Post by Deleted on Nov 19, 2015 22:20:07 GMT
Greetings all! With IO in such a desolate state lately, I've fooled around a bit with different site layouts, and I've come up with this:
General Area
Introduction board - for those new to the forum to say howdy
General Chat board - every forum has one, but only ours has a Dodgy Bits
Recruiting Office board - for unit recruitment, thread sign-up, and character planning
News Desk board - for relevant news or announcements
WWII Information board - doubles as Historical Chat
Allied Area
Allied Application board - for signing up to be a good guy
Allied Unit board - for organizing the good guys
Allied War Room board - for planning how to beat the bad guys
Axis Area
Axis Application board - for signing up to be a bad guy
Axis Unit board - for organizing the bad guys
Axis War Room board - for planning how to beat the good guys
Operations Area
The West board - everything west of Berlin. D-Day and more French prostitutes than you can shake your stick at
The East board - everything east of Berlin. Bring spare winter clothes and a flamethrower
The South board - Italy, Sicily, and North Africa. All-new packaging, now with 30% more death
The Far East board - land contested by the Rising Sun. Reefs, malaria, and banzai charges make this a popular tourist (death) trap
Archive Area
Hostile Archive board - for stabby threads
Neutral Archive board - for gabby threads
Epic Archive board - for stabby and gabby masterpieces
This is a trimming to 5 Areas and 18 boards, in contrast with the 6 Areas, 23 boards, and 148 sub-boards we have now. There are many areas of IO I've never even visited. It's unnecessary and depressing.
So, how would the site operate?
Joining
I know how concerned some of us are about getting riff-raff if we lower our standards too much, so I've been thinking about the best overall way to go about it. Applications or no applications? We obviously want people who can actually write. People that we'd get along with. Why not make their first thread its own application? They actually roleplay their character joining their group, and We The People approve it by roleplaying back. Recruitment Duty. That's one idea, anyway.
Units
I've distanced myself lately from the unit organization we use here now. Instead of having one or two divisions a new player has to choose from, why not have each player manage their own personal unit roster in a thread? You join with a platoon-level rank, you get up to a platoon to manage in your thread. Players could join their units together to form higher commands such as battalions, brigades, and divisions. Say some Luftwaffe characters want to put forward a full Fallschirmjäger-Bataillon. They organize and create a unit framework, then fill it the best they can. They may elect leaders for multi-thread battles and campaigns, and officials to arbitrate organizational disputes, form their own rules and unit government. It would make for a freer style of unit handling that solves imbalances between weak and strong, small and powerful, republican and anarchistic.
Equipment
IF everything was free--and that's a big if--the shop would be unnecessary. Instead, we would list permitted equipment in the WWII Information board. It could be simple rips from Wikipedia or more of a customized IO catalogue with our own descriptions. Kind of an IO Encyclopedia of WWII. We'd be able to post the items however we liked. We could have large threads with each nation's equipment, or divide it up into smaller threads sorted by other means.
Operations
Instead of having a bajillion boards for every small area, we'd divide it into larger theaters of operation. BOTH Neutral and Hostile threads would be done on the same boards. Hostiles could be marked as [H], neutrals as [N]. It doesn't make sense to have multiple boards of the same area for sorting neutral and hostile threads. I've never seen anyone have a problem with their battle thread being side-by-side with a plot-driven thread.
General Area
It's pretty straightforward as described above. It's a more efficient and streamlined version of what we have now. Introduction for meeting the new folks. General Chat for blabbing away about whatever. Recruiting office for Men Wanted ads and character discussion. News Desk for site announcements, leaves of absence, slow posting, returns to roleplaying and the like. WWII Information would be where our IO Guide was located as a streamlined thread explaining how things work here. It would also have our list of accepted equipment, and be our area for historical chat.
Faction Areas
I'm not sure about this yet. It depends on other things, such as the application process and how free our unit system is. The War Room is really just a glorified Faction-specific chat area. We could make it open only to members of that faction, giving it a bit of secrecy and mystery and legitimate use as a campaign planning area, but since most people here have characters of each faction it wouldn't really matter.
What IO Needs
Above all else, I think what we could really use here are some new players. We have bodies, but it isn't enough. Usually it only takes a few people being preoccupied with real life to completely shut IO down. I hate coming back here and finding nothing happening. Why don't we switch to the free cbox? On another note, why don't we start advertising? There's a Proboards facebook page that encourages advertisement. If we shined this place up a bit, did a little work on it, and actively pursued creative writers interested in ww2? We could do great things.
General Area
Introduction board - for those new to the forum to say howdy
General Chat board - every forum has one, but only ours has a Dodgy Bits
Recruiting Office board - for unit recruitment, thread sign-up, and character planning
News Desk board - for relevant news or announcements
WWII Information board - doubles as Historical Chat
Allied Area
Allied Application board - for signing up to be a good guy
Allied Unit board - for organizing the good guys
Allied War Room board - for planning how to beat the bad guys
Axis Area
Axis Application board - for signing up to be a bad guy
Axis Unit board - for organizing the bad guys
Axis War Room board - for planning how to beat the good guys
Operations Area
The West board - everything west of Berlin. D-Day and more French prostitutes than you can shake your stick at
The East board - everything east of Berlin. Bring spare winter clothes and a flamethrower
The South board - Italy, Sicily, and North Africa. All-new packaging, now with 30% more death
The Far East board - land contested by the Rising Sun. Reefs, malaria, and banzai charges make this a popular tourist (death) trap
Archive Area
Hostile Archive board - for stabby threads
Neutral Archive board - for gabby threads
Epic Archive board - for stabby and gabby masterpieces
This is a trimming to 5 Areas and 18 boards, in contrast with the 6 Areas, 23 boards, and 148 sub-boards we have now. There are many areas of IO I've never even visited. It's unnecessary and depressing.
So, how would the site operate?
Joining
I know how concerned some of us are about getting riff-raff if we lower our standards too much, so I've been thinking about the best overall way to go about it. Applications or no applications? We obviously want people who can actually write. People that we'd get along with. Why not make their first thread its own application? They actually roleplay their character joining their group, and We The People approve it by roleplaying back. Recruitment Duty. That's one idea, anyway.
Units
I've distanced myself lately from the unit organization we use here now. Instead of having one or two divisions a new player has to choose from, why not have each player manage their own personal unit roster in a thread? You join with a platoon-level rank, you get up to a platoon to manage in your thread. Players could join their units together to form higher commands such as battalions, brigades, and divisions. Say some Luftwaffe characters want to put forward a full Fallschirmjäger-Bataillon. They organize and create a unit framework, then fill it the best they can. They may elect leaders for multi-thread battles and campaigns, and officials to arbitrate organizational disputes, form their own rules and unit government. It would make for a freer style of unit handling that solves imbalances between weak and strong, small and powerful, republican and anarchistic.
Equipment
IF everything was free--and that's a big if--the shop would be unnecessary. Instead, we would list permitted equipment in the WWII Information board. It could be simple rips from Wikipedia or more of a customized IO catalogue with our own descriptions. Kind of an IO Encyclopedia of WWII. We'd be able to post the items however we liked. We could have large threads with each nation's equipment, or divide it up into smaller threads sorted by other means.
Operations
Instead of having a bajillion boards for every small area, we'd divide it into larger theaters of operation. BOTH Neutral and Hostile threads would be done on the same boards. Hostiles could be marked as [H], neutrals as [N]. It doesn't make sense to have multiple boards of the same area for sorting neutral and hostile threads. I've never seen anyone have a problem with their battle thread being side-by-side with a plot-driven thread.
General Area
It's pretty straightforward as described above. It's a more efficient and streamlined version of what we have now. Introduction for meeting the new folks. General Chat for blabbing away about whatever. Recruiting office for Men Wanted ads and character discussion. News Desk for site announcements, leaves of absence, slow posting, returns to roleplaying and the like. WWII Information would be where our IO Guide was located as a streamlined thread explaining how things work here. It would also have our list of accepted equipment, and be our area for historical chat.
Faction Areas
I'm not sure about this yet. It depends on other things, such as the application process and how free our unit system is. The War Room is really just a glorified Faction-specific chat area. We could make it open only to members of that faction, giving it a bit of secrecy and mystery and legitimate use as a campaign planning area, but since most people here have characters of each faction it wouldn't really matter.
What IO Needs
Above all else, I think what we could really use here are some new players. We have bodies, but it isn't enough. Usually it only takes a few people being preoccupied with real life to completely shut IO down. I hate coming back here and finding nothing happening. Why don't we switch to the free cbox? On another note, why don't we start advertising? There's a Proboards facebook page that encourages advertisement. If we shined this place up a bit, did a little work on it, and actively pursued creative writers interested in ww2? We could do great things.