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With the announcement that Paizo is looking into new forums (no date has been given yet), It seems like a good time to provide feedback on how to improve Play by Post.
We need a better way to create characters for PBP, 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 not intuitive...
The community is not known for lacking feedback. I originally posted this in the general section of the online games subforum, but apparently, no one reads that section anymore. So trying again here.
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Improvements to the play-by-post forums would be fantastic.
* Ability to disable characters so that they do not clutter up the choice of character to post with.
* Ability to have duplicate names for characters so that we don't encounter name collisions with other characters from other players who may not even be actively played currently.
* Ability to set a default character to post with per-thread or per-campaign.
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More profile picture options. Especially pleasant looking ones rather than so many having angry or scary expressions.
Ability to change profile picture for new posts, but keep the old picture for old posts. Because sometimes familiars get their form changed.
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Post notifications to help speed up the game. That's one of the advantages Discord has for PBP, the other bigger reason I know some people have moved over to Discord is it's easier to use on a phone. But I really don't like actually playing the game part of Discord. Hoping new forums can win sim people back here for PBP
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I would love Markdown instead of BBCode on all the forums.
For PBP specifically, light green dice text on a white background is too low-contrast for vision impaired people such as myself (colorblind).
(cross posting for the same reason as above)
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.
1:Map maker,
2:Dice roller
3:PC / NPC sheets
4:Easy note links
5:Player Image Icon importer/ AI maker.
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Not having set times for posting is kind of the point of pbp.
Honestly these forums already have some pretty good pbp tools--aliases for character profiles (characters you use in a game might not change to the default, but they do pop up to the top of your list when posting in that thread); fields that show up in the header on the pbp forum so you can build a statblock there (although it's really not designed for it); built-in dice roller, which isn't unique but isn't universal either; and the campaign page. I'm kind of flummoxed that someone would rather have phone notifications.
(And isn't using a computer for it, apparently.)
But it is a pretty different medium. If you don't like it, that's fine, but changes to the forum aren't going to change that.
I have done games in both. Several PbP on these forums, and a few PbP (true asynchronous PbP rather than virtual meeting space) on Discord.
Discord does fairly well after you add some needed bots like a dice roller (I've used avrae and dicemaiden) and a character surrogate (I've only used pluralkit). Finding things in history is more difficult, but it isn't necessarily easy in the Paizo forums either. And both are easier than trying to dredge up memories from an in-person game that happened a couple of months ago and no one took notes about.
The Paizo boards, however, do have some glaring holes in them. Limited choice of avatar images being one of my biggest gripes.
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I have been playing in a dedicated PbP Discord server for a couple years now. It's very good for this purpose.
One thing that has been working well is using Threads to split off conversations here and there. Also works wonders for having dedicated secret channels for imparting information to only a certain person.
I would consider play by post on here but I would definitely need a lot of the suggestions from above such as markdown options, more images for avatars and colours.
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The Paizo boards, however, do have some glaring holes in them. Limited choice of avatar images being one of my biggest gripes.
You're not wrong, but on forums that aren't dedicated to pbp specifically--which this is is not--having built-in character profiles at all is pretty unique.
Heck, Myth Weavers is a dedicated pbp site, and they didn't have that last time I used it (they might now--I know that site also got some upgrades since I was there).
Most of my gaming is through PBP these days. Myth-Weavers went through a big update recently and, while I have some complaints about it, you could really not do much better than cribbing from them.
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Yeah the process of transferring has been a hot mess and poorly managed but the site itself is solid.