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Today Jim Butler announced among many other things that there will be new forums at some point. So thought it would be a good time to start a new feature wishlist. Might be good to say what current features we like as well.
1: A character sheet that makes sense, the current:
Race = EAC 14, KAC 14|SP 21/21 HP 24/24|RP 4/4|Fort +2, Ref +3, Will +6|Init: +1 | Perc: +8|
Classes/Levels = Speed 30 ft |Spells: 1st 4/4|Healing Channel 1/1| Active conditions: None.
Is more confusing than a 640-page rule book with all the page numbers removed.
2: New post notifications, to help keep an already slow game moving.
3: Chronicle integration.
4: An adventure written for play by post, we need a monster stat block with dice expressions, maps, and tokens ready for use. Even if it's just one adventure for Starfinder and one for PF2e. Would be a great learning tool for GMing a play-by-post for the first time. Even if not a full adventure even a conversion guide for an existing one would help.
5: Separate recruitment sub-forum for Starfinder. There are a lot fewer Starfinder games, which makes it hard to find them mixed in with Pathfinder games.
6: Able to play on a phone. I have no use for this but several players I know stopped playing on the forums to move to platforms that were phone friendly.
Things I like. I'm happy with the current gameplay section. Other than getting new post notifications I get lost doing anything with Discord.
I especially agree with #2 (notifications) and #6 (mobile support).
Is #3 a PFS thing?
I'd love for the Recruitment threads to have ready-made tags that a thread creator can utilize to help others see what the recruitment is about at a glance. Tags like [Closed] to indicate if the recruitment is closed or invitation only, [1E] [2E] and [SF] tags to indicate the system being played, [PFS] and [SFS] tags... maybe even the ability to filter or search on those tags.
The ability for a Recruitment thread-starter to be able to edit the first post for a much longer period, maybe indefinitely. Too often, questions answered later in the thread should be added to the first post so that a potential player can find all the necessary info in one place. Or sometimes, months or even years later, a GM might re-open recruitment, but they can only announce that as a new post or a new thread.
I'd also like the ability to post font in different colors. I've seen some forums where this gets carried away (EN World), but sometimes I'd like the ability to differentiate dialogue between multiple characters, but it's not worthwhile to create an alias for each of them.
The ability to alter alias names! Things like changing their last names, or adding titles or other honorifics they may get as play moves along.
Tags would work better than a whole different forum for each game system.
As long as we're wishing for stuff, I'd like to see a simple map tool that integrates with forums. Better character sheet integration would also be a plus. 100% agree on being able to update the first post of a recruitment thread. Maybe integrate the SRDs for the different games that would allow for GMs to select what they want and don't want. You could even integrate the PDFs that have been purchased and include a compendium or something that can be shared with all players in the game.
Just some thoughts that I have.
Built-in map-making. Though I'd bet that is a pipe dream. :)
Things that would solve current annoyances/bugaboos of mine:
1) Subforums/heading for different campaign arcs within a broad campaign.
2) Posts can be edited at any time but with each post having an edit history (lots of sites implement this currently, the editability expiring thing is clunky and annoying).
3) A less ad-hoc way to do the "upper text" on the play threads. Currently the shorter campaign description appears at the top of each page and GMs, including me, (mis)use that to describe the current action, post maps, etc. It's OK/nice as a kudge but the problem is that this same, (edited) text appears on all pages so earlier situation summaries are lost and I go to old pages and see the campaign described as it currently it (when I'd like to see the old action summarized).
Things that might be nice (in order of ambitiousness)
4) Let people embed graphics directly into a post. [pic=200x300]http://bar.com/foo.png[/pic] etc.
5) Like the spoiler tag but they choices each character makes and the DM can see whether a player clicked on the choice.
6) Actual battle maps - perhaps allow movement on a map by markdown in each post. Not trying to be role20 but could quite nice for play-by-post.