Indie Design policy announcement

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

A lot of new people have arrived at the Forge recently, and a lot of them have been active in this forum. However, the mission of the forum has become diluted, simply because it's hard to moderate when the posts and threads arrive so thick and fast.

So ...

1) Everyone please review the forum guidelines in the Sticky thread: Site-specific guidelines for Indie Design. I am enforcing these guidelines through the following points.

2) A whole ton of threads are moving to RPG Theory without leaving a "shadow thread" behind here (which merely take up space). If you were happily engaged in posting on a thread which has mysteriously disappeared, please wander over there to find it.

These threads are moved because they are ideas about role-playing mechanics and processes, submitted for discussion, but they are not themselves games in design. This forum not for talking and speculating about game design, but for doing it.

3) When posting to this forum, realize that it's tantamount to committing to being a game publisher. If you consistently flake out on the project, or are posting "a neat thing" to generate responses and dialogue, this adds up - you get the reputation as a wannabe designer rather than anyone worth paying attention to. Eventually, your posts will generate 0 responses and when you get your good idea that you're really committed to, it's too late - the Forge won't be helpful to you.

4) Please consider beginning each thread title with the working name of the game and a colon, as in ...

"MyGame: [specific thread title]"

5) Finally, it helps a lot to be explicit about the means by which you'd like to publish the game - simple website posting, all the way to book-published store-distribution, and whatever in between (e.g. PDF for sale). This will help everyone give you the best advice possible.

Best,
Ron