Okay, I know there isn't going to be an "off-topic" or "general discussions" forum, and I approve of the lack of the former and have mixed feelings about the lack of the latter. Regardless, in the "New Policy" thread Zak came up with what I think is a very good idea: A "connection" forum.

What I'm talking about is a forum for people who get into this indie game thing to meet other people in their own area who have similar interests. Sure, you can poke at people with private messages, but being able to put up a "general posting" that people can browse is very, very nice.

What do people think? I often see complaint from Forge members that they can't find anyone to play these games with. Why not help them?

I can hardly think of any strong argument not to do this.

--TQuid

Post to the Actual Play forum something like- "Looking for folks to try games of type x in area y." Sounds right to me . . .

Ack, I would prefer not to have those kinds of announcements in Actual Play. I would then eagerly be clicking on a link to learn what new pearl of wisdom someone has to share only to hear about someone starting a new XYZ campaign in Albequerque.

While I don't see a problem with a forum dedicated to such things, it occurs to me that the location field in the memberlist should do a pretty good job of helping you find Forge members who are in your vicinity. PMs can then be used to contact that person regarding interest.

I agree with Ralph.

I realize that this view might not be popular, but the Forge can't be everything in terms of explicit services and interactions. We do a few things really well, and I'd rather keep the other things either informal or absent.

Best,
Ron

I think I'm with Ron on this one. Your location is displayed on each of your posts & in your profile, so it would be easy for people to PM each other--"Hey, Mike Holmes, I'm moving up to Milwaukee & wanna get in on gaming!" (Which I think I should've done, rather than posting here, even if I was horribly excited about getting in to grad school.)

I sort of like that there isn't a "general discussion" forum. If I wanted that, I'd post on RPGnet. (Which is not to imply RPGnet is "lesser" than the Forge, just that RPGnet is a much more generalized forum than this place.)

Good point. Problem is, there's a ton of members. And if you're looking for "Seattle, WA", you'll probably miss "Bellevue" or "Kirkland" (which is why my profile says "Seattle-ish").

I guess if you REALLY want to find players, you can go through the whole 18 pages.

I do agree that the memberlist is probably a better place than a forum devoted to "Hey, anyone want to start a game in XYZ?" I'd just hate to see someone in Everett miss a bunch of gamers because they live 30 miles away in another city!

Would it be possible to add a "search members" function? That way folks could search by location.

Zak Arntson wrote:
Good point. Problem is, there's a ton of members. And if you're looking for "Seattle, WA", you'll probably miss "Bellevue" or "Kirkland" (which is why my profile says "Seattle-ish").

I also agree with Ralph. The strength of the Forge lies in its focus. RPG.net is a great site for general discussion, private messaging can be used for private stuff here.

Would it be possible to add a "search members" function? That way folks could search by location.

Clinton has said he's hesitant to code changes to the forum functionality, because each new release of the software then requires him to recode for the same customizations. And I guess I can't blame him.

But what about loading a secondary app on the server that would query the underlying database and produce some cool canned reports and charts? I recall seeing this kind of thing for IRC channels. Is there something out there that would work for the Forge forums database?

The "sort by user location" query could be delivered by this kind of app, and I can imagine a zillion other cool reports and graphs:


• A breakdown of an individual user's number of posts by Forum
• A breakdown of an individual user's number of posts by time of day posted
• A breakdown of the number of threads started by an individual user by Forum
• Rankings of the number of posts by users in an individual Forum
• Rankings of the number of threads started by users in an individual Forum
• A user's longest post
• Top ten longest threads
• Forum activity charted by time of day
• etc.



Paul

Paul,

This I can do. Expect to see this when I have a little time.

If location included zip/postal code, that would greatly facilitate "near me" searches. Are there any . . . <clickety clickety clickety> . . . ah, here we are:

http://freshmeat.net/projects/zipdy/

There's a free, open-source zip distance calculator. Not much use for us non-Americans, but it shows people are doing this stuff. More searching might find something that would work for other geographical areas.

Whaddya think, Clinton? My personal gripe is that the Forge is my primary gaming community--I have little urge to slog through all the d20 crap to "partcipate" in places like rpg.net and gamersoutpost. I respect not wanting to clutter the boards with this stuff, but a location tool would be, well, really damn cool.

--TQuid

P.S. A little cheapie yahoo group might be called for, for connections-seeking, announcements, and so forth. I also run a mailserver that has Mailman list service on it & would volunteer my services to run such a list, if there's interest.

This I can do. Expect to see this when I have a little time.

Coolness. It'll be a thing of beauty and utility.

Paul