Author Topic: A New Home  (Read 2947 times)

Offline Stratovarius

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A New Home
« on: July 27, 2017, 07:45:49 AM »
You may have seen the moderation team mention that we were thinking about a redesign of the forum structure. We've been thinking a lot about how, and why, to go about it, and we've decided upon a series of changes. The goals of these changes are to promote conversation and activity and put content other than D&D 3.5 on an equal footing.

There is also an increased focus on Handbooks and Content. That's because we moderators think that here at MMX, we have an amazing collection of individuals who understand rules, game mechanics, and content creation, and can bring that understanding to bear in brilliantly written guides that translates the nuances of games into the language of the everyday player. We wanted to bring more focus to those endeavors, and to those who supply the large quantity of creative content that supports it.

These changes would primarily entail merging unused or overlapping boards and changing the forum layout to better surface active forums. Don't worry, we aren't planning on deleting a single post, especially not when we got it back so recently. At a high level (working from the top of the forum down), it would result in these changes:

= Meta Board =
Intro Board
Board Business
Off Topic Fun - Off Topic + Playground + Bitch Like You Have To
Archive (and subboards/links)

= Gaming Discussion =
Gaming Advice - Gaming Advice + Ask a Question + Polling Place
Dungeons & Dragons General - D&D + 4th + 4th Min Max
D&D 3.x and Pathfinder - D&D 3.5 + Min Max 3rd + You Break It
D&D 5e - D&D 5e + Min Max 5th
Other Games - Oher RPGs + Tabletop + Videogames
Rated M for Mature

= Creative Corner =
Creations & Ephemera - Plug or Promote + Your Game Here
Homebrew & House Rules
Legends of the Heroes - Talespinning + Campaign Journals + When Inspiration Strikes
Game Design

= Handbooks & Resources =
D&D 3.x and Pathfinder
Other Games
General References
Resource Submission

= Playtime =
PbP


We will begin the process of changing over in the near future, barring well-reasoned arguments to the contrary.

Offline sirpercival

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Re: A New Home
« Reply #1 on: July 27, 2017, 09:45:14 AM »
This all looks great. As a corollary, are there any planned changes to the layout of the Homebrew section (re: grouping by author in some cases instead of by topic)?
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Offline Stratovarius

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Re: A New Home
« Reply #2 on: July 27, 2017, 09:46:57 AM »
This all looks great. As a corollary, are there any planned changes to the layout of the Homebrew section (re: grouping by author in some cases instead of by topic)?

There are. We are still debating what those might be. It's between authors having their own space, which is good, and authors in their own space never getting visited or commented on, which is bad. We're trying to figure out how to balance that appropriately.

Offline Raineh Daze

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Re: A New Home
« Reply #3 on: July 27, 2017, 09:55:10 AM »
Seems a bit odd for PbP to go in its own section like that.

Offline Nanshork

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Re: A New Home
« Reply #4 on: July 27, 2017, 10:30:32 AM »
I agree with Raineh, it does feel odd.

Also, not that it matters, but about half the stuff in "Plug and Promote" feels like it would better fit in the new Off Topic Fun instead of Creations & Ephemera (my Kickstarters and Other Crowd-Funding Mega-Thread! for example).  That's not an issue, just an observation.

Offline Stratovarius

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Re: A New Home
« Reply #5 on: July 27, 2017, 02:05:18 PM »
I agree with Raineh, it does feel odd.

Also, not that it matters, but about half the stuff in "Plug and Promote" feels like it would better fit in the new Off Topic Fun instead of Creations & Ephemera (my Kickstarters and Other Crowd-Funding Mega-Thread! for example).  That's not an issue, just an observation.

It is just keeping it in the same place it is now.

I would say that belongs in Creations & Ephemera, actually - one of the purposes of that forum is promoting material that one finds interesting, and your thread is certainly an example of that.

Offline Nanshork

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Re: A New Home
« Reply #6 on: July 27, 2017, 03:33:40 PM »
I agree with Raineh, it does feel odd.

Also, not that it matters, but about half the stuff in "Plug and Promote" feels like it would better fit in the new Off Topic Fun instead of Creations & Ephemera (my Kickstarters and Other Crowd-Funding Mega-Thread! for example).  That's not an issue, just an observation.

It is just keeping it in the same place it is now.

I would say that belongs in Creations & Ephemera, actually - one of the purposes of that forum is promoting material that one finds interesting, and your thread is certainly an example of that.

Like I said, it's not an issue.  That new organization just makes me see Creations as things we're creating, not stuff we think is cool.

Don't worry, I'm not actually invested in where the thread goes.  :P

Offline Stratovarius

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Re: A New Home
« Reply #7 on: August 02, 2017, 03:35:23 PM »
We will begin changing over the forums to their new look tomorrow.

Offline PlzBreakMyCampaign

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Re: A New Home
« Reply #8 on: August 02, 2017, 07:30:48 PM »
0) I agree with putting Play By Post (and its child boards) to Creative Corner

Converting Strat's opening post into a delta format (where underlined is a grouping, bold is a board and quotes is a child board):
Quote
1) Off topic -> Metaboard
2) Playground -> Metaboard
3) Bitch like you have to -> Metaboard
4) "Ask A Question" -> Gaming Advice
5) "Polling Place" -> Gaming Advice
*6) "Min/Max 4th Ed" pulled out -> Dungeons & Dragons General
*7) D&D 5e -> Gaming Discussion
8) New "Min Max 5th" created inside the newly moved D&D 5e area
9) Kitchen Sink becomes Other RPGs
10) Other RPGs -> Gaming Discussion
11) new Video Games created to be with the Other RPGs & Other tabletops area
12) Plug & Promote -> Creative Corner
13) likewise, Your game Here -> Creative Corner along with the above
?14) Does Conventions Meetups and Events threads probably get moved into Off Topic ?
15) Talespinning, Campaign Journals, & When Inspiration Strikes are neighbors in ... Legends of the Heroes? Is that a DotA/MoBA reference? Its sounds like a HoN and LoD conglomeration I'm unaware of.
16) Mechanical Writing is renamed Game Design
*17,18,19,20) The Handbooks get moved into their own grouping along with: Other Games, General References, & Resource Submission

This looks good! I only have two comments: A) 5e needn't get pulled out of general D&D, rather than keeping it there and putting a newly made 5e minmax inside 4e (similar to how 4e's is now).
B) The whole "Handbooks & Resources" is confusing, other than pulling the handbooks away from where it is. What goes in General References or Resource Submission? What about Other Games when that seems covered by Other RPGs, Video Games, and Other Tabletops?

I'm interested to see what's happening with Homebrew and its neighbor.