Just curious since Edge of the Empire has one. I find it to be a great resource for adventure ideas and asking some behind the screen questions regarding published adventures or even original material. So long as the players in your group know not to poke around in that forum your campaign plans should remain a secret while you ask how to play any given situation out.
Just a thought.
Ditto.
My thoughts go the other dirrection, I would rather see just two forums. One for Players and another for Game Masters.
It's not like you blink and the thread you were interested in flys off to page 3 as it does elsewhere.
We talk about all the lines in the GM forum, I don't think anyone would have a problem discussing AoR there. But in general I agree, it's tedious to navigate all the forums.
Yes, I'd definitely like a Gamemaster subforum.
Really, they should have a "STAR WARS ROLE-PLAYING GAME" header, and then under that have individual forums for
* Edge of the Empire Beginners Game
* Edge of the Empire RPG
* Age fo Rebellion Beginners Game
* Age of Rebellion RPG
* Force and Destiny Beginners Game
* Force and Destiny RPG
* Game Masters (all SW RPGs)
This is what they have now, but it could be better organized...
Yeah, I have to agree. But then I'm a fan of sub-forums and sub-folders.
There obviously are no GMs for Age of Rebellion, ergo no forum.
Really, they should have a "STAR WARS ROLE-PLAYING GAME" header, and then under that have individual forums for
* Edge of the Empire Beginners Game
* Edge of the Empire RPG
* Age fo Rebellion Beginners Game
* Age of Rebellion RPG
* Force and Destiny Beginners Game
* Force and Destiny RPG
* Game Masters (all SW RPGs)
This is what they have now, but it could be better organized...
I would go further
Star Wars RPG
Game Master
Fan-Made stories/Encounters
Player
Fan-Made Player Aids
Beginner Game
Print-On-Demand decks
Talents
Adversaries
Line Specific Questions/Comments
Edge
Age
Force
As someone who mostly GM´s Age of Rebellion while Im usually a player in Edge I completely agree that we need a Gm section for Age.
Personally, I wouldn't mind 1 forum per line, but I'd roll Beginner's Box in with the rest of the forum. But then I'd like to have the kind of division in the RT forum as well.
Edge of the Empire
- Game Masters
- Beginner's Box
- Rules Questions
- House Rules
Age of Rebellion
- Game Masters
- Beginner's Box
- Rules Questions
- House Rules
etc.
I want a AOR GM subforum please. and FnD as well.
I've had good luck contacting the FFG Webmaster about pinning a topic. I'm not sure what the protocol is for getting a new forum.
They did it in the Imperial Assault Forum.
They added 3 sub forums and later a 4th because enough people requested it.
I rather have a general forum, with sub forums for the flavors and beginner games.
For me i don't think there is enough traffic and posts to justify MORE forums
Really, they should have a "STAR WARS ROLE-PLAYING GAME" header, and then under that have individual forums for
* Edge of the Empire Beginners Game
* Edge of the Empire RPG
* Age fo Rebellion Beginners Game
* Age of Rebellion RPG
* Force and Destiny Beginners Game
* Force and Destiny RPG
* Game Masters (all SW RPGs)
This is what they have now, but it could be better organized...
I would go further
Star Wars RPG
Game Master
Fan-Made stories/Encounters
Player
Fan-Made Player Aids
Beginner Game
Print-On-Demand decks
Talents
Adversaries
Line Specific Questions/Comments
Edge
Age
Force
I wouldn't. Extensive sub-division is something you do when necessary due to volume of traffic. Otherwise you rely on people making judgement calls based on whether they are interested in a thread called, e.g. "Fiction: The Littlest Wookie" or whatever. Basically the time it takes for someone to quickly make that decision is far, far less than the time it takes someone to navigate up and down different sub-forums. So you go with the first. You'd only want the second if the majority of people weren't interested in general content but just a few specific areas. But most of us are interested in all of the content so it would be a big nuisance. I honestly already find it enough of an annoyance having to separately visit for forums, let alone 12.
Really, they should have a "STAR WARS ROLE-PLAYING GAME" header, and then under that have individual forums for
* Edge of the Empire Beginners Game
* Edge of the Empire RPG
* Age fo Rebellion Beginners Game
* Age of Rebellion RPG
* Force and Destiny Beginners Game
* Force and Destiny RPG
* Game Masters (all SW RPGs)
This is what they have now, but it could be better organized...
I would go further
Star Wars RPG
Game Master
Fan-Made stories/Encounters
Player
Fan-Made Player Aids
Beginner Game
Print-On-Demand decks
Talents
Adversaries
Line Specific Questions/Comments
Edge
Age
Force
I wouldn't. Extensive sub-division is something you do when necessary due to volume of traffic. Otherwise you rely on people making judgement calls based on whether they are interested in a thread called, e.g. "Fiction: The Littlest Wookie" or whatever. Basically the time it takes for someone to quickly make that decision is far, far less than the time it takes someone to navigate up and down different sub-forums. So you go with the first. You'd only want the second if the majority of people weren't interested in general content but just a few specific areas. But most of us are interested in all of the content so it would be a big nuisance. I honestly already find it enough of an annoyance having to separately visit for forums, let alone 12.
Except if it was that 12, and you didn't want to read fan-made stories/modules you would have an easy way to avoid them!
Instead (currently) if you want to find something you have to search at minimum 4 and potentially 3 extra if you look at the beginner game stuff.
So, say I am a new Player, I want to ask "what is this game like?" Right now there are 3 beginner forums that would fit, and 3 regular game forums that would fit.
So say I am an established player in an Edge focused story but I want to know how a AoR spec will help out. I have to post to 2 forums to get the useful information.
With my suggestions Players would have 1.
Beginner games would have 1 that would fit best, and 1 secondary if they wanted more info.
If I want to keep up on what's new or may affect my players I have to watch the Edge GM forum, the Edge forum, the AoR forum, The F&D forum, and keep up on twitter or facebook incase they sneak a new adversary deck that isn't listed elsewhere.
OR If I want to find players for an online game I have to post in the Edge/AoR/FaD forums and then it will hit enough people to get a full group in the same timezone.
So I may not have picked the best organization of the lines, but the current setup is stupid and inefficient.
I'm with Kinnison up there - splitting it up by line into individual forums still seems the best way to keep an active enough forum. We not only have to think about current post rate (which only on EotE does it see enough that I occasionally have to load more topics) but also in the future, once some of the newness wears off. I do think there'll be a bit of influx with the new movies but doubt much of it will have staying power.
Except if it was that 12, and you didn't want to read fan-made stories/modules you would have an easy way to avoid them!Really, they should have a "STAR WARS ROLE-PLAYING GAME" header, and then under that have individual forums for
* Edge of the Empire Beginners Game
* Edge of the Empire RPG
* Age fo Rebellion Beginners Game
* Age of Rebellion RPG
* Force and Destiny Beginners Game
* Force and Destiny RPG
* Game Masters (all SW RPGs)
This is what they have now, but it could be better organized...
I would go further
Star Wars RPG
Game Master
Fan-Made stories/Encounters
Player
Fan-Made Player Aids
Beginner Game
Print-On-Demand decks
Talents
Adversaries
Line Specific Questions/Comments
Edge
Age
Force
I wouldn't. Extensive sub-division is something you do when necessary due to volume of traffic. Otherwise you rely on people making judgement calls based on whether they are interested in a thread called, e.g. "Fiction: The Littlest Wookie" or whatever. Basically the time it takes for someone to quickly make that decision is far, far less than the time it takes someone to navigate up and down different sub-forums. So you go with the first. You'd only want the second if the majority of people weren't interested in general content but just a few specific areas. But most of us are interested in all of the content so it would be a big nuisance. I honestly already find it enough of an annoyance having to separately visit for forums, let alone 12.
Yes, for the person who wants to avoid fan stories, they can avoid clicking on the extra forum. But for everyone else who wants to see it, it means clicking on an extra one. And you have twelve forums!
There are two basic problems with what you propose, imo. Firstly, more people want to see everything than want to avoid most things. That means you've created a situation where the majority are much worse off for the sake of a minority. And keep in mind that exclusion lists vary from person to person. So the minority are also penalized. Your example user who wants to avoid fan-fiction may want to see all the game related content. So they still have to work with browsing eleven forums and are also worse off. The user who is interested in everything except Force and Destiny is in the same position, except it's a slightly different list of eleven forums they have to go through. Basically, everyone now has a mathematically worse time of it, with the exception of those who are specifically interested only in a small number of forums n, where n is less than the number of forums we have currently.
The second basic problem is that traffic is going to be very sporadic in specialist forums. So sticking with your example of fan-fiction, you might see someone post in it once or twice a month. Maybe even less. Consequently, no-one is going to be looking in there because the chance of finding anything useful on any given day is going to be 3% or less! So they wont bother. And when someone does post their fan-fiction it will therefore not be noticed by many people - and this is the important part - even if they are people who are interested in fan-fiction. Low-traffic forums are seldom worth visiting even if you are interested in the content because you only score a hit a very small percentage of the time.
I guess thirdly, there's the issue that the more specific you make the forums, the more times you hit the problem of where to put something that seems to fit several categories. What happens is that people just dump it into the most populous forum and others languish.
However, this isn't me disagreeing with you that the current set-up is not optimal. I just don't think a much increased number of forums is the answer. I would probably put it like this:
Star Wars RPG
--Edge of Empire
--Age of Rebellion
--Force and Destiny
--Games Masters
--Cross-Setting (Optional. Not sure about this).
This is not perfect because there is no specific Beginner area. However, there's no way you can add Beginner forums for all of the game lines because now you have eight forums for people who are interested in everything to keep track of (leading to people not visiting them) and the alternative which is one Beginner area for all lines is confusing because anyone on the Beginner set is probably focused on one game line.
I'm against the separate Beginner areas because the idea is that Beginners should have a welcoming area focused on their needs. But in practice, the people most able to help beginners are not in there, but in their own non-Beginner forums that are more interesting to them. Therefore Beginners need to be mixed in with the main community. They're going to "graduate" to there anyway very shortly.
I'm not certain about the Cross-Setting as it obviously overlaps with each of the line-specific ones. However, I think it's inescapable that we need one. I like your idea of a fan-writing forum but because of the low volume of traffic, I think it would work well with being combined into this last setting. So we would call that "Cross-setting and Fiction". It seems like an odd combination, but it's actually optimal from a site-traffic point of view which is what matters most.
So my final organization would be as follows:
Star Wars RPG
--Edge of Empire
--Age of Rebellion
--Force and Destiny
--Games Masters
--Cross-Setting and Fiction.
I have seen over-divided forums (Eclipse Phase forums in their original version were like this). It kills usage because no-one wants to go through a dozen different forums looking for interesting posts but many try to work with the divisions and you end up with a feeling of emptiness. So I would really like to see five forums, and do them along lines like I suggest above.
I will take your
Star Wars RPG
--Edge of Empire
--Age of Rebellion
--Force and Destiny
--Games Masters
--Cross-Setting and Fiction.
and add 1 for Decks then I agree with it.
I will take your
Star Wars RPG
--Edge of Empire
--Age of Rebellion
--Force and Destiny
--Games Masters
--Cross-Setting and Fiction.
and add 1 for Decks then I agree with it.
Sounds good to me. I do use the decks but I don't really discuss them much so I may have missed that one if it's of interest by itself. Anyway, works for me. 
Star Wars RPG
--Edge of Empire
--Age of Rebellion
--Force and Destiny
--Games Masters
--Cross-Setting and Fiction.
Star Wars Starter Games
--Escape from Mos Shuuta (EotE)
--Attack on Whisper Base (AoR)
--Force and Destint Starting Box.
and add 1 for Decks then I agree with it.
What is there to discuss with the Decks?
Part of me wonders if one Grand Old Forum of the Republic would suffice for the game lines, if the posts could be tagged in respect to their lines. I'd still enjoy a separate GM section, though.
and add 1 for Decks then I agree with it.
What is there to discuss with the Decks?
Look at the deck forums and see the 14 or so threads.