Feature request: "waiting for input" icons

During my relatively short time of playing on GP (and playing PbP in general), I have quite often found myself in one weird situation. There are times when you have read all the posts but feel like waiting for other PCs input instead of making another post. Maybe you or your character are not sure how to act, maybe you just want someone else to take the spotlight. Now, it is inevitable that sometimes this thing occurs to another player in your game, and now you're stuck in a deadlock of sorts, everyone waiting for several days expecting others to act. Maybe GP could use some simple bar with players/PCs names and small coloured lights, standing for didn't read/waiting for other's input/ready to make a post/something else. Or at least some indication for waiting for input if nothing else. Making a new OOC post every time you aren't sure if someone's waiting for your input doesn't feel like a solution. It's obviously not a big deal and not the most important thing to have, but an idea never hurt anyone right?

Maybe I am missing some obvious lifehack for this situation? Any thoughts?

The thing that's often worked for me in those cases is to have a Discord server for the game where you can have those conversations in a more real-time fashion and avoid some of the weird awkward pauses in the game that you're talking about.

But that's something that the whole group would likely have to agree to do. It's certainly one of the pitfalls of PBP, that lack of table talk that you'd get in a face-to-face game.

Yes, this would be a nice quality of life update but it's probably more complicated to implement than it seems initially. Being able to react to posts like you can to messages on Discore would be pretty great for this

When this happens to me, so far, I just go over to the game out of character chat thread and post something like "I'm just waiting on all of you to get a word in." Typically with a little smiley on the end like: :) so no one takes it as aggressive.

I faced this problem early in my PbP career. When I posted about it, one of the old-timers gave me some great advice: "When in doubt, post something. PbP dies from inactivity." I've taken that to heart as both a player and a GM. If we're trying to decide something to do as a group of players, I might post something like, "Marty shifts from one leg to the other and gives the others a look, waiting for more opinions." But a simple OOC post saying the same is also good. I ask my players to do the same, just so I, as GM, know they're still in the game and reading posts.

In short, when in doubt, post. When waiting for others, post. When your character isn't sure what to do, post. PbP dies from inactivity. So go ahead and post. :)

That said, I'd certainly welcome click-able reactions of the sort bowlofspinach mentions.

Man! I feel I should have needed to seek out some sort of wise old sage on a mountaintop for that level of wisdom.

So over all, I like the idea. What I struggle with off the top is
1) Where to put such a feature where it would be easily visible and everyone could/would see it.
2) How useful is it overall (eg, how many people would use it, would it lead to problems in some cases, etc).

I think it's worth thinking on, and the idea of reactions is one to consider on the short term.

I can't tell if you're being facetious or not, but at least you posted something. :)

Lol. No. I meant it.

My GP motto has been that "80% of success is showing up", but yours is shorter (and not stolen).

I like the idea of a Like or Read button. Helps the GM and the players know who is actively involved in the game. I played on another site in the past that had this feature and we all found it helpful.

Like and Read would be great buttons. Maybe "Pass" instead of Read as it more clearly indicates that you don't have something to say right now

We can already see when people last signed in if we wanted to track engagement with the site.

The "read button" seems a little redundant as the system already knows who has read a post.

Does this need a solution with buttons? Can't we just encourage players to post ooc "I have nothing to say"? I think most of my players say something like "I'm letting xyz take the stage now" when they're waiting on someone specific.

Yeah, honestly, I know you said that making new OOC posts "doesn't feel like a solution," but it really is something to consider. Face to face games are full of table talk, and on top of that you can try to read the body language of the other people involved to see whether they are thinking, about to say something, or just waiting. You don't have any of that in PbP, and the only real solution is frequent OOC communication, not just to know who is waiting on someone else to post, but to allow you to check in with your players on how things are going.

I don't know. OOC posts don't feel like a solution for me. People won't always write a message "Will post in a bit" or "Let someone else post first" every time they read a post and don't immediately have time or inspiration to answer. Buttons on the other hand are no problem at all to just quickly hit.

Of course this isn't the most urgent issue but I don't see posts as able to fulfill the purpose this is aiming for.

And it's not about marking that a post has been read (though that alone would already be helpful enough) but for players to indicate their current posting status, whether others should wait for them, whether they are waiting for others

I think these buttons would be nice to have!

I always feel slightly guilty when I post things like "don't have anything to say" and "I'm waiting on you to post". It marks the forum as having something new, and I feel like it is disappointing for others that it's just me posting a few words in OOC when they might've expected an actual RP post. I know it's probably silly to think like this since I'm okay with these possts from others, but still. XD Sometimes it makes me thinks that it's easier if I wait silently until someone else does something than post in OOC about doing nothing.

In other words, I'm more likely to tap a button to indicate that I read something than post in a thread about reading it. For me having an easier way to indicate if I'm waiting on someone or planning to post soon would be a great quality of life improvement.

I like the idea of "Read" and "Like" or other reactions. I think verbalizing reactions in the game thread can make it bloated. I often do it now because its the only way and I enjoy reacting to peoples posts to give positive feedback, but definitely worry it annoys others and I sometimes hold back because I think I'm being annoying.

I think the "Read" button is very different to Last Visited Date/Time stamp. I'll often have time to catch-up on one game, but not another, so Last Visited isn't an indication that I've read all the posts yet. Also, I'll often check in on a game to see if there are any quick questions I need to address but not have time to fully read and absorb a set of longer posts (particularly if they are detailed rp). I'll then come back later to fully read all the posts when I have time. So I think it would be helpful to be able to indicate when I've caught up, instead of an automated output that assumes I've caught up.

Using the OOC thread sometimes works, but because it's not directly linked to the game thread it can be confusing. If there's been a lot of posting since you checked in, you need to check the timestamps of the post else you can mistakenly think someone is caught up, but others have posted since.

I would love to see an OOC thread that is directly linked to posts in a game thread. Sort of like how comments are added to questions and answers on StackExchange. Perhaps you could toggle to view/hide them underneath or beside each post. It would provide a lot of utility related to asking questions, giving feedback, reacting to posts, indicating you've read it, or you're waiting for input, etc. but keep it organized better without creating bloat.

I think this gets at the underlying problem, though. If OOC communication isn't regular and normal, even at the level of just checking in, how is the GM getting feedback on how the game is going? How are the players getting feedback on how they're doing? How does anyone know who's engaged and who's just putting the work in out of a sense of obligation if there's no communication?

It's not even that I'm necessarily opposed to this idea, I just worry that it's a band-aid on a deeper problem. A lot of the posts in this thread are speaking to the idea that posting OOC feels like an imposition on other players, not that it's difficult in and of itself. How many problems would it address to create an environment in your game where OOC communication is expected and commonplace?

What Kaigen said. There may be GMs out there who find it annoying when a player posts saying, "I have nothing to add," but I am not one of them. It's much more troubling when the game just sits there silently for a few days and I have no idea what's going on. I don't see buttons as a problem, but I do think this is a problem that could easily be addressed by GMs and players having an open dialogue about posting expectations.

Two cents here. I feel that I much rather have OOC chat be normalized than any other solution, for the good and practical reasons mentioned by others. I also think that OOC talk, even that which is not for purely practical reasons (like commenting on notable in game events, or sharing related media), is a valuable social experience, especially given the medium. It's its own sort of fun.

On the same topic, I just realized that I rarely share my OOC thoughts in the games I participate in. I've never made a conscious decision not to, it just happened that way. Maybe it's because I don't see others doing it as often?

I agree with you Kaigen. I think a strong and health culture around OOC usage is the real solution, so discussing it and promoting it is the first and most important step. But I think tools that facilitate this, whether they are "Read" or "Like" buttons or an OOC thread that is directly linked to posts, would be beneficial towards that goal. These tools would not be a substitution or replacement for that upfront and ongoing discussion, but an additional feature to promote it.

Having said that, I want to reinforce that I am extremely happy with the site as it is and I do not require or expect any further development of tools since it is free and generously developed by Keleth in his personal time. I'm very happy using all the wonderful features that currently exist. The site is flexible enough that I can almost always find suitable solutions for things that I want to do that are outside the current infrastructure. I also feel very lucky to have other community members who donate their time and skills to contribute additional resources and tools, like Adam's Browser Extension. I only provide these suggestions/opinions as inspiration if Keleth continues to be interested in developing the site further.

We already do have small green squares as an "on-line" indication on profile pics. What if there was the same thing, a colored square in some corner of the character's portrait, that one could choose the color of. Would it make things simpler?

Wise and short! Neat!
Although as some have pointed out, using OOC chat is not the perfect solution.

Firstly, because humans are lazy. How long one can make new posts like "don't have anything to say"?
If one were to do it every time, even in a separate OOC forum, the number of messages would be colossal. It would be confusing too.

Secondly, the "deadlocks" I referred to are somewhat rare. So most of the time one would get away with not posting anything at all, someone else would post and move the narration forward. So apart from feeling lazy, it's hard to justify taking the time to make another post if the risk of "deadlocking" is small. People don't always fasten their seatbelts when it is literally about life and death, and we're talking a PbP game here.

Furthermore, some people are "perfectionists". I, for example, try to make my posts long, descriptive and fun to read, so making a short post about my character standing there doesn't satisfy me. It's a bad habit but sometimes I'd rather not do anything than settle for something plain and simple.

And finally, being annoying is a thing (just you look at me). I have plenty of time, and being on-line very frequently I have to restrict myself from posting too often to not break the game's pace and not annoy the players. An annoying character is one thing, an annoying player playing an annoying character is another :D So being anxious about being annoying might be something other people struggle with too.

Now the things I said in this post are not to be treated as things I need advice on, but as a passage on player's psychology. "When in doubt, post something" is a wise thing and I will try to use this principle as much as possible, but humans are humans with their natural flaws and the stuff I said here is not unique to me, it's just human psychology overall. Some people are always gonna be lazy, careless, self-critical anxious perfectionists and it's gonna prevent them from posting something. Saving a lazy butt's time and effort is saving some PbP game from dying. IMHO etc.

Too dramatic? Yup, most definitely. Obviously not a big deal, the site is awesome as it is and free on top of that, so this is in no way an attempt to portray such a feature as a necessity. I can (and will) find some workaround for myself and deal with the psychological weirdness of mine. This idea for me is just a small quality of life improvement of an insignificant priority. I just wanted to get into detail about why I think the idea is cool and summarise some things others have pointed out in this thread.
I agree with every word! Kudos to Keleth!

Kudos to Adam and others too! Love the extension!~