Rather than co-opt the going forward thread I'll post a few ways in which we could get new players to visit RPG Post:

• Invite people you know to visit the site and play here. I know that most of you have already done this.
• Add the site to RPG directories.
• Vote for the site on directory sites that it is listed.
• Post about the site on other RPG sites.
• Add a link to RPG Post on your signature for other places that you post.
• Discuss the actual games.
  The site has done really well with the focus being on the play by post games. The problem with that is that there is rarely new content that would have terms in it that would attract new players. People that will find the site through a search engine will find it because of this. They'll also have some easier reading and can see that there are discussions about recent gaming developments, which may be easier for them to jump into. Some of the ways you could help new people find the site are:
  • Simply talk about the games that you like, or even don't like. You just need to make sure that the game's name is mentioned often.
  • Post news that you have heard about the games. Paraphrasing is better than copying and pasting someone else's words.
  • Review gaming books that you own or have read.
  • Post editorials about the games or the play by post experience.
  • Simply post anything that includes content that someone else may search for

I realize that the number of regular posters will make doing some of this difficult, but every little bit helps.

Once we get new people here there are a couple things that we could do to help ease them into things. As I mentioned before, having discussions about gaming will give some people an easier chance to post without feeling like they are being singles out.

The site could use an easier way to learn about the site and the games here. It would be nice to have one single place where we have all the games listed, including what they are about and the date the game started, the number of players, and whether the game is accepting new players or not.

Ok, that is enough to see if people are interested in helping with any of that.

Dawn did a great thing in DR by giving a two to three sentence synopsis of what each chapter in DR was about and the important NPC's involved, along with a link to that chapter's thread. This gives people that want to play DR a place to start that isn't a hundreds-of-posts long ordeal.

Something like that for all the games on the site could be helpful. It'd give people new to the site a place to start looking at what they do and don't want to get involved in without having to go through the posts of each game and get overwhelmed. It's not a bad idea for each game, either, but that's up to the ST's and Mods themselves.

That's my first idea. I'll post if I have others.

Would it help if there was some kind of rudimentary template for STs to use to describe their proposed games? Or maybe we as players need to ask more questions about a new game before jumping willy nilly into one? I do try to do so but I admit sometimes I don't or I do so in chat where it may or may not be seen by other prospective players.

That sounds like a good idea to me. I'll do that on my games from now on as well.

Jim: Here's what I've done in the past.

SGF's Intro Sheet

I use the following format:



Also, here are the summaries Mala mentioned: http://www.rpg-post.com/ubbthreads.php/topics/137069/Game_Resources.html#Post137069

Yarp, that's more or less what I meant I guess.