FADT ground rules and FADTDT

FADT ground rules and FADTDT
FADT ground rules and FADTDT
Dirtlaws. Earthedicts

This is a subforum for ETFA-specific discussion threads! (It's also the place to get advice in the vein of "how do I run/plan/start a forum adventure")

  • Generally, adventure authors should be the OP of a given adventure's thread, but obviously it's up to the readers what you talk about as long as it's on-topic.
  • maybe hold off on making a thread though until you can gauge demand with your readers?
  • please stay on-topic within your thread! We have a fine selection of forums elsewhere on the forum for your shitposting and general chatter needs.
  • the above rule can be community-enforced with discretion - you don't need to direct every non-adventure zag to Hawkspace, but be reasonable and above all else, excellent to each other.
  • It's Dlorph!
  • Spoiler policy is on a thread-by-thread basis; if an author asks for [spoiler] tags around key plot points then do that.
    • New readers are probably best posting in the discussion thread that they're catching up and where they're at so far. It can be like a readalong!

Suggestions or discussion about this forum is also welcome in this particular thread!
RE: FADT ground rules and FADTDT
One thing that just struck me is that people might be participating in the discussion threads while still working their way through the archives of longer adventures, like All-Night Laundry. So, in general it's good to be mindful of potential spoilers in your posts; both for the adventure and for other works you might be bringing up in the discussion for whatever reason.
RE: FADT ground rules and FADTDT
I get not spoiling other adventures, but in regards to the adventure itself, what is there to discuss except spoilery stuff?
RE: FADT ground rules and FADTDT
It's more sensible for each thread to figure out their own policy for spoilers rather than setting hard and fast rules?

The best approach re new readers who are really averse to being spoiled would be: making themselves known in a discussion thread without reading through too much, then older readers who want to honor that can chuck stuff in "recent update" spoiler tags or the like until the new reader mentions they're caught up.
RE: FADT ground rules and FADTDT
I just noticed the description for this subforum and it's great.
RE: FADT ground rules and FADTDT

This is something I've been meaning to ask about for a while, but I personally feel that Eagle Time has expanded a lot since it started, and especially so when MSPAF had it's accident. While I am hesitant about this suggestion due to it being a practice from the forum, and it feeling slightly ominous for me I do think that at the rate the forumventures and forumgames are expanding there should be a slight change to the structure of those parts of the forum.

- Completed Games and Adventures
This one isn't a big deal but would at least give a place to archive all the completed games and adventures. Cleaner organization, and the same system of "well done". With games that have been permanently ended (and will not be starting a new round) they may also be put in the completed section.

- Cradle
All new games will go into the games cradle and will only leave when they have enough players and have had 5 or so updates/rounds.
All new adventures will go into the forumventure cradle and may leave upon request at what is decided as a stable amount of updates. Whether it's a month of steady updates, 10 updates, 2 or more pages, etc is something to be decided by staff/the community. I feel this one is the most necessary due to the fact that the forumventure section is beginning to have the issue of 3+ pages of ongoing new and long running adventures all within the last week.

- Graveyard (tentative)
If someone wants to cancel or stop their adventure/game permanently, or even put it on an indefinite hiatus, it gets put into the graveyard. Until they specifically request it to be reopened it's locked for archival, and it's gonnarino.

So uh ya I meant to directly contact a staff member on the eagletime discord to ask "would it be more appropriate to suggest this in the suggestions thread or post a discussion topic"
And I honestly do feel this is something the community should discuss, but I did also want to suggest it?

*wavy hands
RE: FADT ground rules and FADTDT
Not a fan of the graveyard or cradle, really. It makes things too serious, and makes you too feel too obligated to always update/not ever update old adventures. One of the things I like a lot about ET is the casual attitude towards adventures. I do see the problem of just how many adventures we've had recently, but I think there are probably better ways to categorize them.
RE: FADT ground rules and FADTDT
True, true, but I do feel a graveyard does prevent a topic that is on definite hiatus, or a cancelled adventure from getting necromancy'd. The graveyard isn't about not updating, but it is about preventing a topic that won't be updating from getting questions about when the next update is going to be. Possibly a sort of "on hold" shelf sort of situation.
The Cradle is more about preventing the forumventures section with getting cluttered with new adventures that may never actually move past the first two pages of the topic, and reducing competition between new and old adventures for reader attention. It also gives a way for people looking for something completely new to the forums to find it easily, and find a way to help people get off their feet.

It is a little bit serious, but I think that if done right it doesn't have to overtake the casual nature of eagletime.
(I'm also not sure what other methods could work to ensure a more organized forum with reduced clutter. My first idea was just increasing topics displayed per page, but that's just not clutter reducing)
RE: FADT ground rules and FADTDT
I'd be willing to change around the organisational structure of the forums if enough folks are reporting an issue, but I'm currently not personally seeing one.

The Cradle system was introduced on the old forums because old+established adventures (particularly those with slower update schedules or small-but-dedicated groups of suggestors) would spend barely any time on the "front page" of the subforum because of the sheer volume of threads getting updated and bumped. New adventures had a space people could go to check them out and help them start up, other than the underlying administrative issues that had resulted in this structural compromise things worked out ok.

(There was also bitterness iirc about "quality" content not being given enough exposure compared to formula-following (sburb)ventures which would use sprites to knock out updates quickly, but that's obviously not an issue in the current ETFA climate)

Anyway it's Monday morning over here for me, and on the front page of Forum Adventures we've got exactly 25 threads (a front page's worth) of threads that were posted in over the weekend. It's not quite yet the hectic environment you're worried about.

Games meanwhile is lmao, there's four threads that have had an update this month of June

And a Graveyard subforum would've made sense on MSPAF where we did have a subset of rude gits who would periodically bump stuff asking when the next update is, but I don't think that's been a persistent issue here?

Like if I'm wrong on any of this stuff and the more regular regulars of ETFA want to call me out on it by all means go ahead but other than a possible forum-wide archive subforum for completed/exemplary threads I'm not especially seeing much that needs changing
RE: FADT ground rules and FADTDT
I do like the "Completed Adventures" section though, because there's some real good stories on here that I would never have read except for pure chance, and probably a lot more old ones that I will never read.
RE: FADT ground rules and FADTDT
I'm trying to get a number though on how many completed adventures+games+etc we have on the forum that would merit being put in some kind of "archive" subforum and am coming up blank. If folks could help and point out "hey there's this many things" then we could talk about making a list or subforum somewhere but it's fair for me to say as the only active site-wide modmin that I don't want extra work just because one person asked for it and couldn't even list the things needing organising? (Gime is a Mediawarks mod but I am not expecting them to do janitorial thread-organising work outside their own subforum, same for the couple of folks with Hawkspace mod powers)
RE: FADT ground rules and FADTDT
Here's the things I know about:

-Four completed Grand Battles
-Two completed Minigrands
-A few Mafia games (couldn't say how many, don't know if there's interest in putting them there anyhow)
-Vox Mentis
-Take X
-The Zoostuck series (three adventures)
-The Pointless Adventures of Nopor Puss
-one adventure I don't remember the name of where the main character died almost immediately, the end
-Consistency is currently in a state in which it could be argued it's complete, I'm not actually sure

So, that's about 15 if Mafia games aren't included? I don't think we've had other forum games that managed to finish.
RE: FADT ground rules and FADTDT
Didn't Adventures in Financing and Accounting (formerly Adventure Hero or something) wrap up recently, too? There's one.

I've been lurking/visiting here much longer than I've been registered, but even dropping in and out over the span of several years, from a visitor's perspective I don't think there's any need for a cradle or graveyard. To be honest, I think a cradle or graveyard would make the place a little intimidating.

I'm tempted to say a sticky listing completed adventures might be nice, though. Or maybe a link to a community-managed doc where people add their own completed games/adventures?

Sorry if I'm butting my noob ass into a discussion meant for oldbies. Just trying to contribute!
RE: FADT ground rules and FADTDT
If grands/minigrands/mafia games count there's the two RTD's I ran on hawkspace that are complete. Should be a third but lol I'm awful.

But yes, some sort of sticky with a list and when that list becomes unmanageably long whenever that may be, a subforum. For what it's worth I'd be willing to manage that for you if you don't appreciate being lumped with that responsibility. (Which I totally understand.)
RE: FADT ground rules and FADTDT
A sticky would probably be more manageable because it wouldn't be a whole subsubforum, and the whole extra work thing was my only big issue with suggesting these things.

But ya in all honesty my suggestions were a bit too big and misunderstanding of eagletime climate when I reread them, sorry about that! Though I'll also admit that I am not aware of every finished thread, but I did remember that there were at least several. In the end it's not worth making a separate subforum to exalt them, but I do still feel it's worth having a list for anyone wanting to read a story from start to finish that on the forums.