I have a question about the rules presented. I know most came from the old Forum, but I had a couple of thoughts I wanted to throw out.
#5 never post a game plug, ad or interest check:
The first rule makes perfect sense sense, as there are specific forums for this, and it shouldn't need to advertise hear. The purpose of this forum not being having players, but instead having an improved (from some set of perspectives) game/game mechanics/rules, not human resources. I fully support this above rule, but am posting the above rule, here to wondering if this rule is held properly in place if the following two rules are really necessary, so I suggest we consider if they are what we want to have in place?
#6 Never propose games that you won't run:
#7 Never ask for feedback for games that aren't on RPoL:
I will indicate that #6 is the better of the two, but I present, that I would not be opposed to a player of some other game, who was a participant of this forum, coming forward with an idea to simplify something about some game. They may not be planning on running a game with the idea, but perhaps want some help fleshing out their idea to pitch to their GM to potentially implement in that game as a new house-rule, or provide as feedback to the GM who is doing play-testing.
Now I'm ok with saying that the person should be in a position to be creating a game, and have the intent to run a game, and implement the improvements being discussed, but I'm not sure it is absolutely necessary to exclude players.
The next rule (#7), I think would exclude some potentially very good conversations. People whom are interested in developing some improvements, or a new game, which they will be using for their own F2F game every week. As long as they are discussing the Rule/Mechanics and processes for the game, and not discussing how many seats they still have available at the table, and where it is located, I don't see a problem with the discussion having merit to the people here in RPOL. The conversation might inspire someone to implement a similar game on RPOL, or even other F2F games, and I don't believe that would be a bad result. (people wouldn't be allowed to use the forum to advertise their games on other sites... so it should not infringe on the Off-site forum. Even in site, the extent of their advertisement would seem to be discussing the rules they are using, and changes they are implementing, and players whom decide they are interested can lookup the GM using the search functions of RPOL and find their games, and figure out which one it is.
I am perfectly willing to support all of the rules, but I want to make sure they are really what is wanted. So I present the question about the #6 and #7. [or is the prohibition of non-RPOL games specific only when discussing specific games, and general rules discussions, not talking about a specific instance of a game ok. For instance, is it ok to discuss a card game design that won't be necessarily played on RPOL?
P.S. I do not believe that the limitation about being turned into a Discussion forum has to do with the old one folding, per-se, but rather limiting the frequency of the requests, since it requires the moderators to make the change, and they don't want to go through the trouble for forums that don't have significant user (and moderator) support. So any forum would have to prove their interest level for a length of time before they open it up.
I thought I had remembered seeing somewhere how long it took before it was considered viable, but I'm not seeing it in the following conversation, and I haven't found another. Following is a link to Malakhon's thread in RPoL Development that I believe led to the the original GDF.
link to a message in another game
