What do you want from an RPG site?

[brainwipe]

Hi all,
As not-a-big-poster, I was hoping that you lend an ear (or eye) and describe what you are looking for in an RPG website. To be more specific, I am looking at improving the site for my Free RPG, Icar (http://www.icar.co.uk) and was wondering if there was anything glaringly obvious that is missing.

To give an idea about what I am after (ideas wise) is that someone suggested I should have a page which introduces everything (system, setting, etc) in one easy page.

Any comments and critique more than welcome.

Many thanks,

Rob Lang
http://www.icar.co.uk

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Rob,

Here are some threads from this forum that might be helpful. Lots of room remains for more discussion, though, so if anyone has comments or suggestions to add, please do.

To you guys selling RPGs online
Automated emails for URLs
Banner creation
Freebie version creation (peripheral but very important to consider)
Web design comments and stuff
Web-page challenged
Web page content
Web publishing model (slightly more oriented toward finances, but some design issues too)

You might check out all the websites of the members of the Digital Publishers Group to see a variety of choices about the issue.

Best,
Ron

[JSDiamond]

Hi Rob,
There are two things specifically that I like to see in a game site:

1. A 'framed' menu sidebar, so that the whole site doesn't need to respawn with every page change.  Oh yeah, and limited or NO java.  

2.  Pictures.  Show me the cover art or interiors so I get an idea as to the flavor of the rpg.  No joke, art speaks loudest.

Jeff
//www.orbit-rpg

[Adam]

Hi Rob,
1. A 'framed' menu sidebar, so that the whole site doesn't need to respawn with every page change.  Oh yeah, and limited or NO java.  

Not to hijack the thread, but framed sites present several useability problems for many casual browsers, and for that reason I would rarely recommend using them. A well designed site should redraw quickly, frames or no frames, because artwork or other images will already be in the cache.

Comments on the Icar site:

1. The design uses less than half of the width of my browser. What is the advantage to that?

2. The blue links on blue background are very hard to read.

3. The text is too close to the table borders, making it harder to read.

4. I don't see a note on the main download page saying what kind of files are inside the zip files, nor are file sizes listed. I see that there's a note on the individual files page, but I'd wager that most people are just downloading the main .zip file and looking at it locally at their leisure.

5. There is no index.html inside the zip file. Nor is there a README file, which I would suggest including - people are somewhat trained to look for README and index.html, but "0.htm" is a little more elusive.

6. I think you would be better served by moving to a proper page layout program and distributing the book in PDF; the current way you have the HTML files renders many of the advantages of HTML null, and surely is a pain to update.

7. I wouldn't mix the fiction with the rules material on a regular basis, especially not in the format chosen.

8. The top dual arrow should allow for Forward/Back navigation, and the Forward navigation at the bottom should be on the right side of the page.

There's a few thoughts off of the top of my head.

[brainwipe]

Wow, thanks all. The first truly objective ideas I have had for the site. I shall be updating many of the site features given Adam's wise words. The reason the browser is half the size of a 1024x768 frame is that you can have both the rules and the main page on a screen at the same time. I've been told this is very useful. It's also a style thing, but I don't think style should get in the way of functionality.

All the other comments are great and I'm going to set about putting them into action.

I'm not sure if there is an easy method of converting so many HTML files into one pdf. If anyone knows of a good way of doing it, please let me know!

Many thanks once again all, this Forum is clearly the elder statesman compared to the quibbling child of rpg.net.

Rob Lang

[Matt Machell]

Couple of points that spring to mind:

From an HTML purists point of view, a doctype declaration would useful, as it means a browser won't be tempted to render the page in default mode (which can cause problems).

Frames, I'd avoid, mainly because search engines don't index them as well as flat pages.

Make sure the text is resizable by the user (use % sizes in your CSS), as not everybody has perfect eyesight, and you've chosen quite a small font size.

Make the scrollbar more obvious, it kinda blends into the background as it stands.

Another thing is, as a new arrival at the site, I'd like to see an obvious link to a summary of what it's all about (but from your intial post it sounds like your working on this).

Hope those are useful.

-Matt

PS For anybody looking for good books on web design topics, I'd recommend glasshaus, and not just cos I work for them ;-)

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

Quick dialogue note: saying "frames" to computer people is like saying "discount" to a retailer - it usually invokes a tirade but the speaker probably meant something else.

If what you're looking for is some kind of navigational "box" or area that remains mostly unchanged while the rest of the page changes, then check out these three sites: Anvilwerks, Sorcerer, and The Riddle of Steel. Each one uses slightly different designs to accomplish that end, and the various computer people here can explain how each one works.

Best,
Ron

[Adam]

I'm not sure if there is an easy method of converting so many HTML files into one pdf. If anyone knows of a good way of doing it, please let me know!

Well, it will probably take some elbow grease. What I would do is:

1. Strip all the HTML from the files. You can most certainly find some software/scripts to automate this.
2. Copy all the text files into a single master text/RTF file.
3. Strip out anything else that you don't need, and then seperate the content out, one file per chapter.
4. Import the content into page layout tool of choice.

[brainwipe]

Thanks Adam, I was hoping there was an easier and more automated manner of achieving this.

I suppose you're right. :(

[Matt Machell]

I'm not sure if there is an easy method of converting so many HTML files into one pdf. If anyone knows of a good way of doing it, please let me know!

You could try HTMLDoc, http://www.easysw.com/htmldoc/. Not ideal, but it works.

-Matt

[Clay]

If what you're looking for is some kind of navigational "box" or area that remains mostly unchanged while the rest of the page changes, then check out these three sites: Anvilwerks, Sorcerer, and The Riddle of Steel. Each one uses slightly different designs to accomplish that end, and the various computer people here can explain how each one works.

I can't explain how The Riddle of Steel site works, but the Sorcerer and Anvilwerks sites are driven by my software and maintain their consistency by defining a site template. The Anvilwerks site is a little more fantastical because Clinton Nixon has modified the software slightly so that he can change the style of the template for different portions of his site.

The only downside to using this tool is that you incur slightly higher hosting costs due to the need for a database. A solution is in the works (although a long way off) to rebuild these tools so that they don't need a database.  Higher hosting cost is offset by reduced management and maintenance headache.

There's a cheaper method done using Server Side Includes. It ensures site consistency (I even have a tool for handling the menus), but site maintenance is more involved than with the software mentioned above.

[Adam]

Thanks Adam, I was hoping there was an easier and more automated manner of achieving this.

I suppose you're right. :(

Feel free to get in touch with me if you need any help; I have access to all the relevant tools and have the necessary experience. Friendly advice is free, actual work requires a bit of compensation. ;-)

[Valamir]

1. Strip all the HTML from the files. You can most certainly find some software/scripts to automate this.
2. Copy all the text files into a single master text/RTF file.

Wouldn't the easiest way to accomplish this be to simply open the HTML files in any of the recent versions of Word that can read HTML and then just save it from there as RTF?  You'll get an error message that formatting will be lost...which is pretty much what you want to happen.

It may work better to save as a Doc and then save the Doc as an RTF...sometimes what formatting is lost and what is switched to the new file type depends on what format you're going to and from.

[Adam]

Wouldn't the easiest way to accomplish this be to simply open the HTML files in any of the recent versions of Word that can read HTML and then just save it from there as RTF?  You'll get an error message that formatting will be lost...which is pretty much what you want to happen.

This may be easier, yes, but will probably produce a really junky RTF file with lots of styles and excess formatting, which is something that you should generally avoid when building a file that will be imported into a DTP program.

Also, when dealing with many files, doing a lot of cutting and pasting, and combining the files into one larger one, I think it's a lot easier to work in plaintext, especially since you can easily manipulate it with unix commandline tools.

[brainwipe]

Thanks for the advice and offers of help. I will stick with frames until my service provides me with php. Then there's no stopping me!

Converting to pdf will probably be done by either cgi routine or cut and paste. The cgi rountine will strip all the text, remove html and place all in one big file while the cut and paste will be much slower (I'm a programmer so a cgi-rountine like this doesn't frighten me at all!).

I've done some research into different packages and I think the best is Adobe Indesign. I'm not too keen on the MS auto-formatting malarky and Adobe tend to produce crash free software. It's also not stupidly expensive at about 100 pounds.

Adam, I would offer some of this work out to others, but this is still my hobby (and is likely to remain that way) so I dare not spend more money than I absolutely have to!

Thanks once again for a lively and interesting discussion on what is quite an important topic, for me at the very least!