Looking For Group Sub-Forums

With the large number of D&D editions, variations as well as this Pathfinder game it makes it very difficult to find games posted on the looking for group forum if you are not interested in either. A post is made for say Shadowrun then twelve D&D and Pathfinder games get posted and then the Shadowrun campaign is bumped to another page. I think it would be nice if there were sub-forums for popular game systems (is Pathfinder a D&D setting?) to make it so other systems are not totally dominated by the larger systems.

I think that this is good. 4e and Pathfinder are the two most common systems. If there was a D&D 4e and a Pathfinder/D&D 3.5 forum that would clear things up nicely. Also having a White Wolf/World of Darkness forum would be decent since I see a lot of interest in that and it covers a lot of different systems. Other systems would still be in a general classification, and if the LfG for them increases, then they can get their own sub-forum. As for Pathfinder being D&D, yes and no. Pathfinder is also nicknamed D&D 3.75 as it's made by people that worked on 3.5 and then left Wizards and decided instead of going where Wizards want with 4e, they would refine 3e and build their own setting. Pathfinder clarifies a lot of rules, streamlines a lot of things and nerfs some balance issues from 3.5e. BUT if you're familiar with 3.5e it's an easy transition to Pathfinder... it's kinda like the difference between American English and British English. The core is the same, but there are certain differences, some of which mean completely different things in the two dialects, but you can still communicate and understand each other.

I agree that the forum could use a bit more organization, but I don't wish to see it split between D&D and non-D&D.  There's also the LFG Search that can be used for specific requests for systems and days. I think a split between "GMs looking for group" and "Players looking for group" might serve as better sub forums.  As a full-time GM, I really only have an interest in one of those forums to begin with and there's a number of prospective players who are interested in multiple systems that span across the D&D divide - where do you put your post in that case?  Are OSR games sufficiently D&D?  Dungeon World? Numenera?  13th Age? Also, if you look through the LFG forum currently, there's more posts for GMs trying to run non-D&D games than people starting up D&D games.  What you see a lot of are players - either individually or in groups - looking for D&D/Pathfinder GMs.  And that's turning out to be a tough market, so there are a ton of those kind of posts. As someone who only runs games that aren't "new school D&D" it's not tough to find players under the current system.  It's occasionally tough to find committed players, but that's not something limited to a system - it's unique to this style of gaming.

While yes there is a LFG Search that can be used to search for specific requests, it also requires GMs to start a campaign before they can list it. Sometimes a GM will post on the forums, "Hey, I am looking for players for X". For example, I posted a game I was looking to get together, and 24 hours later it was on page 3 of the looking for group forum. Search is nice, but this is about a diverse community, search doesn't tell you if a campaign is active, inactive, going to start soon or even if the GM is still with roll20. You can find a game on search, post then never hear anything back.

I see Dave D's point. PLUS there would be the movement of topics when a new subforum would be warranted and that would fluctuate with tastes. BUT it only serves to maybe halve the traffic. I suppose a further differentiation could be: GMs Looking for Adventurers: Oneshots, Guild Games and short finite adventures to be wrapped up in a month (4-5 sessions)  anything that is meant to be low commitment or casual come and go kind of play "adventure of the week" deals. GMs Looking for Campaigners : Long-running epics that build the story up and have a grand plan. Meant to be spanning most of the level range available to a system or to go through significant character development over the course of the story asking for a high level of commitment Players Looking for Group: Where the player goes who is looking for something to join but not sure what they're looking for or not sure who to join in with. That way like minded people can focus on forums they prefer and if you're looking for a short quick adventure or a long epic, you can go to the right place. This keeps it general enough and focuses more on the kind of play people are looking for .

Terratani said: I see Dave D's point. PLUS there would be the movement of topics when a new subforum would be warranted and that would fluctuate with tastes. BUT it only serves to maybe halve the traffic. I suppose a further differentiation could be: GMs Looking for Adventurers: Oneshots, Guild Games and short finite adventures to be wrapped up in a month (4-5 sessions)  anything that is meant to be low commitment or casual come and go kind of play "adventure of the week" deals. GMs Looking for Campaigners : Long-running epics that build the story up and have a grand plan. Meant to be spanning most of the level range available to a system or to go through significant character development over the course of the story asking for a high level of commitment Players Looking for Group: Where the player goes who is looking for something to join but not sure what they're looking for or not sure who to join in with. That way like minded people can focus on forums they prefer and if you're looking for a short quick adventure or a long epic, you can go to the right place. This keeps it general enough and focuses more on the kind of play people are looking for . Just remember that splitting up the lgf board into multiple lgf boards will require the mods and devs to spend more time in the forums just to police it. The mods are volunteers (Great bunch) and the devs are the makers and creators (Awesome people). If you never been a mod or an administration of a forum, you've never experienced the workload that can appear out of the blue and the addition of boards will increase the workload. I'm not saying it will cause that of an increase but each board added will increase the workload and pull the devs away from something that we all enjoy and that is working on roll20 code. I personally would recommend creating maybe standardized style for posting your games. That would probably work better than adding additional boards. Just my pennies tossed into the bucket.

I agree that it is a problem that all the black sheep topics on the looking for group forum get buried so quickly.

If the forum isn't working well enough use the actual LFG system:&nbsp;<a href="https://app.roll20.net/lfg/search" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/lfg/search</a>

*smack forehead* TL;DR?