Well hey there, fancy meeting everyone here. I know you’re looking at this, wondering what Omi’s doing here because I know you’re absolutely captivated by my old farty self. You’re welcome for that mental image. For real, I’ve been collecting a few ideas that might help out the board. I’ve been a RPer for quite a long time, I stopped counting after ten years but if you want a ballpark, I’d say if I were to condense the time together, it’d be around fifteen years. About half that time I’ve been staff; both admin and mod and let me tell you, you are forever learning. I’m certain I’ll still be RPing in my 70’s and still learning and teaching my grandkids a thing or two. And by teach, I mean camp sniping their ass. I will be the best grandparent ever.

I’ve had the chance to watch this place grow from the beginning, I believe I was your first non-staff member to join and I know this game has the potential for so much more. I have some suggestions of organization, a few updates to already great things and a little constructive criticism. The key word being constructive. I am underlining that with great purpose because I do not want anything I’m going to say to be misconstrued.

The skin change was a great step forward, it gave the game a more polished look while making it easier on the eyes. Black and white no matter how awesome, is harsh on the eyes. RPers are visual, if a site has awful colors like neon yellow with lime green text, they are not going to stay. Graphics are also a great way to draw people in. I know when I see a board with images; be they simple or complex, it can persuade me. However, you’re not going to sway a player solely on graphics, but you’re going to draw them in long enough to start reading game information. We’ve got a Spiderman banner, it’s a nice crisp clear image and the text is easy to read. We encompass a lot of Marvel, granted we’re mainly Avengers and X-Men but we’re Spiderman and Ghost Rider as well and who knows who we’re going to get next? That’s the fun part! Lets include these other verses to show our diversity. You can do this by creating rotating banners that focus on one verse, such as X-Men in one, Avengers in another, Spiderman, etc. Or you can do one main one that shows off some of the verses. A banner can include a lot and not be too busy. There are a lot of sites that devote to making graphics if you’re not artistic, some are free, some charge, and I’m certain you can even ask your fellow players. There is a lot of untapped potential there.

Organization is key to a happy RPG and a little goes a long way. The Questions and Suggestions board can easily go into Starting Out. It’s up on top of the board, easy to see for people who don’t want to talk in the chatango box. Sometimes anons just have a simple question and it can easily get lost in a conversation. I also suggest a board strictly for announcements, such as our Activity Check. There was no real announcement for it and luckily everyone still saw it. It could have easily been overlooked and if you have an Announcement board, then no one will miss it. No one will have the excuse they missed it, either. You want to give your players every opportunity. When you were looking for staff, you had it in a board relating to characters and it would have been perfect in your Announcement board. I also suggest an Admin board, you can easily make it viewable only to staff but it gives you a stable place to talk about anything game related; bios, plots, characters, threads, all that fun stuff.

The Character Extras can be simplified to look more appealing (Remember visuals) and a little more organization. As a RPer, I like to see everything related to characters in it’s own category, such as your Applying Characters and Approved Characters board and a new board for general game plotting where everyone can toss out a plot idea that doesn’t solely revolve around their character. Maybe someone has an idea for a massive game wide plot or someone wants to create another character and they don’t quite know how to go about it. Maybe someone doesn’t like making personal plots but still wants to find a thread or players to start/join a thread. You don’t want to leave out players, give them a place they can find a thread or a RPer. Then you can place all the fun characters extras like Personal Plots, Open Threads, Thread Trackers, Journals, etc. into one single board as subboards. It’s neat, organized and saves a little space.

In the main RPG category, Earth 616, there are a lot of empty boards and everyone seems to be posting solely in the New York City one. The board on default looks empty and like no one’s RPing, hence the occasional comment we get in the cbox by new players. Just a suggestion, but since it’ll probably be awhile before we get to places like Latveria and Wakanda we could do away with those for now and add them later as the game progresses and there’s need for them. It seems like we could just focus on New York City as the main game play and instead of a ton subboards, just split NYC into it’s boroughs. That’s five boards to play in. Then you can add more to the descriptions like where some of the main areas are, like Avengers Tower and Parker Industries are in Manhattan while technically Jean Grey’s school is outside the boroughs, but it shares its border with the Bronx. Whatever else doesn’t have a canon place to be, we can make it whatever we want. Because if Marvel doesn’t know, then no one knows and it’s open to interpretation. This way, staff can add more to the descriptions underneath each board and help give it a little more life.

In the OOC category, the General board is perfect, just use it for ooc fun stuff. I love the Arcade board too, we need to make more games there to rock it. The Request A Board is kind of out of place and really doesn’t need it’s own board. Someone can make a thread in the General board and pin it to the top so everyone can reply to it and it doesn’t get lost. I also propose an Archive board where you can put abandoned characters, dead character bios, finished threads, etc. So everyone can still go back and read through and enjoy but it also keeps the RPG board nice and tidy.

That’s pretty much it for organization, I just have a couple more thoughts and suggestions for the inner workings of the board. One is, the bio coding is a little messed up. The bio format and info themselves are great, I personally love the detail and the all encompassing aspect of it. But, I’ve had to go back and fix coding and a player should never have to do that. You want it to work the first time, every time. Not everyone knows their coding and it’s really easy to mess up if you don’t know what you’re doing and why subject your players to that? It’s going to annoy both staff and player.

Now that you’ve got a nice little group starting out, the rules might be in need of an update. Even though we’re comic based, we’re all using real life actors and actresses, etc. and perhaps that could be mentioned in the rules and include the size of avatars for ease. Same for any signature pics. Some ground rules that cover IC and OOC, even touch up a few basics that even though the average RPer knows, it’s always nice to have a refresher course. Maybe provide a FAQ, every good game needs one and you could cover questions that seem to pop up, such as characters are original creations rather than canon. I also propose a little more background to the plot. Not everyone is 100% knowledgeable in Marvel canon and when you’ve got the X-Men, Avengers, Independents, The Fantastic Four and on and on, canon can get a little confusing. Just a few highlights to tie these different verses together.

I noticed that we lost a staff member. Two people can still run a game but it takes dedication and it makes me sad when I don’t see staff on consistently nor RPing or interacting with their players. Simply popping in briefly doesn’t do it, there are always things that need to be done. Nothing kills a game faster than an absentee staff. Your players are watching and if staff cannot follow their own rules nor pull their weight, then what use are they? Dedication is needed to run a game, it’s fun but it takes work.

Which brings me to my last thought for now. Bios. It should never take more than a couple of days to look over a bio. Sometimes we get busy, things happen and using myself as an example, two weeks to get a bio approved is downright ridiculous. Players are finicky and if you want to keep them, you have to treat them fairly. If I had been a new player and I went through that same scenario, I would have thought the staff didn’t really seem to care about their job and in turn me. Why should I stick around? Then you lose a potential player who could bring so much to your game. Even if you get busy, send a PM to the player to reassure then you are looking over their bio and thank them for being patient with you. Encourage them to hang around in the cbox and chat in the OOC boards.

So that’s about it, just good natured advice from one player to another and help make this place even better.

Thank you very much for your thoughts Omi! I'm gonna shoot you a PM through Chatango and we can work things out one by one.

I've done a few things but I still have a few questions, I look forward to hearing from you!


- BlackSpider