Hi! Odd request, but I'm in a pbp that is most likely to get over 5,000 posts. We really miss losing the post count on each page when we get up there... Is there any way that can be changed?
Partially it is psychological, but it also helps keep us track of where we are when we are trying to catch up on posts we missed when we are away from the boards.
Our group is a little nuts, I'm one of the more frequent posters. However, when I get up in the morning there can be between 20 and 60 posts to catch up on. So we do a quick read through and the range post count on the bottom just keeps us in order. :)
We've done a new thread for each of the books in Jade Regent, and we miss it when it disappeared for book 2... and are quickly approaching that point for book 3.
I'm in the same game, and I also agree that it is missed when it is gone. It's a quick and easy way to see how far things have moved forward since the last time you checked in, and how much time you need to allot to catching up and responding. Obviously it's not essential, but it was useful enough that multiple players commented how much they liked having it when it went away.
Do you not use the Campaigns tab and the (x new) links? They tell you how many posts are new since your last visit and take you directly to the first new reply.
We do, but honestly... sometimes when it game is hopping it is more of a pain to go to the campaign tab than to just refresh thread...
Or if you've taken awhile to compose a post and behold the post count has jumped from 546 to 554. Because in the second case the campaign tab doesn't actually help anymore.
We do, but honestly... sometimes when it game is hopping it is more of a pain to go to the campaign tab than to just refresh thread...
Or if you've taken awhile to compose a post and behold the post count has jumped from 546 to 554. Because in the second case the campaign tab doesn't actually help anymore.
I'm not totally understanding the problem, but have you tried clicking on the timestamp next to the username of the post you care about?
When you do that, the URL changes to include the post number, and then if you refresh new posts will load after that.
And if you've posted, simply go back in your browser history to that link before hitting refresh.
Seems like the way you're doing it you need to memorize the post number anyways, so you could just type that in the URL.
Kyrademon? So you guys are the ones with that break-neck posting rate that I've been seeing! Bravo! :D
I haven't tried reading any of your campaign yet, but I've been flat out amazed at how fast your game is moving. My PbP's no slouch, but I'm pretty sure you've lapped us 2 or 3 times in only a few months now. I was wondering, how you're able to maintain such a fast pace? What's your secret?
As far as keeping track of new posts, have any of you considered using an RSS feed reader? In Chrome I use RSS Live Links, and my players who use FireFox and running LiveClick. Now granted we don't average anywhere near 1-200 posts a day, but it still helps us to keep track of our game pretty well.
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*Ahem*
It's over five-thou-s!!!
Kyrademon? So you guys are the ones with that break-neck posting rate that I've been seeing! Bravo! :D
I haven't tried reading any of your campaign yet, but I've been flat out amazed at how fast your game is moving. My PbP's no slouch, but I'm pretty sure you've lapped us 2 or 3 times in only a few months now. I was wondering, how you're able to maintain such a fast pace? What's your secret?
Kyrademon did pick us out for this :). And has done an awesome job with the pacing. And the whole flextime mechanic means that we can have multiple scenes ongoing at the same time. It adds up...
We've been over 5000 for a while so I didn't even recall that there were post counts actually.[/ooc]
I did try a RSS feed for a while when we first started. There was too much of a delay in the post going on the board and it popping up on the my normal feed reader. Now I've gotten locked into the hit refresh and see how the post count has changed to see how many posts I'm behind.
So I figured it didn't hurt to ask.
I added up the total post count for this game yesterday. The three gameplay threads total over 15,000...
I added up the total post count for this game yesterday. The three gameplay threads total over 15,000...
Heh, and here I was proud of Rumble for hitting 5K in its first year. That used to be fast!
So how does the whole FlexTime™ mechanic work? It intrigues me. :)
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This is getting a bit off-topic, but I hope one post to answer a question isn't a problem ...
There are basically four things at work which account for the apparently unusually fast pace of our game.
1) We are all insane. This is probably the one that is not reproducible.
2) Flexible Time (FlexTime) - This was introduced a few weeks into the game, and is most likely the main reason for the posting rate. Basically, it is the concept that scenes which primarily focus on role-playing, both public and private, can continue happening "in the past" simultaneously with the main plot progressing. So, for example, if you started a conversation with a PC or another NPC about the quality of Varisian Beer, that conversation could continue to progress, either openly or privately spoilered, with a header to distinguish it, even as the plot moved on and in "the present" you began exploring a dungeon. There's some more details, but that's the gist.
A major reason for this is to attempt to accommodate both faster and slower posters, and those who like high levels of interaction and those who are a bit more hands-off. Ideally, frequently-posting players can basically make as many conversational posts as they want, without overwhelming the slower posters (who can usually ignore the mostly spoilered private conversations or the clearly labeled public ones they don't wish to be involved with). Similarly, players with a highly interactive style, whatever their rate, can have conversations and roleplaying without making all the people who want to move on and explore the dungeon wait while a conversation about Varisian Beer slowly plays out over days.
A side effect is that this pushes the posting rate way up.
3) Dungeon Crawl Mode - This was introduced at the first big dungeon of the game. It is basically the idea that if every door is going to be checked for traps and every room is going to be searched and every part of a dungeon is going to be explored, there's no reason to explicitly ask for similar minor decisions every time they come up. In Dungeon Crawl Mode, characters are assumed to automatically be doing those things, and the progression only stops for encounters or important decision points. The main idea is to prevent long, slow-paced "Should we open the right door or the left door?" conversations which don't add much to the game anyway.
Again, a side effect is that it pushes the posting rate up a bit as it moves things towards the more involved combat and roleplaying interactions and away from slower "wait while everyone weighs in on the 'which door' question" ones.
4) Fog of War - These were part of the game from the beginning. Essentially, they're a set of rules that allow players to declare combat actions without needing to (or being able to) see what happened before them in initiative order first, in any given round. It allows combat, which is usually (and still) the slowest part of any turn-based PBP, to move forward a bit more quickly than it often does.
If you're taking somewhat unrelated comments on the play-by-post forums, I'll repeat here what I said in another thread. I miss having the "breadcrumb" links up at the top of the page for play-by-post games. Now I have to scroll to the bottom and then scroll back up a bit past the "Recent Threads" sidebar (bottombar?) and the Quick Reply box to find them.
(I think someone claimed in another thread that there have never been "breadcrumbs" at the top of PbP threads, but I'm sure they used to be there once upon a time.)
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Kyrademon: Fav'd and listed, thanks for the explanation! I was about to quote you and reply in this thread, but I see that Gary has already said it's on-topic here. Still, if you wanted to copy-pasta your methods there, I like to try keeping a few threads bookmarked that I can direct others to for advice when common topics resurface.
Yours would be very valuable advice for sure!
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Just as a contrast , here's how I handle each of those points and why:
1)- My own brand of insanity runs toward being a bit OCD. ("A bit" may be something of an understatement.)
2)- I've actually heard of folks who run game on Google pages doing this since you and more easily split off a separate thread to continue that line of dialog. While I can definitely see that allowing for improved pacing, I'm not sure that would work for what I'm trying to do. Basically, for Rumble, I like to ensure that it remains readable as story even to someone with perhaps no rules knowledge.
To that end I don't think I'd feel comfortable adopting this method, at least while the game is hosted on Paizo anyway. Maybe if they had subthreading, but then I'd kind of worry about everyone being able to stay on the same page if other people are posting in the past.
Still, it's a creative solution and it's certainly got me thinking about ways I could leverage it certain instances...
3)- Looks like we do something fairly similar here. One thing I do to keep pacing up is I automatically preroll the entire party's Perception and possibly Stealth and Survival, etc. anytime they enter a new area. Similarly, I pre-roll the party's Sense Motive during relevant dialogs and format the spoilers calling out what the conditions were and the characters who passed.
Celestial AND PC Bard or Perception DC 20 (PC Paladin):The players whose characters are entitled to act upon this information would be the PC Bard, Paladin, and NPC Bard. i.e. someone was speaking directly to the PC Bard, while the others were trying to listen in. Since the NPC bard doesn't know Celestial, they don't get to act on this info.Perception Checks:
[ooc]Note I'd typically just have the 1st letter of their name labeling the rolls, but I replaced them so you could see how I organize the rolls. My scripts list any conditional modifier after the dice tags so that I can quickly paste them inside if they are relevant.
4)- I've tried doing that before and played with other GMs who did so, but it tended to result in problems like people trying to post far ahead because they previewed and saw that their first d20 roll was a nat-20, etc. Just like with the dialog, it caused things to feel kind of disjointed for us.
The solution I used was to allow the party members and allied NPCs to be more flexible about when they act in the initiative order. Basically all allied N/PCs who would get to act before the next enemy's place in the initiative order can post whenever they like. Effectively, those who are busy with work or afk get auto-delayed, and I'll just pause if there's anyone who hasn't acted yet by the time the next bad guy comes up.
, Enemy Commander, Cleric, Rogue, Enemy Hobgoblins;
In the above instance, the bard, sorcerer, or monk are all free to post their actions in any order. After they've done so, I then have the enemy commander act, at which point either the cleric or rogue can go. It may not be as fast, but it keeps the organic feel we like, and it keeps me from having to hunt for actions like I know GMs in some games I've played in had to. Of course if a player wants to specify a general course of action rather than calling out specific ones, then I'll just allow those actions to carry over until they situation changes and necessitates a re-evaluation. (i.e. they thought they were fighting a human blackguard and it turns out to be a demon with DR and SLAs in humanoid form, reinforcements arrive, an ally gets KO'd, etc.)
I think the top of page breadcrumbs went away for PbP threads when we converted to using campaigns. I'll see about adding them back for those.
I notice that there is a breadcrumb link at the top of the play-by-post pages now. Unfortunately, it's pointing to http://paizo.com/campaigns (which seems to be empty) instead of http://paizo.com/paizo/messageboards/community/campaigns as I would have expected.
I notice that there is a breadcrumb link at the top of the play-by-post pages now. Unfortunately, it's pointing to http://paizo.com/campaigns (which seems to be empty) instead of http://paizo.com/paizo/messageboards/community/campaigns as I would have expected.
Discussed here. Seems to be intentional, for now.
Thank you!