This is a suggestion for Roll20. It is based off my own personal experiences. Finding players or a group on Roll20 can be a nightmare. Especially for DMs. Let's say I post something on the LFG tool, and on the forum? Well, I'm probably going to have to give the page with info about my adventure, which makes sense. But then I'm definitely going to want to do some applications, asking who the players are, what their experience, play-style is etc. And every single person who comes by is going to have to fill that out. I mean, these are - for the most part - total strangers I'm soliciting here. So, then I have to go through all the applications (and there could be
dozens of them), and I have to update my forum listing, and it's just a
huge headache. Tons of PMs to sort through from people who didn't use the LFG listing or the forums too. Gotta' respond to all those. Then, I've got to figure out what everyone's availability is and see what time will be best for the game. And that means that maybe someone I picked for the game suddenly can't be in it due to scheduling conflicts. And then maybe someone else learns I'm using House Rules and that's a deal-breaker for them so they're out. And... it's just... a big pain in the butt. Doable. But... it makes me cringe just thinking about it. Alright, so that brings us to my suggestion : So, there should be a standard application to join a game. It should have things like, name, age, experience level, sample character biography, and quirky question. And this is something that the DM should be able to set up, and give a link to. Like "Apply here". And the application will have all game information and the questions. And then when those are filled out they will get e-mailed or otherwise sent to the DM, so they've got a nice, clear list of people to look at. And, when people are looking for games, they should just go into their account, set the flags of what games they're looking for (Pathfinder, D&D, etc.), then they should set their availability, text / voice, language, etc. And once that's all set they should just click 'find game'. Basically, it would put them on a mailing list, and when a game matching their criteria is listed on the LFG tool, they'd get a private message saying "Hey! A game of the type you are looking for has been posted!" That way, when you looked at the listing you'd know it was something that matched your time slots and that was or wasn't homebrewed, etc. Then if you were interested you could easily just click 'Apply now', and bam, the DM gets your application and everyone's on the same page. It should be less of a mad dash to get a game and more of a minor bit of bureaucracy. "You want in a game? Fill out what kind of game you want and click 'LFG' and you'll receive messages when there's a game open you like." And for DMs, when they post a game, it would be clear what the time-slot is for the game, as well as have a standard applications all set up so once you post the listing Roll20 handles all of the minutiae and paperwork, which allows the DM to focus solely on the people who would best fit the game. Also there should be a tool for when the game launches that informs everyone who filled out an application, who didn't get an invite, that 'Sorry, you weren't picked.' Please understand that I'm not criticizing the current features. I know setting times of games and posting an accurate description of the games is something that Roll20 already has. And, having used them to run game here (several), they work okay. But it would be really nice if there was something that could streamline this. There are a LOT of people looking for games. Might be worth it to work on a system to help them find the game they're looking for more easily than camping the forums and spamming applications the second an opening occurs. Thanks for reading, ~JOE
