Game Wiki

Honestly, I didn't know that lists wasn't active. It was written in the code long ago, but I commented it out at some point, though I don't know why. I've enabled lists on staging as:
[ list ]
[ * ]
[ /list ]
without the spaces of course. You can also do 'list type=a/A/i/I' for alpha or roman numerals. Head to staging and test it out, and if there are no bugs, I'll move it to prod. Please also check out other pages to make sure the CSS I changed to get lists working doesn't break other stuff.

Just tested it and it works fine for bullet points and ordered lists as shown below (removing spaces from the [blocks])
Unordered/bullet point list
[ list ]

A

B

[ /list ]
Ordered/Numbered list
[ list=a/A/i/I ]

A

B

[ /list ]

That's great Keleth, thanks. Staging looks like it is working.

As it is, it is a useful feature. If it is not too much work to fix, we should be able to say:

[list=2]
[*] should start at item 2
[*] should be item 3
[/list]

and get a numbered list that starts at 2. Currently it starts at 1 no matter what number we put there. This should add a `start="2"` to the html ol tag. Same for [ list=ii] or [ list=B], but they should all add `start="2"` (with the number 2).

It would look like:

< ol type="A" start="2">

It might also be nice to remove the extraneous < br> at the head of each list, this is inserted by the carriage return after the [ list], it is ugly to need to say `[ list]

A`, all on one line, to condense these line breaks.

But this is actually a larger issue, there are many tags that need to be squished to get rid of blank lines, so we could, maybe make a list and deal with them all in one fell swoop?

I can add start.
This gets a bit tricky, and I did see it, but yah, if we put together a list, I can do something like remove newlines from the list of tags, so they aren't converted to breaks. Technically, modern browsers shouldn't care, but it could theoretically cause problems in edge cases.

The items [ *] don't work if the newline is removed, they seem to need to start on new line of their own (which is how we want to type them anyway). It is only the opening and closing tags (the [ list] and [ /list]) that insert extra < br>s after them, there are no < br>s after the items.

The stumbling block seems to be that only the player who created the post can comment upon it. That's not the way my group is used to playing and I think it's important to the social integrity of the group that everyone can comment on every post. Unfortunately, it does seem that TK was unique in that respect, so I'm left with the Hobson's choice of whether to accept the limitations of a different PbP system or just abandon my game for good.

For the moment at least it looks like its going to be the later, if only because its taking me far too long to sort things out.

In Character content could be included here, if relevant, without my answer above disrupting the flow of the game.

I get that spoilers can be used to reduce the impact of OOC comments on the flow of the game. Essentially, that was what the 'Comment' button was on a TK roleplay post. You clicked on the 'Comment' and it opened what was essentially a sub-forum that allowed the GM and other players to comment on the post and discuss it's content.

The issue becomes that in GP only the poster can comment on their own post. So, there is no exchange of ideas, no option to ask a question and get and answer, no option to provide guidance or instruction. So, as I said before, it's similar to making everyone leave the table and move to the kitchen to comment on the gameplay, even if you then introduce a sub-system so that the player in the kitchen can accurately reference their comment back to a specifc event at the table it's still disjointed and artificial rather than pro-active and spontaneous.

I'm really having trouble imagining how I could make it work and appear a natural part of pro-active gameplay. It was an important part of our group dynamic, it's hard to imagine how it could work if the table was taken away and we were all dumped into separate kitchens.

I guess the only people who can answer that are the GMs who are managing to run pro-active groups without a post-related comment feature. 'What happens when Aaron rolls his third consecutive 'critical fumble' on a WS roll with a 90% chance of success?" Where does the round table reaction go?

Why don't you try running a chapter here, or a one-shot? See how it actually works instead of assuming failure in advance? I'd like to think our site will surprise you. After all, we all happen to love it.

GMs can edit a players post, and so have such a conversation with a player, but you're right that other players or their legal counsel or random passersby can't participate in the exchange.

As to round table reactions, that's either relegated to a Discord server that many of us use for rapid communication, or to an OOC thread that is robust in some games and disused in others. Honestly, that's not a big part of the culture here.

I suppose you could technically make everyone a GM so they can edit posts. Maybe that could offer a workable solution.

I believe it's even possible to give edit rights to all players without making them GM.

Just throwing ideas around that might help you, Didz. But for the most part, I agree with cowleyc. Give it a try. You'll probably know within a few weeks if it's working or not :)

I've updated staging to allow lists as

[ list ]
[ list=a|A|i|I ] - a for lowercase alpha, A for uppercase alpha, i for lower case roman numerals, I for uppercase roman numerals
[ list=a|A|i|I,# ] - as above, but provide a number to start at that character (a,3 starts at c, I,5 starts at V)
[ list=# ] - any number for the start of said number

Again, anyone who is willing, please test it out, and we can add this feature in :)

Do you mind starting a thread in Bugs with other bbcodes that need to have a newline at the end of if removed? I'm going through the list, but it's BIG, so I don't want to miss anything.

Done. [link]

And I made one for discussing the lists as well. [link]

I intend to do that.

But there is a lot of prep to do before I will be ready to invite my players to join a game so that we can test the roleplay process.

The big difference between TK and GP, is that where TK provided a set of features that were pre-designed and pretty much usable out of the box, GP provides a toolkit, and it's up to the GM to decide how to make the best use of the tools provided. So, at the minute I'm still working through the options for setting up the basic 'Campaign Management' features like 'The Tavern', 'Player Introductions', 'Campaign Wiki' etc.

I've just sorted out the template for the 'Campaign Date and Time Stamp' (It was just a block table on TK, but I've had to recreate it using BBcode for here.) I need to create a similar BBcode template for the 'Change of Alignment Notification', but that should be easier now I've been over the coding once.

Campaign Date and Time Stamp Template


The big challenge will be the 'Character Sheet' and the 'Character Journal', I've made a start, but there is still a lot of BBcode to sift through to get it right. Also, one of the positives of GP is that the toolkit offers opportunities to improve on the standard features provided by TK. So, I want to try to make the most of those improvements if I can. Things like Roll Buttons on Character Sheets and the automatic calculation of 'Encumbrance Totals' within containers could make life easier.

However, until I've got everything ready to use, I'm reluctant to invite anyone to join the game as it's just going to complicate things. The OOC comment issue is likely to become important when we start trying to test the roleplay system. But whilst noted, I wasn't planning to try and resolve it until I'd got a playable campaign set-up sorted. It just came up on here because JohnStryker mentioned he was also a TK Refugee, and I mentioned it as an issue in my response to his question.

I hope to look at some examples of games in progress to see how they handle it, in the hope that I am missing a trick or something. But it's not my current priority

The General Guides has help for building things out, including :
The Public Repository of Custom Games Sheets sheet has many game systems already laid out in a variety of formats you can copy form. There is also a set of 📄 Character sheets: DnD 5e for each class
The Public Repository of Dice Highlight Codes
The Shared GM sheets - guide and repository may help with setting up tools to run your game. I use GM sheets on all my games for tracking and publishing information, like you time stamp template would be a snippet.

I've been referencing Adams BBcode Guide thread quite a lot and find it very useful, and I've been through the list of character sheet templates in the Public Repository several times looking for ideas and blocks of code I can copy.

I'll have a look at the Shared GM sheets - guide and repository assuming thats something different to the Public Repository. A couple of days ago, I also noticed a thread for GM's to share ideas and set-up tips, which I meant to go back and check.

That's good to know.

So, if that's the case, I should be able to provide GM advice and guidance to the player about their proposed actions without leaving the table. It's just the rest of the player group that will be banished to the kitchen. Although I'm just wondering if as the GM I could set something up to allow the rest of the players to comment on the post. It would have to be repeated on every single 'Roleplay Post' of course, which could become a bit of a chore.

I understand that social interaction between players may not be encouraged on GP, but it was a major part of our game, and I often thought it was the main reason it ran so long, as most PbP games tend to fold pretty quickly without it.

We were quite lucky that the players in our game quickly got into the habit of commenting on each other's posts. I think that behaviour overcame the lack of party bonding and the tendency for PbP players to treat their commitment to other players in the game casually. It also had the tendency to encourage good roleplay, as most players seemed to like to play to the crowd and get a positive response for their posts.
Allowing all the players to edit each other's posts could well be the solution to the problem.

It's not ideal, but if one assumes that players are sensible and honest enough not to interfere with the content created by the original poster, it could work, and if placed within spoilers, it is probably the closest I can get to the TK post comment system.

Yeah, if you know your players are honest people, it shouldn't be an issue. For a game with random players probably not ideal.

Just one thing to watch out for; if 2 or more players are editing the same post at the same time, the last one to post will be saved. Which means the first player(s) will lose whatever they added. I suppose it's bound to happen at some point, unfortunately :(

In the end it's a work-around for something that doesn't exist in GP. So it's going to come with down sides.