Formatting Your Game Forums

So you've finally done it, a game is set up but you're not sure what to do the game forums are empty, you may have recruited Players you may not have either way it's best to have your forums set up from the outset. Here I present a few Ideas of what to put in your game forums
Stand Alone Threads
1: Out Of Character
the out of character thread is useful for all sorts of things such as notifying people when you're going to be absent or your characters making a plan. As this is the most undefined thread most anything could end up in it.
2: Character Creation
All good games must start somewhere and this place is usually with character creation, in your first character creation post it will be useful to post Character Creation Guidelines as well as any homebrew rules you may have for the game.
3: Game Forums
It's nice to have your game that is actively running nice and accessible to everyone so you can go ahead and stick it right in the middle of everything you can even Sticky that thread so it's always at the top.
Subforums
Video On Creating Subforums and the ACP in general by user Qralloq here
1: Finished Game Forums
Once a story arc has completed one can move that thread Into the Finished Game Forums or Archive where things can be referenced later if need be but don't crowd up the main area.
2: Player Notes
At some point your players will become unable to remember everything that has happened the best way to prevent this from becoming an issue is to create a subforum to allow your players to take notes DO NOT TAKE NOTES FOR YOUR PLAYERS doing this can cause them to not need to try to figure out what is important for themselves.
3: Setting Glossary
You can keep track of all sorts of things here from NPC's to locations this is similar to you DM Notes below except you limit it to what you players know.
4: DM Notes
This is of course purely optional if you choose you can create notes that the players cannot see in there own subforum this will make things easy to convert over to other posts, as you can easily include formatting.5: Player & DM chats
depending on the style of game and the players you are with you run you may wish to have a chat that only one player and the DM can access, don't try and set these up before you have found players for your game and also make sure the player would use it before creating it as otherwise it will just be an empty thread that takes up space

I like to have a character-specific private forum for conversations with the DM about my character or notes I want to take on my character to help development. I also use it to further develop backstory, add links to remind myself of character inspirations, etc.

I've seen this done, it's by no means necessary but not everything here is.

I usually use one thread for Character Creation that I then turn into a general OOC once CC is over.
I also dont like having the current IC thread in a subforum so I keep it in the main part and then move it into an Archive when it is retired and replaced by another.

So I usually end up having:
- A References subforum
- A Scene Archive

And then
- One or more currently active IC threads
- An OOC thread

Since we're discussing threads, I also like what some DMs do for story threads: They cut them off at good stopping points and create a new chapter, usually about 20 pages or so. If you get one gigantic thread of 40 or 50 pages, it makes it very difficult to look back and remind yourself of something, or find a specific moment to quote or reference.

Unless you onepage and ctrl+F it

That's true, but trying to load 30+ pages is a pain in the butt, haha

What's the consensus on story thread length? Do most people prefer longer ones so they only have to one-page it a single time, or is it better to keep them shorter?

playing D&D I usually switch to a new thread during important moments usually aligning with when I level up the characters, I like the Archive Idea because I totally get not liking to go through more links to get to the game.

I really vary it from game to game. When theres a logical break, I like to go to a different thread. But whether that's a scene, a story arc or a calendar day is different for each game

I try to emulate "sessions" — roughly how much we might play out if we were to meet in person and spend about 4 hours together. This usually ends up being 15–20 pages of IC posts, with 5–10 of OOC. I also dole out XP at these junctures. This is in Star Wars and Genesys; it would vary in a different system.

That would be amazing! How do you make a more posts show up as a single page?

You need to install the GP Google Chrome expansion. Then there is a link at the top of a thread to turn the whole thread into one page

I like having a notes thread.
In one game I'm playing, we have a notes thread. The gm puts maps and npc names that we see often. We have a shared vault at a "Harry Potter type" bank that we update as needed.


Just a cool idea one of our players came up with I hadn't seen b4.
We created a group fund for treasure so there are 5 of us and we split treasure 6 ways. The "party fund" buys healing potions, hotel rooms, pays tolls, etc. We have a real life cpa playing that keeps track of it in the notes. lol