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Feedback ยท RP Groups (accepted)

Litphoria is meant to be a place for all kinds of play-by-post/chat roleplay. However, one kind of roleplay is not well served at all. That's large roleplay groups with continuity and with a need for organization and a sense of community. Without a central hub where everything can be found, a series of RPs with a large cast of players can easily turn into anarchy -- or at least a big mess.

As the founder of a group, I want to be able to manage my community from one place.

I'm using "group runner" rather than "group moderator" or "group owner/founder" to firmly distinguish the role from the moderation staff role and to not exclude the very real case of multiple users filling this role.

As a group runner...

  • I want to be able to create a group with all the relevant information regarding an RP group on one page. This serves as a central location where any user can see everything (well, everything public) associated with the group. Anybody considering joining a group RP will have a complete view of the group so that they can see whether it's right for them. This page should have...
    • Links to community hubs at the top. OOC chats, a super casual RP chat, and so on. The group runner should be able to list any group-associated chats they own here.
    • A content rating, such as the RPG Rating System, to give an at-a-glance summary of what sensitive content is allowed and disallowed.
    • A body of text for the RP runner to write in rules, wanted characters, current happenings, etc. Whatever text they want to represent their community and inform users looking for a group may go on this page.
    • A list of all characters that have been invited to the group.
    • A link to a list of all roleplays associated with the group.
  • I want to be able to select whether characters can join this group freely ("Join this group"), or if they must request to join ("Request to join this group"), or if the group is invite-only ("Private group").
  • I want to be able to invite characters to the group.
    • As the owner of a group, I want to be able to assign multiple users to the role of group runner for a single group.
  • As a group runner, I want to be able to ban a user from the group.

As a group member or a user looking for a group...

  • I want to be able to see quickly and easily what a group is about, who is in the group, what the rules are, where the OOC chat is, and so on.
  • I want to be able to quickly see all RPs associated with the group in one place.
    • This view should be reachable with a single click from the hub page.
    • It should not be sorted with nested directories (that is, in the style of a forum). Forums are great for when there are ~200 users posting each day, but the scale of an RP group is considerably lower. Instead, it should list all roleplays and that list should then be filterable. This has the added benefit of being scalable to the needs of the group.
    • The list should be sortable by last post date or by the RP's place in the in-universe chronology.
    • That's because many roleplays in this style are done in "liquid time" meaning that users have the ability to post RP scenes at arbitrary points in the timeline.
    • Without sorting chronologically, anybody reading these roleplays after the fact will have to piece together the chronology on their own and that greatly diminishes the value of the RP as consumable content.
    • This list should also be filterable by chronology (begin and end date) and by tags (not sure whether these should be a discrete & locked in list, made up by the group runner, or freely input by users. Tags might just be interests and themes).

As a group member

  • I want to be able to add an existing roleplay to the group timeline as long as it contains a character in the group.
  • I want to be able to create a new RP and immediately add it to the timeline as long as it contains a character in the group.

Regarding chronology...

  • As a group runner, I want to be able to create specific date components, matching the in-universe calendar, as fields in any RPs posted to the group.
    • I want to be able to create an arbitrary number of date components.
    • Each date component should have a custom label.
    • Each date component should have an optional maximum number.
  • As a user, when creating an RP to post in a group I want to be able to enter a date and upon posting the RP see it in the correct place in the chronological order.

The hope with this group setup is that it creates strong continuity in a group's RP scenes and a strong central place for a community to form. This helps the community around these scenes feel accomplished, helps non-group members to access this community, and to better navigate a complex series of RPs.

meta info

endorsement points: 1

created: 14 July 16 at 03:48 PM (build: 7/1/2016 1:00 AM beta)

Trigger Girl!Luluco

Here's what we covered in the chat.

  • RP Groups are the implementation of Series.
  • Series should be specific, such as having a certain continuity. Much more specific than any one Interest or Theme.
  • Series should have associated roleplays and characters as well as a description. Put everything on one page.
  • Cut chronology, it's a "further down the line" feature.
  • Many roleplays may be linked to a series, but a roleplay may only have one series.

I would also propose, if we're simplifying it down like this, stickied roleplays that float to the top of the series RP list.

Korra

I'd really like this. My use cases would be: organising a tabletop RPG play group, or hosting an ongoing (mostly freeform) RP continuity.

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I'm struggling to see what's not already covered by just "making a new chat". Other then being able to link roleplays to the chat, which currently would just be hyperlinks in a setting box. But like, can't we already create places for people to chat which are either invite-only, visible but require pinvites for posting, or public? This seems like a biiiig implementation for a comparatively small gain.

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Then again perhaps that also means WA can just copy a bunch of code and it's not actually a big effort!

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Also yeah, creating a new chat plus Series for RPs, which would definitely be nifty.

Korra

Mostly it's the cohesion thing. Having one single chat doesn't collect a community of people and their roleplays together very effectively, compared to a group (and series!) that can create a sort of cohesion between everything. Without a central organisation location, all the group's chats (including its central chat, if it has one) and roleplays are just adrift in a sea of random other roleplays and chats from the greater site community.

It's hard to put into words, but a group collection point is something that feels missing. I've analysed what I need to run a group continuity RP, and I could do it with only what we have now, but there's definitely bits missing preventing me from doing it fully effectively. Having fully functional series is going to address most of that; having those united with a sense of community in the form of groups is going to go the rest of the way.

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Yeah, I would really like to see series up and running.

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I mean that in an "agreeing with the comments here" way not a "grumping at WA" way!

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