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[MrWiggles]

So, a friend long time goal, has been to make a forum site, which is meant for play by post games. Role Playing games are more or less cover for what kind of infrastructure a custom forum could provide for them.

But what kind of infrastructure could roll to dodge games or mafia games used? There seem to be prevalence for secret messages, and one on one dialogue with the game runner. That's handle with private messages, but it can be done better if the forum had it in mind from the start.

So yea, what kind of feature set would make running those kind of games easier/fun/faster/complex?

Dont worry about technical issues, or design issues or server burden, or any of that jazz. This is just homework and research for the project, so we can put up a grocery list of Features and Design goals.

[Toaster]

Both games need randomization, but random.org really has that covered.

RtDs (and most forum games in general) would benefit from something to store player information (status, inventory, etc) within the post, so that the mod could just update it instead of reposting it every time.

Mafia games need PMs and private chats, and if we're shooting for the stars, why not a built-in form for submission of actions?  It'd have to be customizable to allow oddball roles, though if the form was just for submission and the mod interpreted it, it should be fine.

[MrWiggles]

...and if we're shooting for the stars, why not a built-in form for submission of actions?

Expand on this please.

And also, what kind of support can be given for Classes.

[Johnfalcon99977]

When I used to be on a Roleplaying forum, they used signatures and the space under the profile picture to link to topics that contained your stats and inventory. It seems like a good idea for such a forum.

[Armok]

Assuming you start from normal forum software somewhat like the one we're using now...

* IC/OOC distinction, with options to colour code or hide.
* "Game" object, which can have multiple threads (IC, OOC, comment, etc.) as well as some other stuff like a chat.
* "GM" and "player" positions for a game. There can be more than one GM, GMship can be passed on, can accept or deny players wanting to join, can make threads within the game as GM/Player only, etc.
* "turn" object, requires a response from each player (although the player in some game can just "skip") and have GM responses to the last turn. Turns notify players and make sure everyone respond in a timely fashion. "skip turn" and "quit game" are right in the poppup box as well as the Email notification as links, to make sure the player has no excuse in case of lacking time. Maybe also a "working on it" button to notify players/GM that you haven't been hit be a buss.
* Many tags along the lines of "spoiler" and "quote", all supporting recursion.
* special "status" part of turn post. This is automatically copied from the last turn with a history system, and any changes made are marked to be easy to find.

[Nirur Torir]

* "Game" object, which can have multiple threads (IC, OOC, comment, etc.) as well as some other stuff like a chat.

Make it so they can be linked to certain players (inclusive, exclusive, or open), for Mafia group-specific sub-threads or team vs team strategy discussions. Possibly add an observer group that defaults to allowing all hidden sub-threads threads read-only or open (at GM's choice) to whoever the GM marks as observers.

Improve polls: A pre-set allowing the GM to easily set it so every active player can be voted on, lock it to only being available to the players for that thread, and make it easy to see who's voting for who. Have an in-thread method of voting which both changes the poll and is obvious.

Let the GM disable post editing.

[Toaster]

Let the GM disable post editing.

And edit all posts in the thread.

[freeformschooler]

I think the abbr tag is one of the finest tags for running games in general. Having something like it would be very helpful.

[MrWiggles]

* special "status" part of turn post. This is automatically copied from the last turn with a history system, and any changes made are marked to be easy to find.

Please expand.


Also, how would you define an RtD and a Mafia game? How different are they really?

[thatkid]

I know myth-weavers has some sort of code that allows you to ensure that only certain users can read a section of your post. I think it's something like...

Code: [Select]

[private=Bob]Hey dude don't tell Joe but I'm totally boinking his wife.[/private]Where Bob would be able to see it, and nobody else.

That might be useful, I think.
Also, any PM system that has a cleaner look to it than bay12's

[Armok]

I dont think you should explicity define "RTD" or "mafia", but rather make a general system that could suport both, and many more, well.

Not much more to say abaut status. When the GM makes a Turn post, there is a "status" section below the main post, wich works like the normal one except lines are numbered. At the start it is empty. If the GM puts something in it,  the next turn post, rather than being blanc, it'll have a copy of the status from the previous turn. If the GM edits, adds, or removes any lines, those are marked in a different colour.

Actually, having multiple "status" sections might be a good idea, like one for each player, and maybe they are only able to see their own.

Maybe also add a "compare statuses" page where only one status section is shown, but from all the turns.

[MrWiggles]

The distinction between them was ask to better explore, what was different between the to, to understand what features may be need.

The forum, is meant to support table top RPGs, War Games, free form stuff, general forum activity, and mafia, and rtd games.

So yea, we're not looking for incredibly specialized succinct game sub-forums. But we want to be able to host a wide selection of games with a host of Support Tools. Dice Roller with Log, Character Information Space (for character sheet, personal note space), Battle Map (with placement history), Posable Avatars (maybe). Plethora of Tags for posting (for secret messengering, easy coloring, Selective Gibberish Tags [for speaking an alien language or some such]). And letting Player have multiple characters in a game. And GM are planned to have fine  administrative control over their game. We want them have full Administrative Powers with their own Game Forum, and be to designate Co-GMs, and lesser Gms.

So far, everything listed here for Mafia and RtD coincides with already hoped for features. And this isn't a final list of features or all of them all together (but most of them that effect users and players). A lot of the features are the more borning stuff, like Tagging System for games to group and search for them.

[Johnfalcon99977]

This sounds pretty hard, by the way. But if you pull it off you will get all the internets. All of them.

[MrWiggles]

This sounds pretty hard, by the way. But if you pull it off you will get all the internets. All of them.

These components by themselves, aren't hard. The real difficulty, is to make them work together and for them to work with a growing/large player base.

Posable Avatars and Battlemats, are more or less the same thing. Its image rendering by pulling various images and overlaying them each other, by storing their coordinates to compose the image. (Thats not it exactly, but more or less.)

And the image rendering, is something that PHP is fairly capable of doing.

[Toaster]

Do you support something akin to Maptools?