I've been looking at the categories available for game threads, and I'm wondering what one you might use for a highly structured organization (such as a military unit)?

That could fit in most of them, I’d think. What setting/system? Tech level?

I was speaking in general; as there's a category for spies but not something like a military or mercenary unit.   You can easily have it happen in a sci-fi setting as a fantasy one.
This message was last edited by the user at 20:34, Sun 14 July 2019.

Oh, ok. I see what you're saying now. Maybe Action or Survival, but those don't read as explicitly military.

If the game is more "ground troops" oriented, you should read about the Table of Organization and Equipment (TO&E).

If the game is more "fleet forces" oriented, look into the Ship's Organization and Regulations Manual, Basic Military Requirements, Bluejacket's Manual, and the various organizational charts available concerning naval forces.

You might also give a cursory glance at certain publicly available NATO documents regarding combined and joint forces operations.

For contrast, you might also look into organizational documents concerning Soviet-era and Modern-day Russian Federation forces, and those of other nations.

There has literally been a metric ****-tonne written concerning the organization of WWII German, Italian, Japanese, and Allied forces.

In reply to horus (msg # 5):

I was referring to RPoL category: e.g. Action/Adventure, Arena, Fantasy, etc.  I wasn't referring to specific organizations, which you seem to have misinterpreted my question.   There is a category "Intrigue", which refers to spies (as I mentioned); but not one for any other form of organization with a rank/nobility structure.

I think it goes back to the question of what setting it's taking place in.  There's a specific 'Intrigue' category because there are actual RPGs specifically built around spies and spying, but to the best of my knowledge, there aren't any built around running a military unit, as a general setting...there are games with a very military slant to them, but they pretty much all fall under some other category, like sci-fi, historical, action, etc.

So the best category depends largely on what, exactly, you're using for a setting.  Are these Colonial Marines or a Stargate Unit?  Is it a platoon in the Napoleonic Wars?  Are you RPing some fictional element of Operation Desert Storm?  Is it a current military unit dealing with supernatural threats?  These are all military, but they would fall in very different categories.

I thin the information you want to communicate is best sorted in the Game Information.

Very sorry I misunderstood.  Yeah, the genres, er, the categories are rather broad.

I could support addition of a Military genre, but even then most military-oriented games fall under either Ancient, Medieval, Historical, Strategic (although Organizational and Tactical are conspicuous in their absence...), Sci-Fi, or some other genre.

You mentioned this fictional organization might be "like a military unit".  Shucks, the Girl Scouts are military in some aspects.  What sort of game are ye cookin'?

I'm with Gaffer on this one - Game Info would be the place to spell out the true nature of your game (lest it be puzzlin' anyone).

{Hey, The Rolling Stones played the 'Dome yesterday!}

In reply to horus (msg # 9):

By the same logic, you don't need a category for spies either.  I stated military because that's what people usually think of when you refer to a group with a varying levels of decision making and responsibility.  What about a thieves guild or other organized crime?  There's usually one individual at the top who makes the important decisions and varying levels of responsibility.

In reply to Hunter (msg # 10):

There isn’t an espionage category.  Intrigue is far more general.  Scheming nobles fits every bit as well.  Or a politically focussed thieves guild game.

That said the categories aren’t that coherent,  but there is not much interest - at the level where decisions are made - in adding to them or replacing them with a cleaner collection.  This doesn’t seem like a great addition either.

What’s wrong with using the categories that apply and putting the details in game information ?  The categories aren’t going to describe everything of importance anyway.

Hiya

I take it that you are talking about the genre'/type/categories that you choose for your game when setting it up.  These have been broadened but it gets to a point where you can just be finicky or nit picking and easily folk could get overwhelmed as to what genre'/type/category(ies) to put their game under and you do get a choice of three.  In my opinion, and we all have those, we do not need any more game genre'/type/categories.

Usually it is really up to the GM/PGMs description in the 'Game Info' and the ad for the game to describe what the world/universe is about.  The developer of the said game knows what they are looking for as a setting and describe it so that players submitting characters know what type of storyline they are going into.  It is all the characters/players that make any game come to the life the developer has imagined and described for them.  Its teamwork.

Hope this helps

That's probably the most accurate description you can get of what the spirit of categories should be. A broader, more general category system, with more intricate custom tags is the ideal scenario, but in a world where we can go through and actually add additional detail about what the games consist of- going in and seeing that it's an "Action" game, and reading how it's a military based game, certainly makes a lot of sense.

The idea of tagging games in the subject or title also exists if you want to get hyper-specific about the audience you want to attract, of course, as well.

In reply to PaulK (msg # 11):


Nope, not much interest - unless you count the complete overhaul of the categories (including adding the ability to select multiple categories) that was done a few years ago, with extensive input from site users.

Title:

"GURPS - Kasserine Pass, US Army platoon holds off Nazi Panzers"

Yep, a title like that tells you just about everything you need to know about the game...

Remember you can assign multiple categories to an individual game and it's worth doing that if you're trying to make it easy for players to find.


Personally I would put that in the Historical and possibly the Action/Adventure and Survival categories.

If you were looking at a Twilight 2000 game then that would probably be in Apocalyptic, Historical and the Survival categories.

If you were looking at a game about current day Private Military Contractors then that would probably be in the Action/Adventure and Contemporary categories

If you were looking at a game about Aliens style Colonial Marines then that could well be put in the Sci-Fi, Horror, Action/Adventure and Survival categories.

And so on. Hopefully you're getting the idea. The current classifications give you a lot more options - as was mentioned above, a few years ago there were about half as many classifications (I think) and a massive expansion was implemented to give GMs more options to select when setting up their games.