Okay, I know a lot of you (Carl included) look at these sorts of messages, think "I should think about that and answer it" and never get around to it. Well, *do* think about and answer this. It determines your future. If you peeked at the teaser graphics, you'll have noticed there isn't much game-specific information on that profile page. That's the "group" profile, for the technical stuff. So I'm working on the *game* profile side of things. What that'll be is a sort of an elaborate version of the kind of thing you'd see on the PBM List (http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/pbm_list/descriptions/shazrad_city_o f_veils.html for instance), crossed with the old-fashioned FAQ/Template/Thingy that used to be the required homepage for all Phoenyx games before I got lazy: http://www.phoenyx.net/template.html, with a little of the Openings Form thrown in: http://www.phoenyx.net/openings/form.html This will replace the whole Openings List structure, and be for Phoenyx and non-Phoenyx games alike. Awhile back, Jason griped that it was darn near impossible to find openings in any game, Phoenyx included, even if there *were* openings. The PBM List is nifty, but (1) not really roleplaying-oriented, and (2) not always up-to-date because it's freakin' hyuuuge and too hard for Greg to verify. Pbem.com (Irony Games) claims hundreds of ads, but is really just the same five duplicated hundreds of times (okay, not quite that bad, but it *is* disorganized). And I know the Openings list gets duplicate submissions. So what this is, is a place to profile your game. It'll have a critter where you mark that you have openings. If you do that, it'll email you in a week asking if you want to renew that or let it lapse. Otherwise, it'll robocheck your link now and again, and email you (once a month? a quarter?) asking you to renew the whole profile, update it, or whatever. Ads with recent openings, then ads with recent changes go at the top of the list, so you don't have people continually re-posting duplicates just to stay at the top. So. I need feedback on what sorts of things (from the aforementioned sources) need to be included in such a profile to make it useful to potential lurkers and players. Remember, in part the old template was there to make potential gamemasters think: "How long IS this game going to take?" and "How AM I going to run combat?" I'm also looking for questions that will indicate to the potential player that the game is not likely to die young. "There is/is not a secondary gamemaster [probably a faithful player, in an existing game] who could take over if need be," and if so, "The second-string GM has an 'In Case Of Fire, Break Glass' spoiler file so that he'll know where the plot was heading, what the secrets are, what the character sheets look like, etc." I'm also thinking of requiring all Phoenyx gamemasters (including current ones) to fill out a Last Will and Testament indicating what their plans are in the event they fall off the net or otherwise can't continue the game. I'm also also thinking of requiring a Living Will... what the minimum activity level of the game should be before the category editor intervenes. Speaking of minac, I'm also wondering if there's a software way to measure that. Right now, the system can track last post, and last owner post, and some of you have probably gotten inactivity warnings. (If your list hasn't seen a message in four weeks, something is wrong.) Ideally, I'd like to have a way to pick up on warning signs *before* that point, but I'm not sure how. The category editor could subscribe to every group, I've done that now and when you get above a certain number of games, they all run together... without meaning any insult, I can safely say I wouldn't have noticed if any given fantasy game went silent, because I couldn't track which characters were in which one. The new software can track who's a gamemaster (not just list owner) or a player. But it can't tell if a player is making a "move" post or just a "Boy, work is really keeping me busy" post. I wasn't terribly happy with the way the pbemtools test went over on testlist... it's difficult to remember to put in or take out +turn or +move when a turn/move is "official" or not. I'm considering a (web- based, probably) form in which the gamemaster can quickly scan the messages and check off the ones that should be "official" and which ones are chatter. But I dunno. Which leads back into the metrics stuff. Assuming we either figure out a convenient way to separate the in-game stuff, or just assume if it's from a GM/player it's in-game, I'm trying to decide if it's worthwhile to measure it somehow... word count, message frequency, etc. If the metric declined, the category editor could point that out to the gamemaster and see if the game's in trouble or just finding a maintainable stride. Which leads back to the game profile stuff. Obviously, we don't get any kind of word/message count on eGroups games, f'rinstance, but would some kind of ratings system be appropriate? Or would that just lead to Joe's l33t gamer friends rating his game straight 10's even though he's a l4m3r, just because they're friends? Or would just having a writing sample be sufficient? Would *you* guys want people rating your games? -- -------------------------------------------------------------- Listowner tools are found at http://www.phoenyx.net/listowners
