You know what would be helpful? If GMs listed their expectation for player posting rates and these were searchable categories when searching games. You know what would be awesome? If the average posting rate by players and GMs was automatically calculated by RPoL and that was a searchable data point in the game finder function.

It's a chore right now to marry up a player's desires and the actual speed of posting in a particular game. It generally necessitates a discussion with the GM and then RTJ and then playing or reading over 500 posts and paying careful attention to posting dates and times. It's a real #$&@ chore and I'm sure it's tedious for the GMs as well and contributes to player turn-over.

Not even considering other considerations, such a metric is pretty much impossible to compute.

Let's take for example a game I'm in. There probably are around 200 messages, around 30 of them mine, all of that over at least a year, more probably two. Why? Because the GM ghosted. But that still leaves me with a dreadful average on that game. Even if you try something like limiting the time period to the last message of the GM it wouldn't work since he comes back from time to time to ask if we want to continue...

And that's merely one of many problems you'd get if you tried to get something like that.

What would be easier would be to add a field for that on user profiles, a field that could be found. I suppose however there is a reason user profiles are barebone, so it's unlikely to be done...

Any kind of automatic calculation of posting rate would almost certainly be unfairly skewed by the dreaded Real Life monster, if nothing else.

Or by the fact that some games simply run slower than others. A player capable of posting every day in a game that posts every day might only post once a month in a game that only posts once a month - which would give them significantly less than a 1/day average if automatically calculated, yet in both games they're posting at the appropriate speed for the game.

While putting an expected posting rate into the harder metrics, alongside game systems and such, wouldn't be necessarily bad, having an "average" runs into some issues.

You have games that may technically be very old, but don't have a lot of posts because some GMs recycle their games rather than deleting them and starting new ones.

Another issue is some GMs start a game and then take their time to get all the threads set up, detail out world/setting information, NPCs, etc, etc, so that would skew their posting average.

Not to mention it would only be a useful metric for established games that are looking for replacement players, or that are the types that are constantly recruiting as new games wouldn't have enough actual useful data to establish such a metric.

So +0 for enabling a field in a way that is searchable where a GM could choose from some set posting rates.

-1 for including an "average posting rate" metric that can be looked up when looking at a game's information, listing, etc.

This is kind of my point. I want to avoid the games that move slower than others. I don't care why they move slower. I'm not fault finding here. I'm just trying to match my desire to the playstyle of others.

It's not my intent to be judgmental. For some people the slower pace is desirable. And that's fine.
This message was last edited by the user at 08:06, Mon 07 Sept 2020.

If you posted a separate metric for the GM and a player average that would address that, right?




I'm not saying that disciplinary action needs to be taken against slow posting games! :)

I'm just asking for a public metric that helps people focus on games that are likelier to be a good match. There's a lengthy explanation about the difference between Adult, mature and open games that I'm sure many people don't read or read closely. If you are concerned about it being misleading, post a 5 paragraph explanation of how the metric is generated somewhere. But the data would still be useful if you knew how it was arrived at.

For clarification, I don't mean for this to be some rating that follows a GM or player around. It's not like I'm assessing your quality as a player because you had a bad average. But that would be great information to know about that game. I would avoid that game.

I understand there's all kinds of reasons for a particular campaign to stall out. None of them matter. The game is still stalled.

The metric isn't impossible to compute. You just don't like the conclusions someone might hypothetically draw about you due to it. But the effect of not having this data is a mismatch of players and campaigns. Revealing this data would reduce the mismatches. That would reduce player turnover.

But honestly, I'm not here to argue about this. I just wanted to throw this out as a suggestion and the site owners can take it or leave it. Thanks for your thoughts though! :)
This message was last edited by the user at 08:17, Mon 07 Sept 2020.

How would you calculate NPC posts in your metric?

Would every NPC post (including write-in NPCs) count towards the GM's posting rate? Or only posts made as the GM? What about posts made by NPCs controlled by players - would those posts contribute to the player's posting rate, or the GM's?

What about PM posts, would those count? I know several games that handle private scenes in PMs to prevent OOC knowledge from leaking.

What about the game where there's only one IC post being made a week, but there's a running conversation in the OOC that skews the average? (Or OOC PM conversations, likewise.) Would you have some way to separate the 'meat and potatoes' IC posts from the 'garnish' OOC posts?

I'm worried that there's so many factors to take into account after getting an "average posting rate" that the calculated average itself would be essentially useless.

That's a fair point, that's why RPoL would have to be very transparent about how the score is created. A GM self-rating, even if intermittently adhered to, would still be nice. If I were designing it, I would answer your questions as follows.

I would include all NPC posts, both by GM and players. Whether it gets tagged to the GM or a player doesn't matter that much. The metric is supposed to show activity, not necessarily by who.

PM posts don't count. That isn't involvement of the group. Not that I have anything against using PMs as you described, but that doesn't move the group as a whole forward.




This seems like a hypothetical problem, not real world (or virtual). Would this happen regularly in any campaign? Would a group with a massive running conversation in OOC really only post once a week IC?  Regardless, OOC is not the game so I wouldn't count it.

The above are my thoughts in response to you, but I can imagine there would be a lot of disagreement on them. I still think a self-rated, searchable box by the GM on what they are aiming for would be a good addition.

/thisguygetsit.jpg

Yup, any "scoring" method would be rendered useless.  Also, I'd skip it as a GM if it were yet more 'paperwork' I had to complete in order to run my game (IE if I had to list my expected posting speed, toggle switches in the RPoL GM UI, and was expected to update the UI when changes were made, etc).


As for listing expected posting rates in the RTJ?  I'm all for it and do it.


Then ask the GM.  An awful lot of RTJs I've read have listed posting rate expectations (and like you, I sometimes skip joining a sloooooooooooow or superfast posting game), so I'm not sure why asking when they aren't posted would be an issue.

But a lot don't. You have to RTJ to get that info. And since there's no formal place to list it, it often (always?) gets buried in the game description when it does exist. It would just be nice to filter it out like all the game genre's I have no interest in.

Which is why RPoL doesn't implement scoring systems.

Now, if you're wanting a place which simply lists a GM-input posting rate so that you can search on it, then you will also need to accept that some GMs might not update it if things change (or might deliberately post misleading information to attract more people).

Thanks Ron. I just wanted to throw it out as something I'd like to see. No heartburn if it doesn't get implemented.