How the IC board can be unfair

[mr.bob]

The IC board tends to be a bit biased agaist people who's posting habbits might not fall in with the posting habbits of the people they are playing with.
What I mean is that when someone is DMing a PbP RPG, and they post, say at 10:00 at night, when no one they are playing with is on. Then in the morning a bunch of people post who are not in that person's game, and that person's game gets pushed down to the bottom of the forum.
Becuase people who are playing multiple PbP RPG's at the same time post in their RPG's in decending order, (well sometimes, it's first the ones that they are DMing, in decending order, then the ones they are playing in decending order), they might not get to that game, becuase it might not look like it has been posted on. This is especialy a problem is at 10:00 at night the posting goes:
DM, P1,P2,P1,P2,DM,P1,Dm,P2,DM. Becuase it ended with DM player 3 and above think that there are no new posts, becuase by the time they get around to posting, it's at the bottom of the board.
I have personally had this problem both as a player and as a DM.

There are several ways this problem could be fixed. The first one is to have an idicator as to wheather or not there are new posts in IC threads the person is participating in. This already kind of exists the in form of Emailed replies. But that is a very cumbersome method. The second method is to have a IC threads with new material to be put at the top, but have the ones where you are the last person that responded to them at the bottom. A third method is to have an indicator showing how many posts have been made sience your last post in a thread next to the thread. (these are all variations of the same method, but posting them might help anyway).

The problem is that YaBB 1 Gold - SP 1.3.1 probably doesn't support anything like this what so ever. So basically I'm just ranting about petty annoyances.

[Zherog]

I don't even understand your problem... ???

[Edalmri]

But it says New! right next to the thread when there are posts you haven't seen yet.

[Lilly]

And there is this nifty little feature at the top of the thread that says "Notify" and you'll get an e-mail if someone replies to the thread, and it also goes in the "Notification" do-hicky in the bar at the top.

And if you think you are going to be getting too much e-mail, there's always yahoo and hotmail.

[Tharivol]

The first one is to have an idicator as to whether or not there are new posts in IC threads the person is participating in.

It already does that. It indicates whether or not there are new posts in any thread on any of the forums since the last time you read that thread. It even marks (for me at least) if someone made a post that was made while you were reading the thread (so when you back out is says "New!").

[RawBearNYC]

This is a limitation of the medium, frankly. Message boards aren't really designed for this type of thing. A dedicated message board that hosts one game might work, but playing a bunch in a forum doesnt' really work.

There are other mediums better suited to it. Those that allow you to subscribe to games and then you just see what's happening in your games.

The e-mail notifications are really be best way, within the limitations of the medium. Not sure why you feel it's cumbersome, unless your e-mail's slow. If that's the case, i might suggest getting a yahoo e-mail account just for the gaming, that you can check.

I'd sit down and write web based play by post software, but that already exists and I don't know that I'd add any new value to it.

[mr.bob]

I know, I feel kinda stupid about posting this. :-[
If people who started threads could lock topics, I'ld lock this one.

Nothing to see here folks, move along.

[Nikolai_II]

http://rpol.net/ is a really good place for online forum-based roleplaying and I'd might probably DM there if I spring for being an online DM someday.

It does lack the charm of being nearby to Rich's comics and allowing to earn post-count here though ;)

[The Giant]

I have to concur with RawBear; if the primary concern is the interface with the game, there are a LOT of sites that are far superior to this one for online roleplaying. There are a few listed in the Go link to the left. The truth is, the Gaming forums only exist because fans of the comic asked for them! They wanted to play with the people who they were posting with, and we gave them a place to do it. But it's always been kind of a lassez faire situation; we don't really screw with the forum much, we just let people run.

[clarkcd]

But it's always been kind of a lassez faire situation

Adam Smith would be proud. :P

[mr.bob]

there are a LOT of sites that are far superior to this one for online roleplaying.

I stay becuase of the community. :)

[RawBearNYC]

And we're happy you're here!!!