RP Scenario "leads"

[Lilaena De'Ville]

I am thinking that we might want to appoint a few people as 'leads' for this forum who can accept PMs from newcomers and give them help in getting started. Like Jace for DC, myself or Andrew for Mutants, Charley for Fallout, someone for WoD, etc. This would be a voluntary position!

(This could also be used in the SW side of things, with one pointman/woman per faction but that's another thread)

I volunteer for Mutants and/or WoD, and I'd be happy to write up a thread with information in it to sticky at the top of the page.

We could have one thread with several posts (each post with more in depth information on each scenario and contact information)...?

[Captain Untouchable]

I like the concept of having a go-to person for each setting, in theory. However, I can see there being a few reservations / obstacles.


1. The lead for each setting would need to know everything there was to know about a setting. Purely by virtue of having my fingers in a lot of pies, I know most of what is going on with the DC side of things. However, in the Mutant setting I know next to nothing about the Redencion House side of things; and conversely, I'd wager that Holly or Andrew's knowledge of the Treadstone / X-Force / Avengers / Britain side of things is similarly limited, by virtue of the fact that they're not actively involved in them yet.

Not only would we need to make sure that our lead knew what was going on, we'd have to make sure that was constantly the case. Would it be the lead's responsibility to pester people to find out what was going on? Would it be the responsibility of the writers to keep the lead in the loop?


2. Having one person in charge of keeping the information in stickied threads up to date makes sense, but I'm not sure if that is the best way to go about it. Each setting seems to have a different level of documentation: Star Wars has a lot of (not necessarily up to date) threads and wiki pages; Mutants has a little splash on the wiki but not much in the way of threads; DC has a few useful threads dotted about, but not much on the wiki; and so on.

First off, it might be worth coming up with a group consensus on how we want to do things. The wiki seemed like a good idea at the time, but it seems like people have given up on keeping it updated. If this the case, we might be better off doing away with the wiki entirely to present there being any misleading / out of date information lying around... and then I think we need to decide on a (small) standard selection of stickied threads and what they contain, so we don't end up with one forum more cluttered than others, etc.

Alternatively, if we do want to continue using the wiki, it might be worth revisiting what we intend to use it for, so that we can do a big overhaul and make it a useful resource, keep it up to date, etc.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

You don't have to know everything, but knowing who to point people to "if you want to do such and such, you should PM this person"

Asking someone to know everything isn't what I'm talking about. Having someone available for new people so they can be acquainted with a scenario and answer questions is.

Getting rid of the wiki seems like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I think it works fine as is, asking people to keep it updated is what we always do, and interest comes and goes. Working on the wiki when we don't even RP consistently seems like trying to prune a single tree when we're worried about the health of an entire forest.

[Captain Untouchable]

Isn't worrying about giving new people someone to PM equally redundant if we don't even RP consistently?

Even when we were RPing consistently, people weren't keeping the wiki up to date. With new settings, people don't want to have wiki pages. It seems like the wiki is not something that people want: so either we need to arrange for specific people to adopt the baby, or we need to seriously consider having it aborted.

Edit:

Also, if the person doesn't need to know everything, then can't new people just PM the existing Moderators?

[Lilaena De'Ville]

edit -

Sorry if you caught that before I edited it, it was sort of knee-jerk reaction

I don't want the wiki deleted, I have put a ton of work into it personally, have compiled extensive lists of RPs for most of my oldest characters, and to have that all just be deleted would be horrifying.

If the moderators are available for this thing and want this to be in their job description then that's a great idea. I still think that it should be listed somewhere on the off chance that new people do show up and need a place to start even if it's just for the person they contact to say "here's the FAQ, here's the wiki, here's the leader of the faction you're interested in"

edit: if you want to continue talking about the wiki maybe a separate thread?

[Dragon]

Somewhere someone mentioned putting up TV Guide-type short blurbs explaining the concept for each of the Gen RP settings. We could include a contact link with that, even if it's just listing the group mods. I'm not exactly sure where those blurbs would appear - if they're just on the main forum directory, then the mods are already listed there.

We'd also preferably want to word it as a service rather than a mandate - here's where you go if you'd like help, not TO ENTER HERE YOU MUST PASS THREE CHALLENGES!

[Lilaena De'Ville]

We'd also preferably want to word it as a service rather than a mandate - here's where you go if you'd like help, not TO ENTER HERE YOU MUST PASS THREE CHALLENGES!

Yes, I agree.

edit: any more opinions?

[Dasquian Belargic]

I think it's a great idea to have people who are like 'greeters' for each scenario. I don't see it as necessary for them to be total encyclopedias on that scenario, they just need to have enough knowledge to be able to introduce someone to the setting, get them started on their first character / thread perhaps.

Also RE the wiki, I don't think I'd want to get rid of it. I think some scenarios just benefit from it more than others and some people enjoy using it more than others. As long as we're clear on the fact that the wiki isn't the be all and end all of what's happening on the board, I think we should be fine.

[Droo]

I also think that as long as the guide is regularly available and has enough knowledge to either point newbies in the right direction or get them on their feet, then that should suffice. Perhaps we ought to create guides, not only for each setting but for each of its factions, the first example of which that springs to mind is the excellent work that was done on the Wheel guide. Something like that for the Brotherhood, or Redencion House, or the vampires, or Gotham's villains, should serve to help all in setting up new characters.

As for the wiki, when I have the time or inspiration for it, I love it, and even when I don't, I love browsing it to see what other people have done. Just because there have been few updates in recent memory, a by-product of their being precious little roleplaying activity of late, I'm sure, is no reason to consider dismissing it.

[Captain Untouchable]

I know talking more about the wiki is deviating from the topic a little, but since this discussion seems to focus on guides/intros for factions and such - which to me seems like the sort of thing that the wiki is supposed to be for - it still sort of seems relevant in my mind.

As for the wiki, when I have the time or inspiration for it, I love it, and even when I don't, I love browsing it to see what other people have done. Just because there have been few updates in recent memory, a by-product of their being precious little roleplaying activity of late, I'm sure, is no reason to consider dismissing it.

My earlier response was a bit of a tl;dr situation.

My basic gripe with the wiki is that there's stuff that is three or four years out of date. There's important stuff that hasn't been updated on character and faction pages; factions like the Rebel Alliance have dozens of separate pages (27, in fact) in varying degrees of up-to-dateness; and people have expressed a desire in other settings (DC, the end of the world boat one, etc) to see the amount of pages / information / etc that we include on the wiki minimised quite considerably.

Since people have expressed a strong desire to keep the wiki, is there a way that we - either collectively, me personally, or as a specific responsibility for these setting leads - can make the wiki better? I will happily use my over-abundance of free time to streamline / prune / reformat the wiki for all settings into something that is actually a useful tool. I'm happy to put the effort in, so long as it's something that people actually want / find useful / will use.


Edit:

On a slightly more helpful/constructive front, I see that Holly is keeping tabs on the active threads in the Mutants stuff. Is this something that people would find useful in other settings as well? Would it be helpful if it had more / less information? Would it be helpful if it was broken down by faction?

Similarly, the DC stuff has a pretty comprehensive list of characters, and who plays who. Is that something that people find useful? Would it be helpful if it had more / less information? Is this something that you would like to see carried across to other settings in the same / similar / a different form?

Which would people find more useful: several threads of OOC information (who plays who, what threads, faction introductions), or one stickied thread per setting that contains all of it? Would it make more sense for some / all of this information to be stored on the Wiki? Where should the split be?

[Droo]

One thread per setting should suffice, with a post dedicated to each relevant bit of informatoon (eg. who's who or faction intros) and the first post could serve as a table of conents with shortcutd to the relevant posts, if indeed the thread is that extensive.

Back to the wiki talk, the thing is it has never been a compulsory part of the community in any way, which is why I think it is now important to pursue the idea of these intro/guide threads because, as you rightly say, the wiki is woefully out of date. As such, it will also be important to place emphasis on these guides for newcomers, and make it abundantly clear that the wiki is what it is. However, it couldn't hurt to setup a team of wiki enthusiasts who.can dedicate time and.coordinate between them to keep certain contemt up to date. in otger words, not character profiles without express permission from its author.

[Vince]

All this talk leads me to believe we're thinking of making a SW-Fans Core Rulebook/Sourcebook, for Star Wars Internet Play By Post RPG.

[Dasquian Belargic]

There's important stuff that hasn't been updated on character and faction pages; factions like the Rebel Alliance have dozens of separate pages (27, in fact) in varying degrees of up-to-dateness; and people have expressed a desire in other settings (DC, the end of the world boat one, etc) to see the amount of pages / information / etc that we include on the wiki minimised quite considerably.

I'm all in favour of centralisation information, and this is the reason why. I don't know how the Rebellion ended up with so many pages but I can't think that all of it is relevant. I am realistically never going to read that much information, personally.

I think in the interest of helping new people into the board, we don't want to overload them with information, so if we can have greets or scenario leads who are willing to maintain a topic on the basics of a scenario, as well as perhaps a little run-down of what's new... that would be best, at least in my mind.

[General John Heller]

The dangers with relying on a thread on the forums to cure all our ills is that a) we're not all that great at keeping those up to date either, and b) conveying all the information that we need to convey would make for a very long post.

It might be better to rejiggle the wiki as well at the same time, so that the two work in tandem. Using the Alliance as an example, we presumably need a thread that briefly explains to everyone what the various branches of the Alliance are, and what we're doing with them. However, anything more than a paragraph or so for each is going to be ridiculously long. If we rework the wiki to work in tandem with these new threads, we can have those brief paragraphs and then a "Would You Like To Know More?" link that jumps to a wiki page with a little extra information. Something like -

The Wheel
Constantly on the run from the Empire, the Jedi have sought refuge in The Wheel: a rag-tag convoy of freighters and transports, defended by the Rebel Alliance. The Wheel's military forces are commanded by Commodore Vansen Tyree, and the elite Rogue Squadron number among it's defenders. The Jedi are trying to rebuild some semblance of their destroyed Order; a Jedi Council oversees the affairs and training of the Jedi refugees, and has begun to slowly offer advice and support to the Alliance. Despite the location of The Wheel being top secret, the convoy is threatened by the fall of Master Loklorien s'Ilancy to the Dark Side, and by the alleged presence of a Dark Lord of the Sith within the Alliance's ranks. (More)

With similar stuff for SpecForce, Alliance Intelligence, the Navy, the Novgorod, the Government, and the other stuff that is actively important to roleplaying.

That's the sort of thing I mean by making the wiki a "useful tool": instead of trying to compete with Wookieepedia by having pages for each planet and all that jazz, we should consolidate down so we've only got pages of information that is actually relevant to people who want to roleplay... like the sourcebook thing that Vince joked about.


(Edit: Posted as Michael Ironside. Disagreement is not permitted. )

[Lilaena De'Ville]

If we just worry about someone possibly not keeping up to date on things in the future, we will end up not doing anything at all.

[General John Heller]

Or we could put our noggins together and come up with a way to minimise the chances of that becoming a problem.

I'd rather put a little extra thought and effort into doing a decent job than just doing a half-assed job because it's the first / easiest thing we came up with. The "Yeah, this could be a problem in the long run. Oh well," approach seems like a bad use of our time, when a better solution might be out there lurking in the shadows just waiting for us to stumble across it.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

So are we thinking yes or no in regards to letting existing members volunteer to be written down as available for new people to PM/IM regarding dispensing RPing information?

[Droo]

I say... yus!

Edit: And I'd be happy to put my name down to assist with Mutants or WoD newbies, although I'll grant you I'm not the best choice for either of those - but the offer's on the table because I'm so darn nice!

[Dragon]

I say yes as well. No reason we can't take a both-and approach here. I'm willing to be put down as a contact for MU. I'll just have to remember to check this account regularly for PMs. However, I think it's a good idea to have two or three people as contacts for each setting, if we have enough volunteers. That way we not only have a larger knowledge base ("If you're interested in Avengers, you probably want to talk to JadenLuka!"), newbies have options if somebody's out of town or out of sync with timezones.

I like Jace's model for brief explanatory paragraphs per setting/faction. It highlights the focus of our narrative, and it should be relatively easy to keep them reliably up-to-date. It would also be very simple to add AIM/screenname contacts at the end.

[Captain Untouchable]

I think Andrew is on to something there with the multiple volunteers idea.

If we just had one contact for Mutants (or a list of several) for the entire setting, there's a chance that you'll contact the person and they'll point you at someone else. Sure, there's no big deal, but it's not necessarily a step that needs to happen. If we have a volunteer or volunteers for each "bit" (for the House contact Andrew or Holly; for Treadstone contact Dee or Jace; etc), it'll help new people (and old people alike) get straight to the person they need to be talking to, with no muss or fuss.

That makes it more of a shared, team effort kind of thing; more eyes to make sure that posts and pages are up to date; all that jazz. We're a pretty friendly and collaborative bunch, so if our approach to bringing new people into the fold echoes the way we do pretty much everything else, that's an added bonus.