I suppose the File Depot is a must.
Potentially some avenue to submit rulesets for review, or to review rulesets that are already out there.
Hm, good idea. A way for members to submit a picture/description of a PnP RPG rules set and discuss it, write reviews, etc. I'll write that down. Perhaps even a way to submut specific books under a 'header' so, for example, one could review the Dark Heresy roleplaying game and then click through to see what people think of the books individually as well. A file depot is definitely in, probably something similar to DFFD.
As to ways to differentiate, let us review some of the major sites out there.
www.rpgnow.com
This site is basically Amazon for indierpgs. It allows customers to place reviews, but only in the exact same way that Amazon does. It lacks a forum to have any meaningful conversation about a given item.
Hm... so allow for product reviews and forum discussion. That seems reasonable and not terribly difficult.
http://www.rpg.net/
This is an idea similar to your own. It is a horrendously laid out site, though. It offers reviews, and a forum. The site is difficult to navigate, but once you get into the product reviews you can see there are customer reviews and links to associated products, which is pretty good. Most of the download links are on an affiliate site, however.
You aren't kidding, that site is horrific. I can certainly do better than that.
Actually... that's about it, as far as I can tell everything else is either related to cRPGs, or is so hopelessly laid out and filled with such tripe that it can be safely ignored.
So in short, I'd say that if you made a sharper looking rpg.net kind of site, it'd go pretty well.
Yes that is my thought/hope as well. Initial focus would just be community building and getting reviews up, maybe continuing my blog and updating it a bit more often.
I don't eat much candy, how about fruit.
^.^ I'll see what I can do.
Furthermore what's your distribution method? How are you going to pay all the shipping costs to send the candy to every registered member? This is a serious issue to work out before anything else.
Ah, we use a modified sending spell which allows the transmission of a single handheld item.
Two words.
Giant.
Catapult.
That also could work, but I feel range might be an issue. Also I'm pretty sure it's illegal to hurl fruit and candy across the world in catapults.
Built in tactical map would be nice, with movable tokens of course. Best thing IMO would be your own system with as much rules support from the site as possible (check if movement is legal, declare attacks of opportunity, apply all needed modifiers to rolls, that kind of thing), so the players rarely have to check the rules.
See, this is an issue. A simple tactical map isn't hard, including movable tokens and such. Rules support is a whole different issue, because which system do we support? We cannot support every RPG system in the world. I think, rather than make my own virtual tabletop, it would be better if the site had a section where people could link to and review useful gaming tools.