place and is forum specific (so the same player could be in two different games on the same site). I'd also make it possible to hide the xp award for each post from everyone but the moderator. That would be a useful feature for me.

[Brian]

I will be developing it in PHP, and once I get a framework set up I'd be glad to let you help out. Especially the "posts since you were last here" function.  

Sure, though I suspect I could contribute a bit more than just that. Thats a pretty simple thing to code.

I'll briefly throw out one of my own ideas for a PbPRPG forum:

One thing that I think would be important for a forum like that is Character Profiles. In other words, members sign up with ONE member ID, and then can have up to X character profiles, with independent stats, bios, pictures, signatures, inventories, and so forth. Also, it'd be cool if Character Profiles could have Alter Egos, for the purposes of Disguises, Secret Identities, etc. Alter Egos have different pictures, names, sigs, etc, but share the same stats, inventories, and backgroud info since they are technically the same person.

You could do this using an SQL table for Members, one for profiles (with an ParentMember ID column), and AlterEgos (with a ParentProfile ID column).

Code: [Select]

Member 1
|-- Character Profile 1
|    |-- Alter Ego 1
|    |-- Alter Ego 2
|-- Character Profile 2

[Spriggan]

Ya we've talked about that in a old topic.  here if you want to see the discusion.  It would be cool if Tage codes it.

[Tage]

That was actually the first feature that came to mind for a PbP Forum, Brian. Additionally, there will be game and non-game threads. Only game threads will allow you to post "in character." Also, when you create a "player" profile, you submit it to a game thread, and the GM for that game approves whether or not you can post to that game. You can only post in character for profiles that have been approved for certain games.

The biggest issue Fell and I have discussed is how to handle character sheets. Personally, I think the best thing would be to just store everything in a giant MySQL Text field, allowing for absolute flexibility. The downside, of course, is that we wouldn't be able to code in any mechanics involving any character information.

I wasn't really planning on coding up many mechanics anyway, just to keep it as open as possible. What are your thoughts on the matter?

[Spriggan]

when you say mechanics do you mean the chracter creation process?

[Tage]

Mechanics can include that, yes.

[Fellfrosch]

I like the idea of leaving the forum as mechanic-less as possible, because it will allow for a wider variety of games. If we code in all the rules for D&D 3e, how could we play a game using Palladium or CODA or Pinnacle? It will be much easier if the forum just carries information, and the GM has to deal with the mechanics (such as dice rolls and attributes and whatnot) on his own.

Even so, I'd love it if we could have some actual character sheets. It would be cool to do them as forms, so the player could fill in each field with attributes and skills and background info and stuff, and then save them in a standard character sheet layout. The fields and stats wouldn't "mean" anything to the program, but at least the resulting character sheet would look better. We could make a bunch of templates for the major game systems, and then when a GM starts a game he can choose which character sheet to use. This would require a lot of work to create and code--maybe that's something Brian could help with?

[Spriggan]

I agree with Fell, but to make a different form and mechanics for each games, someone needs to code a different one for each game.  And that's a pain.  But if your willing to do it you'll get no compliants here.