Differenciating "Other Games"?

Hello, I am new at Roll20. One question occured directly to me: Can one differenciate "Other Games" in the directory or simply create/add "new" RPGs? That would make finding specific games for a system much more easier. Sorry, if that might be a typical noob question... Baldor

The game types are based roughly on popularity on Roll20. In other words, once a threshold of games being played that use a system exist, they show up as their own category. If your desired game system isn't showing up that just means not a lot of people are playing it (which doesn't make it bad!). See this thread for some more details. Hope that helps!

Thanks for your reply. I do not have great expertise in programming or the like, but I still don't understand, why there are not more differenciations, given that this would be technically easy to embed and admins had the time doing that. In my humble opinion it would attract more potential players when they'd find their system right away. If a GM would not find "his" system, he could just "create" a new system. That would make things both more precise and easier to access.

The intent of the game listing is that if you look a game up, there will always be a campaign for it available. This would not happen for games with low-popularity. For example, I'm willing to bet that my campaign "Cutie Mark Crusaders Troop #185" is the only campaign on the site using the Unknown Ponies: Failure is Awesome system. Because my campaign is in-progress and not looking for new players, I don't have it listed on the LFG tool, so someone looking for a UP:FiA game (were it separated from the Other Games category) wouldn't find any. Additionally, if GMs were able to create their own entries in the list, you'd be subject to alternate spellings and misspellings. Do you want to search for "D&D3.5" games, "D&D 3.5" games, "Dungeons and Dragons 3.5" games, "Dungeons & Dragons 3.5" games, etc...?

Thanks for your quick reply. I can see your point. My search strategy was first looking for my "homesystems" and then picking an interesting campaign. So it was a little bit uninviting browsing through lots of totally different systems/settings in the rather large "Other games"-section. Oh well, I guess it's only a little adjustment. Nevertheless, Roll20 looks good so far :)

My suggestion would be for the roll20 team to include some type of poll that could be ran by the community mods or something in a single thread. Then every month what ever the top one is, have the roll20 team add it to the list. This might be faster than their current system, and would get those weird games on there.

it has seemed to me from the beginning that people looking for games that might not be popular show up, look for a game and not finding one running, depart. And yes, that would then be a game that 6 or more groups of are not running, but for those of us who are not the main stream gamers just because, it's that much tougher to set up and run games that are not so to speak "popular".

Although Jakes solution would be the best concerning democracy, I'd rather guess that this would be too circumstantial to apply. It's not really something of a big deal, but so many "other games" are just a bit uninviting as I wanted to point out. For example: Although there are numerous English systems played in Germany as well, many Germans prefer to play "Das Schwarze Auge" (DSA, "The Black Eye", developed in the early 1980's) or "Midgard" (since Aug. 1981). Having these (and of course other systems as well!) systems just put on the regular list may attract more players from there (with a little commerical on specific German RPG sites...).

Trollkin said: it has seemed to me from the beginning that people looking for games that might not be popular show up, look for a game and not finding one running, depart. And yes, that would then be a game that 6 or more groups of are not running, but for those of us who are not the main stream gamers just because, it's that much tougher to set up and run games that are not so to speak "popular". +1, I continue to wish that Other Games were somehow better supported. I understand the dilemma, but haven't the stackexchange sites largely solved this problem with a tag cloud that provides suggestions as you type? This has the affect of 'herding' users into a defined set that gets used repeatedly, creating a self-reinforcing definition. I know there are players out there for some of the less popular (NOT UN-popular) games, but marginalizing them in this way creates the self-fulfilling prophecy that they don't meet the existing popularity threshold. I'll keep hoping...

Dan W. said: Trollkin said: it has seemed to me from the beginning that people looking for games that might not be popular show up, look for a game and not finding one running, depart. And yes, that would then be a game that 6 or more groups of are not running, but for those of us who are not the main stream gamers just because, it's that much tougher to set up and run games that are not so to speak "popular". +1, I continue to wish that Other Games were somehow better supported. I understand the dilemma, but haven't the stackexchange sites largely solved this problem with a tag cloud that provides suggestions as you type? This has the affect of 'herding' users into a defined set that gets used repeatedly, creating a self-reinforcing definition. That would help the issue of spelling (and, in fact, on SE sites you can't enter a nonexistent tag unless your reputation is high enough), but not the issue of volume.

Brian said: The intent of the game listing is that if you look a game up, there will always be a campaign for it available. I get wanting to ensure that people's user experience isn't frustrating, but since the value of roll20 over one's FLGS is to find things that aren't already readily to hand, it seems in this case that it might be undermining your core value proposition. Why does the SE solution not address volume? It seems that any automated solution will scale, almost by default (I say almost, because I suspect in this sort of thing edge cases are going to require human eyes). It may even be implemented strictly for the 'Other' category, with subsequent 'popular' games being promoted to 'real' tags. I don't know how popular any given 'Other' game is, but I suppose that in aggregate it's a category worth courting. At the moment, those 'others' are forced to flock over to g+ instead, and it would seem to me only a matter of time before competitors start building google hangout apps to take advantage of it (actually, I think Ron Edwards already is, with his new app - for trollbabe I think? Or S/Lay with me?).

Miedvied, could you explain why "Other Games" would be forced to go anywhere (such as g+)? I'm wondering if people are somehow linking what is available in the search listings with what can be played on Roll20. They are not related.

There is a certain fear with other games not being included in the main listing that it makes them harder to flourish. I can say that I too find this fear evident in myself, but it isn't really rational. I had two 'other games' that I created and used them in the forums to recruit. I found more than enough players, even if the system (cortex) wasn't even heard of by 9 out of the 10 players or so.

Miedvied said: Why does the SE solution not address volume? It seems that any automated solution will scale, almost by default I mean that automatically adding tags won't suddenly make people play those games. When I said "volume," I was referring to campaigns, not tags. Jake M. said: There is a certain fear with other games not being included in the main listing that it makes them harder to flourish. I can say that I too find this fear evident in myself, but it isn't really rational. I had two 'other games' that I created and used them in the forums to recruit. I found more than enough players, even if the system (cortex) wasn't even heard of by 9 out of the 10 players or so. I don't know what to say to that. I mean, you've admitted that it's an irrational fear, you got players for two campaigns in the Other Games category, and you had players that had never heard of your system. Based on your anecdote, it sounds like the search tools are working for Other Games; the huge player:gm ratio probably helps the less-known games get traction, too, as players will snap up whatever listing they see. ~_^

So, I think there are two basic situations. 1) People do not know the game system. The result of them not knowing the game is they are not going to be looking for that game and browsing the "Other Games" listings will have the same (or maybe even better) effect as browsing using the "Playing these games" menu if the "Playing these games" menu included those games. 2) People do know the game system. The result of a person knowing the game system is that the person can search for it using "Other Games" and/or the Matching Keywords field. In either case the current system would seem to cover both situations.

Yes people looking for other games can search by keytag. People looking for Pathfinder see pathfinder groups. People not looking for rare games never find them, which keeps them on the fringe of the die hard more or less old skool player base. As those GMs age out, those games will be gone. People coming in here not looking for them, it's a lot tougher to encounter those games, unless you are looking. The thing that's a bit sad is that people might come in and miss decent games, because they are not being specifically sought. but I guess that's cool because there's 10 new people looking for Pathfinder almost every day so at least the pathfinder player base is growing. And that's definitely a popular game. My groups are almost always full, let's hope that continues to be true for all who want to run and play.

Trollkin , Im a bit confused by your post. Are you saying that there are few people running the a rare game or that people cannot find each other for rare games?

Gauss said: Miedvied, could you explain why "Other Games" would be forced to go anywhere (such as g+)? I'm wondering if people are somehow linking what is available in the search listings with what can be played on Roll20. They are not related. I don't think people will be forced to go anywhere else. Just that alternative resources are already flowering and, if they serve certain communities better, they're less likely to come back here for the roll20 app than if they'd never left at all. That is an effect to be exacerbated as other people start to build gaming toolsets/apps directly into g+h, as RE is doing with (Trollbabe/Slaywithme, as I said, I forget which game). If people do their LFG/social networking there, and start building toolsets there, there's no reason to come back here. (One might think roll20 is just the toolset, but that would be a mistake: a lot of people recommend roll20 as a place to LFG. Probably a good chunk of your LFG forum is people who are using roll20 to find games, not dungeon toolsets) Then again, maybe this entire discussion is sort of an irrelevancy: the toolset does seem to focus more on tilesets and the like, which I suppose does sort of shout "we're here for [the sorts of games that rely heavily on tiles/maps/minis]". I suppose it might just be that the games that fall into the "other" category aren't really the ones roll20 is built for, and trying to attract and conserve those players is just a distraction from the design team's core audience. I'd understand that, too: if I were building a commercial product, I'd probably focus on the categories with the greatest majority of players. (Although, actually, I'd focus on the categories with the greatest proportion of paying players. It's possible that's distributed randomly among game categories. It's possible not. Worth looking into.) As to other posts in this thread: While asking people what possible detriment there is to not having the tags available for "Other" games, the app designers went to the trouble of building and installing the current "tag" system - that is, they seem to believe that it has a value for users. Can't we just agree that that value also applies to people trying to play "Other" games?

Fair point, but did you know which is one of the most popular rpg in Germany (with many followers): "Das Schwarze Auge" ("The black eye"). Thousands of players. It's not a game I do play regularly, but it's still a big thing in Germany with a lot of material and source books. DSA-players might feel more attracted if they saw their own entry in that drop-down menu. With all respect to the great work of roll20: Right now, for me the current "other games"-system looks like a barren desert, because of the chaos of systems it has.

If I'm a new player to RPGs, I probably do not know what games might possibly be in "Other". So the most popular games listed with tags listed in forums, get the attention. Yeah that's what is mostly running, but it seems to be having the effect of feeding those that are running, which crowds those lesser known games out, shunting them to the hard core long term players and GMs, in a sort of special crowd of people that play rare games. I might be a DM of the crowd, but I'd like to meet players who might want to learn about it. Perhaps new players to the hobby. Or they can come here and find savage worlds and pathfinder, unless I spam daily the LFG. That's about as coherent as I can manage. In the end, it is what it is, and it's been this way and I get why. But I also see the net effect which is to build the market share of games that are popular, reinforcing them as popular to the new arrivals, who build the numbers to make them more popular. If that's what we're chasing, as a community, as a direction, so be it. I just want to make sure that that's what's going on in net effect if not by the underlying structure. If that's not the intention, well that seems to be the effect to me, but i'm only one small sliver fraction of the daily growing player base here.