Seriously I think this is needed, just something simple like a five star voting system. Course I say simple, yet have no idea how hard that would really be to program, this site is already pretty awesome. Just kinda tired of playing bad games, or really good games with robotic GMs that I feel hate me in some way.

Am I the only one that feels this way?

Probably not, but RPoL will never implement such a system.  Sorry.
          /help/?t=faqs&page=frf

I have to say I agree with policy on this one.  The thing is, above and beyond what Ron said, each person's gaming style is different.

The thing that might make Ron love me as a GM might be the exact thing that makes you hate me.  I don't see any way that would ever come about as a fair rating.  Plus if you're like me and have only one game, (and adding that usually only unhappy people post ratings) that could make me look horrible.

NOt only that, but I hate anything which comes across like a popularity contest. And how are people who are, in your opinion, 'bad', meant to get better if everyone just blacklists them, effectively?

But the big thing for me is... have you ever been that kid picked last for sports teams? There's going to be someone, that is like that if you have a rating system. I don't like 'proving' myself, and why I rarely apply for games with writing samples.

There needs to be a dating site but instead of dates, it needs to be people chatting with and meeting up with there soul dm/players

I would pay for that.

Believe it or not, three of the games I'm in now are games I was invited to play, because the GM read stuff I'd posted here in CC and liked how I wrote and how I thought (not necessarily in that order).

So, in a way, that not-a-dating site is already here...it's just a question of how people choose to use it...*grin*

It is a bad idea, sorry. You will get false impressions from pettiness, inexperience, and simple incompatibility of visions. You'll also get GMs down-voted because a player had issues with other players, because they didn't get the game or it was different from what they expected... add in that it's meaningless if someone is new to the site, so has no votes and the people who use RPoL to only play privately with select friends...

And it's not like rating an item on deviantart or a writing community website. It would be rating a person. there is no way for that to be inoffensive.


As it stands you can check the public forums for a username,
search for games by user name,
and even rmail other users to say "Hi, I'm thinking of joining {game}. Would you mind giving me your impression of {user}?".
If you really want to vet a prospective player/GM there are ways to do it.

I'd prefer something along the lines of a 'favourite' button that you can check and can search by games by anyone on the favourite list. Wouldn't be visible to anyone else, no blacklisting or shaming, just a way to keep track (site wide and on the site as a whole) of those GMs and Players that you enjoyed working with along the way and would like to continue doing so.

I know you can do this is a Notepad or similar but if it were integrated into the site I think it'd hold more use and accessibility, without the downsides to most 'rating' systems I have seen.

Would something like that be possible, or are there also problems with it that I am yet to see?

I still don't really like it; as it does mean it makes it harder for newer players to crack in, as well as it assumes there is no development of GMing/playing skills. But no, it's not as likely to hurt people's feelings.

So once I thought I'd try to play in this campaign, real life.

I went to about three sessions over the course of a month and realized quickly that:

- There was no plot.
- There was never any in character speech.
- Every session was going through a labyrinth of elaborate traps and monsters, very old school style.

Now the thing is, when I first started playing, that's how it was done.  I've kind of moved beyond that now, but this style is still out there and it's not my cup of tea any more.  I like there to be SOME of this kind of thing but not ALL this all the time.

But I know there's people who feel very differently.  Frog God games has made a whole line of products for people who feel like that, for instance.

I went to them one day and said, essentially, you guys are too hardcore and technical for me.  They took it as a compliment to their game I couldn't maintain personal interest in it.

The point is, if I had to "rate" that campaign, do I give it 1 star because it was a terrible fit for me, or do I give them 5 stars because they were nice people and the game is clearly fulfilling a need for others?

Youtube has this problem, people don't rate the video on how good the video is (its production values etc.), they rate it on whether they agree with what the video is supporting or stating.

I think the existing rating system is most recently discussed in this Community Chat thread: link to a message in this forum

In reply to chrisormie (msg # 8):

Since your system would be a purely private thing, why not create your own list?  That way you can adjust it to suit your own needs.  Just cut'n'paste the GM's name into one of your scratchpads (it's still "integrated" with RPoL, so you can check it from anywhere where you'd normally check the site).  Assign numeric values, colour codes, whatever... to make it easier to spot the ones you are most interested in.

Keep lists of GMs you like, and ones you don't like.  You can use the Main Menu search function to find games run by those GMs (note that RPoL will never give you a means to search for games that a specific person is playing in - because, frankly, that's none of your business.  If you want to know what games I play in, for example, you need to ask me and I will decide whether or not I want you to know, not some automated site function).

So this works in the same way as a "like" button, except for a couple of things:

1. It isn't just restricted to people you like.
   
2. It doesn't require us to code something that we aren't actually in favour of.

I'm part of a trading site that runs a point system that simply puts a "Successful trade" vs an "Unsuccessful Trade" Now I'm not in favor of  that, but they did have a spot in the forums for people to simply post reviews of the trades after they were done.

Possible to do that here with a "Game review". Can this be exploited by personal opinion, sure, but it also has the potential of showing the reviewers state of mind. Now Mind you, this would be a GAME review not a GM review. It would however allow those people interested to at least read reviews of the games that the GM had run.

I really think any kind of system other than making your own list would mess with the community dynamic and make it less of a community. The minute you start creating any kind of popularity stats, you marginalise some of the members of the site.

I think I've said that before somewhere... but it still stands. Why is everyone so pre-occupied with green/red lights? This isn't purchasing a dvd, it's playing alongside other people. Maybe you won't like all of them, maybe you really hate some of them and want to steer clear, but why in the world would you ask strangers to make that choice for you? You're the only one who can know whether the chemistry between you is good or bad.

Any game review would be in breach of the sites rules, which do not permit the naming, linking to, or identification of any game in any public forum (with the exception of the advertising forums, where it is limited to GMs who are advertising their games).

Once again, RPoL does not (and will not) support any form of public rating system.

I'm also against a site-supported rating system here. I'm glad there will not be one.

I think the end result would be a massive upswing in duplicate accounts/sock puppets while the Mods get bombarded with name change and "delete this rating/review" requests.


On my favourite forum, at the bottom of each post* is a row of toggles, like so:

educational | interesting | funny | agree | disagree | love

They tally up each click for everyone to see. Any user can click them, but it's a toggle. One person can't just click for an hour to rack up numbers.

I love it. It's visually discreet. It makes getting a quick vote easy. It cuts down on thread bumps. We post a lot of photos on those forums. And I'm the kind of person who gets annoyed scrolling past dozens of "SO CUTE!!" and "OMG! ME TOO!" posts.

But some users hate it. Some get angry and make posts demanding to know why a button was clicked. Some feel pressured to Own A Click and make a post just to say which buttons they clicked. To me, this is like a thread bump, so it drives me up the wall. And many users pester the admins with requests to release the names of the clickers. Worst of all, some users attach their self esteem to the buttons. They write posts describing how hurt they feel when they don't rack up a certain number of "good" clicks or how they feel threatened by "bad" clicks.

Sometimes, I'll read through games or posts and think "HA! disagree 1!" but I wouldn't want that system in place here. First off, low visual content and the no hyperlinking rule. Second, I think the roleplaying hobby attracts a lot of fragile souls. I think one reason RPOL has such a good reputation is because it's a game site, not some ProBoards site with a die roller attached.


*well... at the bottom of most posts. There is the option of joining or creating a group (which would be like a game here) in which the buttons are hidden or unclickable to outsiders. Or a member may turn off the buttons, so others can click away while the clicked user remains unaware of the results. These people are generally ridiculed.
This message was last edited by the user at 17:57, Mon 19 Jan 2015.

So much of how 'good' a game is can come down to personal factors...was it what you expected?  Did you get along with the GM?  The other players?  If the answer to any of these is 'no', it's likely to color your view of the game.

Did you have a series of bad experiences with the Dice Roller at a critical juncture?  Was there some part of your personal life that was going to pieces while you were in the game?  Did some aspect of the game arouse unpleasant associations with some other experience in your life?  If you answer 'yes' to any of these, once again your opinion of the game is likely to be tainted by it.

But these are all circumstances that are largely beyond the GM's control, unless he was actively unpleasant toward you.  But outside of that, the GM may be blameless.  And while you may dislike the game, there may be other players who really enjoy it.  But do they frequent any of the public forums on RPOL?  I'm in several games with players who never look at the CC threads...so, suddenly, my opinion of the game becomes more valuable than theirs, in terms of public perception of a game.

These are just a few reasons why any sort of rating system is problematic.  As was mentioned, this isn't like rating a transaction, where there are a few definite criteria that can be analyzed.    A seller may be a toral jerk, but if they send you what you bought in a timely fashion, that's not going to have much impact on the transaction.  But your assessment of whether or not a GM is a jerk will have a HUGE impact on a game rating...and it may only be your opinion and the GM isn't much of a jerk at all.  You can't convince me that perrrsonal opinions of GMs would NOT influence game ratings...so much of what a game is comes out of who the GM is, and what they bring to the game.

I agree with all of the above. Any kind of public rating system would cause far more problems than it could possible solve.

Remember when Rpol didn't even list a GM's username?

THOSE were the days. :p

I'd also like to say that I find a lot of RPers that I know, don't think they're good at RPing/GMing regardless. This includes some people I greatly enjoy the games of. All it would take for some of those, is a number of 'bad ratings' and they might be driven away from RP for good.

So sure, make your own private list of who you like playing with. But don't make it a public thing, which is going to cause hurt feelings, no matter how it's done.

I guess I disagree with everyone present. I am tired of getting burned a month and a half into a game. I would love to read some reviews on GMs prior to going through the lengthy RTJ process.

I can appreciate that viewpoint, but honestly, isn't that gaming in general? I can only speak for myself and what groups I've played in, but even with tabletop I'm sure that slightly less than twenty of the literally hundreds of characters I've made in my life got played any longer than 90 days. I envy anyone who has a significantly better track record.

Then again, thinking about it, I suppose I would pity someone in that situation in ways too. That would severely curtail the amount of fun you got to have making characters.

This is one site policy I can wholeheartedly agree with - for all the reasons posted above.
Tileira is the one who beat me to my main objection, though:



Personally, I prefer to make up my own mind about people, both here and in RL.

If you have a run of GMs you don't like, keep looking. Sooner or later you'll find someone who runs a game you enjoy. Then ask them if they want to run another.

What's the worst that can happen? You spend a few weeks playing a game you won't finish. But maybe you can get an idea from it that will help you devise a game of your own, maybe you'll meet another player there that you get along with. Absolute worst case, you get a (private and personal) list of people you don't want to game with again. Even that's a positive result. There's a lot of worse ways to spend your time.

Another, perhaps controversial, question to ask yourself is: am I setting myself up for failure by the games I RTJ? Eg. Does the genre you prefer attract more plonkers than discerning individuals such as yourself? Is it a genre that is particularly difficult to do well? Have you been spoiled by a genius GM in the past, with whom nobody can compare?

There are so many reasons why a game might not work for you - which is precisely why rating Games and GMs is pointless, IMO.

A 'good' GM is a very subjective matter.  Even for myself, it may depend on the mood I'm in, exactly what I'm looking for.  As others have said, you need to make your own personal and private list.  And even then be careful you aren't letting 'bad luck' colour your perspective.  An excellent game is a mix of GM, players, story line, characters, and good timing; sometimes it happens, sometimes with what appears to be the same chances, it just doesn't.

This message was deleted by the user at 15:57, Tue 20 Jan 2015.

Heh...I've had this happen in dozens of tabletop games...most of them with GMs that I really enjoyed playing with.  They just decided they wanted to try something new...and it didn't click.  In more than a few of them, we never even actually got around to playing...we made it through character creation and the playing never actually happened.

Just because you get a GM with a good track record does not guarantee that every game that GM decides to run is going to go somewhere.  It improves your odds, sure...but on RPOL, half the time games die because so many players jump ship that the GM loses incentive to keep the game running...and no amount of game or GM reviews will change that.

In reply to bigbadron (msg # 12):

Yeah it's similar to what I have right now, except I do not currently have any games going and so it's off site in a Google doc. It's a good way for me to keep track of people (and after four years absent from the site, I have forgotten the names of a bunch of cool folk sadly) and hopefully reconnect with them.

All in all I agree with the site's policy on this, but I really love being allowed to challenge and question it this way. I know it can get annoying for mods to revisit topics frequently but as a user it's a really good way to feel more involved in the site, so thanks for humouring us malcontents and rapscallions!

Again, I disagree. Everyone has made strong points, I understand them, and even agree on a certain level but I feel fundamental disconnect goes deeper. Peer reviews keep people honest. A rating system would go a long way to discourage GMs from just simply saying, "Hey, I am bored, let me go start and RPOL game I don't intend to run for more than a month." Furthermore, everyone's argument that 'not all GMs and players mesh' is kind of the point of the review. If people wrote well, thought-out constructive reviews of their peers, this would be very beneficial as a player during the RTJ process and even in the game. Players can identify with certain reviewees, as someone would shopping for products online.

But it is all moot. The policy will never change. I will be left with 12, 1st level PCs that never got a lick of EXP, destined to be shelved and never played. Meanwhile, I'll continue to GM my game until my heart fails or the world ends cause I made a promise to my players. And you're damn right I would get a good review for it.

That's a very big 'If'...and it still fails to address the issue of how to objectively assess how good a game or GM is.  Without some foundational criteria to use, written reviews are opinion...look at reviews on Amazon and you'll see a lot of apparently good products with some scathing reviews (at least, many of the products I've purchased in the past couple of years have had several harsh reviews, even though I had no problems with them.)  And that's a case where people generally have a pretty clear notion of what thething is and how it's supposed to work...there's only so much one can expect from gaff tape, for instance.  But games or GMs?  What is expected of them, and how well those expectations are met, are both incredibly subjective.

Yes, there are some GMs who know how to promote their game, pick their players, and keep things running smoothly.  But in looking at my own game list, I see at least one game that I would write a good review for, which others who've played in it would likely pan, and many might leave so-so reviews.  Whose review is correct?  Another game I'm in started off really well, ran for a few months...and then went idle, for more than a year...and then picked back up again.  The review I might have written a few months into that 'idle' phase would be hugely different than the one I'd write now.  Which one should count, even though both would technically be accurate?

These aren't isolated incidents...and they illustrate just a couple of the problems with trying to use reviews for GMs or their games.  Think about movie reviews, even...how many of the movies you like have gotten iffy reviews?  How many bad movies have you sat through because friends told you they were good?  Yeah, occasionally, a film comes along that gets universally panned, or that everyone raves about...but the vast majority of them have mixed reviews and you may go into one of them with totally different expectations than the reviewer.  Does that make their opinion any more or less valid?

... why not repurpose one of these 12 next time you go for a new game? Rather than go through making yet another new character? If you have -12- just sitting around, why not make sure you don't lose them when the game goes, and next time you need to make a level 1 character, you have a character already to go, with only formatting to worry about.

In reply to Ronning (msg # 27):

This is based on two dangerous assumptions:

Firstly, that everyone who posts a review does so in the form of a mature critique. I am sick of finding reviews of film and books which say "It's bad and a waste of time because I don't like {genre}" or (and this one really gets me) "I don't like it. {author} is good at {genre}. {author} should stick to {genre}. This is rubbish".

I can only ask you to forgive my cynicism, but I don't believe for a moment that any kind of reviewing or rating system on RPoL could possibly be helpful for this reason alone. I have met far too many "one-star" players on RPoL to think that the RPG community is more mature and analytical than the world at large. I know we like to think so, but if this did become a thing it would turn out like every other system: giving voice to the people who don't give valuable feedback.
(Has it also occurred to you that such a system would remove user/player anonymity?)

Secondly: some GMs run game after game after game of one system and setting, several at a time. Some hop from one genre to another, from one system to another, and experiment with tweaks to canon or house rules. Unless someone is running a lot of games and many of them in the same canon, I think the reviews would be pretty much useless.

"Oh, so, he was really good at running that Lovecraftian horror game two years ago... do I want to join his tongue-in-cheek '80s superhero game?"

The only people a rating system would be useful to are the career d20 players maybe.


I really do worry about a world in which no-one will take any risks without first consulting a public vote. Out of all the people I have met in RL and online, there is definitely a smaller bubble of people I would trust to make a sound judgement on anything than the 'facepalm' bubble.

I mean, why would I take facemaker329's opinion of willvr's game? I don't know either of them. Do I then look up facemaker329's credentials to check whether he's talking sense or throwing his crayons? Does chrisormie's review of facemaker329's game mean that facemaker329 doesn't know what he's talking about? Or that chrisormie picked the wrong game? Or that chrisormie is upset about facemaker329's review of willvr?

Aside from anything else, the mods would need a lot more time and bigger aprons for cleaning up all the mudslinging and putting the brats on the naughty step.

Just have some patience and be willing to endure disappointment? Please? Can we have one place left where we take responsibility for ourselves and carry our own baggage? The worst that will happen is you will leave a game thinking "I'm not playing with him again..."

In reply to Tileira (msg # 30):

Bravo.

You're asking for a way to OBJECTIVELY rate something from an entirely SUBJECTIVE viewpoint.  It's really impossible to do.

We all like and dislike different things.  Tileira stated that she wouldn't take the opinion of one person she doesn't know of another person she doesn't know.  I'll go one step further.  I'm real life friends with a player on this site, known the guy for 20+ years and we have similar ideals with games.  Just this past month we were getting into a game, something in the GM's style just didn't fit with him.  It really got his goat and if he wrote a review, it would be absolutely scathing.  Myself, I really enjoy the GM's style.  So we have two people, with similar styles and tastes in gaming, both of which would have written polar opposite reviews.

There are just way too many subjective things about gaming to really have any possibility of making an objective review process.  Beyond the point of sheer system differences you get into styles and ways that each GM does differently.  Heck, even spelling and grammar, for one person that might be a deal breaker and another might not care if everything else is in place.

Okay, valid points but they fundamentally contradict themselves.

Everyone is making these great arguments as to why reviews are a bad idea. I get it. Humans suck can can't be trusted to give a factual, non biased opinions and criticism of someone else's play. I understand. You don't know these people, you don't know if they were the problem. A GM can be switching between genres. Things might not have clicked. The GM likes the color red and the reviewer likes the color green, blah blah blah. I get it. Different strokes for different folks.

However... If I read 20 reviews on 1 GM, are you telling me I am not smart enough to formulate an educated opinion? Are you telling me I am not smart enough to recognize what reviewer sounds a bit whiny and immature versus those I have come trust? If facemaker329 interviews everyone and their mother but consists of very little substance vs Tileira's well articulated arguments, are you telling me I am not smart enough to notice these things?

Furthermore, I proposed reviews... nothing more. No rating system, no Like/Dislike, nothing but one individual critiquing another. I am not... living in a world that is managed by the majority. I said nothing about NOT taking risks. I am talking purely about a reviewing system where players and GMs can make educated decisions about the people the associate with. Who cares if the reviewer is right or wrong- that is for me to decide when I read it.

Again, all this is moot. I get RPOLs policy. I don't agree with it but I find what RPOL offers in terms of functionality to be way more important than finding the perfect player/GM candidates.
This message was last edited by the user at 20:23, Wed 21 Jan 2015.

I liked every movie that Siskel and Ebert disliked and disliked every movie that they gave a "thumbs up" to.

I wouldn't judge a Player, or a DM, based upon someone else's "rating." It's something I have to "check out" all on my own.

I'm just saying . . . tastes vary greatly from person to person. "Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder" is true for many things, not just paintings.

I want to answer yes so very badly. And that's why I'm against the proposed system. I'd want to abuse it. Just because.

Hmm. What do they say, for every negative response there's something like 5 positive ones that don't respond. Because people comment more about what not's working than what is. (In general.)

I have to say, there's plenty of people who would basically never be able to get players again, ever, if there were a rating system. That's why i'm against having one, though I do think there does need to be some way to warn people about someone who's burned you, since it's against RPoL policy to be not-nice in any way or to say bad things about people on public forums.

Except, you run into problems with those people who weren't 'burned'...the GM had legitimate reasons for doing what was done, but the player cannot/will not acknowledge that side of the matter.

I've seen that come up far too often to think that it wouldn't wind up becoming problematic with such a feature.

Ultimately, the one review/rating system that I can trust to not be influenced by someone else being petulant, petty, or just having a bad day somewhere along the line is my own opinion...and even that can't entirely be trusted, because I've initially thought stuff was better than it turned out to be after consideration, or something I didn't like ended up being something I really enjoy (like Depeche Mode...not a fan in high school and college, recently rediscovered them and have a totally different appreciation for them now.)

The fact of the matter; is you get to know people you trust regardless. And if someone that you do trust, privately, says "Careful - he left me stranded in three games" - you'll listen.

I'm not actually a fan even of that level; but I acknowledge that's human nature. But to turn it from a private thing between friends, into a big public thing, is somewhat scary; and will end up blacklisting people; in effect.

If I want to know about a gm, I take several step (i am not a stalker, but i am watching the show right now. Lol)

I can check to see if the gm runs any games here on rpol. I can read the public threads and get a sense of the gm. I can also ask to lurk in his game. Reading the interactions between the gm and his players usually gives me a really good. And i dont need someonee else to tell me.

Although I'm against a rating system, this points to one area where I might be tempted to agree: A "vanished without a word" blacklist.

It's simple, objective, and there's really no excuse for such behaviour. These days you can even get connected from a hospital bed. There are some people who don't deserve to get players, or to be accepted as players.

I'm not talking about people who have a life glitch for a couple of weeks and come back again with an apology, nor people who are never seen on Rpol again and may have been invited to the Great Gaming Table in the Sky, I'm talking about people who just stop posting without any excuse and are seen advertizing (for) another game the next day - people with no manners.

However, even here, I can see that the hassle of implementing it, and trying to separate the people with bad manners from the people with bad luck, would probably make such a list unworkable.

In reply to borderline_dnd (msg # 40):

Actually, I have to say that being involved in the public threads has been my best tool for winding up in good, solid games...

I'm currently in six games.  Two of them are games started by someone I was in another game with, who started the one we're now playing when the first GM abandoned the game for one reason or another.

Of the remaining four, one is run by someone that I had heard several people mention as being a good GM in the midst of off-hand comments during various discussions.  When I saw he was advertising a new game...in a system that I really enjoy, no less...I jumped at the chance.

Of the remaining three, two of them are games I was invited to join because the GMs had read stuff I'd posted here in the CC forum and liked both my writing style and my overall attitude, especially toward gaming.  (I think it also helped that, even though I've been in a few heated discussions on here from time to time, I've never been the guy to resort to name-calling or blatant trolling...but they didn't mention that, so that observation is speculation on my part.)

And the last game is one that one of those GMs was asked to co-GM by the person who started it...and I was invited to get involved in that game, too.  I've actually had a few other invitations, from similar sources...but the timing was bad (asking me to start a game when I'm flailing to stay ahead of the ones I'm in, with real-life commitments looming large, doesn't work out very well, because I'll generally err on the side of caution when it comes to the possibility of being over-extended in how many games I play) or it was a system that I either dislike or that I just wasn't interested in learning how to play.

So, yes...discuss things here.  Whether or not anyone says so, people pay attention to what's said...and how it's said...and when they see someone who seems familiar to them, they'll reach out.  Plus, it's kinda nice to have people feel familiar enough with you that when you post something about bad news in your life, they feel like they can extend a little moral support, even when you aren't in a game with them.

Dumping a game is one thing, that I might listen to.  If it was involving more than one game, because there might be reasons for the first 'dump'.  I can see getting completely fed up with a whole group full of bickering players and just walking away.  Past that I won't even do more than take into consideration what my best friend says.  There are a lot of things we agree on in games, but some things that are total deal breakers for him are things I enjoy and vice versa.

Yes, I agree, it would end up as a public blacklist.  For things that the whole story wouldn't be known publicly.  Even if both sides were to tell their stories you might not get the full idea.  All it takes is for one person to blow everything out of proportion and one person to not feel the need to defend him/herself against a bunch of bs claims.

I've run a grand total of one game (still ongoing) here.  I was VERY picky about who got into the game, I wanted to make certain that the players could accurately play they type of characters in the game.  I turned quite a few potential players down because I didn't feel they could do the job.  This upset a few people, a couple even tried to argue with me.  Because of this I'm sure there are a few people out there that feel that I'm an unreasonable jerk.  My response to any long, vitriolic review of me would be: "I didn't feel they could play the part, my game, my rules."  Chances are that wouldn't turn anyone to my side and might actually do the opposite.  Thing is, I WOULDN'T FEEL THE NEED TO DEFEND MY ACTIONS AS GM.

The other end of the spectrum is something I saw years ago on another site.  One of the site owners manipulated dice rolls.  It was blatantly obvious, you can only roll so many natural 20's in a row.  When you do it fifteen times, roll an 18, then roll ten more 20's (where I finally gave up counting), it's patently obvious you are cheating.  Thing is, not many people seemed to care.  To me cheating is an unforgivable sin.  Obviously there are people that don't mind playing with a cheater.  So who would you listen to?  One of a few voices mentioning the cheating (before they were kicked off the board) or the 40-50 other players that seemed to have no issues?

All in all, there are just too many ways any system would turn people away from good GMs and not turn people away from bad ones.  Ditched games can somewhat be seen just by looking at how many games a GM runs.  If the person has started a game a month that only lasts a few hundred posts that might be a sign that any new game won't last.  Past that, things fall into objectivity and various likes/dislikes.

In reply to Ronning (msg # 33):

It's not just telling the difference between biased reviews.
You then have *if* they give balanced reviews of what was good and bad, not only what they didn't like
*if* the game the review is on has anything in common with the new game
*if* most of the players review the game, not just 1 or 2.
*if* the GM runs enough games, frequently enough for there to be a sufficient amount of information
*if* -and this isn't personal- you know yourself to be a person who does not have an unconscious bias toward negative reviews.


Particularly on that last point, many people do spend more time trying to decide if the negative comments will be true for them rather than the positive ones. It's a natural inclination to avoid unpleasant experiences.

I am very very glad that RPoL admins don't intend to implement any kind of peer review/rating system on RPoL. I'm not here to "win" at RPGs. There are a lot of people on here who simply don't run or play in enough games for this to be useful. I still believe this would only be useful to those people who play 3-4 D&D/Pathfinder/d20 games simultaneously.

There is nothing 'wrong' in wanting a rating system, or wishing there was some way to compliment (or complain about) other users, be they player or GM.  It's human nature, and it's very understandable.

I also think everyone here understands the reasoning behind RPoL's decision not to implement a rating system -- WHETHER OR NOT they agree with that decision.  RPoL's philosophy includes things like anonymity, the basic freedom to politely speak your mind about most things in the public forums without being attacked or trolled, and for GMs to run their games as they like and for players to have many, many possibilities for games.

While it's fine to share your opinion either way, please keep in mind that it should be just that, and that there's no need to convince anyone else to 'come to the dark side'.  We can agree to disagree on the point, and still be friends at the discussion's end.  :-)

Pertaining to this topic, I have a question for the Mods.

Would the Rpol rules support someone starting a 'Discussion' game where the purpose was to  discuss and/or rate GM's and players? It would be a 'private' system, in that it's in a game and not on the public boards. But would openly discussing players from one game, in another game, break the anonymity rules? Either in fact or in spirit?

RPoL would not support this type of game, no.

You simply cannot account for what a Player -- or GM -- may, or may not, take offense too. Peoples sensibilities also vary greatly. Sometimes an "insult" was not meant, rather, a poor choice of wording was made.

Yet another reason not to establish a semi-official rating system.

In reply to Mystic-Scholar (msg # 48):

And for some, it doesn't matter how it's worded, they will take it wrong.  In short there is no good way to rate players/GMs for a group, only for an individual.

You also have to account for perspective of people.

I was active in the game design boards for awhile before it shut down. Well I generally don't know who is saying what (due to no avatars, I tend to identify visuals rather than text) well one individual didn't like my discussion about their homebrew system and asked me to leave them alone. Well later in a different thread on a different topic, I responded, not realizing it was the same person. Well they seemed to think I was being rude and stalking them, when really it was just me not really knowing who I was responding to.

It didn't help that we never seemed to understand each other, constantly correcting misunderstandings about our ideas.

It was just an inability for us to have anything but bad communication, but very likely it would have led to very negative reviews, and from his perspective, totally legitimate negative reviews, though not from my perspective.

Multiply this by the number of people, and the rating system becomes unworkable as people give reviews based on anger or personal tastes that might not translate to what someone else would feel about that person.

Word.

I had a situation like that, where I player I ended up removing couldn't see why I had to do so, and if we had reviews, he would likely have many unflattering things to say, based on the last comments he graced me with before leaving.

As a GM, it would be disheartening to see someone's bad attitude possibly turn people away from my games due to one person's pettiness.

I don't see a way that a public review system wouldn't be abused and cause a lot of bad feelings.  It would be rather stressful for something I come here to do for fun.  You could solicit opinions from other players, but a public system I believe would cause more harm than good.

This is my main problem with reviews, ratings, whatever. I've been running games on Rpol for going on five years. I've brought four to a conclusion and closed one. I'm not sure I've had more than two dozen different players in those games, so I doubt you'd get 20 reviews on my five concluded games. You might get a half dozen and you mostly won't know those Rpolians at all.

Mystic-Scholar mentioned Siskal and Ebert. Those two guys reviewed hundreds of films in their careers and people got to know over time whether they could be relied on when choosing a movie to see. You aren't going to know anything about Gaffer and the odds that you can compare your experience with a GM to mine are pretty remote.

So the reviews are going to have no reality that you can judge them on and there aren't likely to be enough on most GMs to form a consensus.

In reply to Gaffer (msg # 52):

LOL Your comment about movie reviews reminds me of the critic who wrote for the newspaper we got back in the day I went out to watch a lot of first-run movies.  If he liked it, I wouldn't, if he panned it, I gave it a serious look.  So his critique worked for me, but in a backwards sort of way.  A rating system, however, wouldn't be so easy to work with.

Actually that does give me an idea.

Have one or a few that do reviews like they were reviewing a movie, with descriptions of a gm's style, as well as likely reason for failed games if any, and rate their creativity, railroading, etc.

Granted, it would be skewed a bit, but with consistency, readers could eventually learn whether they tend to agree or disagree with a particular reviewer's statements and can then make judgment based on that.

It would be like reading gameinformer to decide what games to investigate further based on seeing what games are your style and such.

In reply to DarkLightHitomi (msg # 54):

Well the only way for that to work would be to objectify traits and set down rules on how to express them right? I heard somewhere that a 7/10 game review is supposed to be like rating a game four stars for instance. That has to be clear at the get go.

That being said, I am the last person to ask about a numeric scale. I got to confuse a poor gm a while back that used one of em in their rtj.

In reply to DarkLightHitomi (msg # 54):

RPoL is not interested in setting up or running any kind of review system, or in permitting users to do so on this site.

In reply to bigbadron (msg # 56):

Good to know.

In reply to bigbadron (msg # 56):

Thank You BBR. It's been ten years or so since I last said it. You rock man!

I was not aware this was such a hot topic still, but my question was answered by BBR on the second post. I don't agree with it, but I respect it. Maybe when I learn how to program such an in-depth site as this, I'll do anything I want too it, but I'm not unhappy because I don't get to put a like on someone's game or whatever.

Honestly not to concerned either way, I just like making ideas.

Might put together some guidelines for describing gaming styles though. Could be helpful to have a well known set of descriptors for gaming and gming styles to make finding good matches easier. So a gm could use them to describe the game and their style, telling potential players what to expect on that side of things.

I don't see that stuff mentioned ahead of time, but I only look at ads or ICs that catch my eye.

In reply to DarkLightHitomi (msg # 54):

Setting aside BBR's declaration, this suggestion is still extremely problematic.  Who makes up this hypothetical panel of reviewers? What happens when someone requests a review of a game that none of them are interested in?  How long are they expected to spend analyzing a game before reviewing it?  What is expected to become of their games while they're working on the review?

The questions of 'how much analysis time' and 'at what point in the life of the game' are two huge sticking points...if they look at a game for an insufficient amount of time, the review won't be complete or will miss some very significant details.  If they review a brand new game that's still looking for its precise 'voice, the results will be massively different than they'd be once the game has really hit its stride.

Because you're likely to get reviews from either extremely pleased players, or extremely disgruntled ex-players if you don't have appointed reviewers.  I know I'd much rather spend my RPOL time participating in my own games than analyzing someone else's game and writing reviews, and I expect the vast majority of players and GMs feel the same, so creating a 'panel' of reviewers is an iffy prospect, at best.  I don't see any satisfactory solution to those problems...which is the primary reason I wouldn't trust reviews if they did decide to use them.  And, frankly, I'm perfectly happy with the flat refusal to add a review system.

It would take that review panel quite a while to get through all 7,000+ games on Rpol, let alone through all the 9,000,000+ posts.

And our product isn't like a commercial game or book or movie or play that everyone wants reviewed because they might purchase. By the time my games get to IC posting, the 'new players' tag is down, so what good is a review, which before that has precious little to look at.

No matter how you shape this function it is, at best, useless.

I meant to review GMs, specifically in as objective a way as possible, as in to note objective aspects about how they run games, such as whether they are exclusive to premade content, homebrew, or if they mix the two. Comments like saying they are good or bad wouldn't be part of the revieGMsurther, you would only really need to review GMs who are looking to run more games. There are far fewer GMs then games, and fewer still that will be making new games anytime soon, and even fewer still that have enough content posted to give a fair review.

The idea being that a player could find info on how the GM tends to run their games, to discover any incompatibility in playstyles before even bothering to rtj.

If rpol ever became a pay-to-play site, I would really like to see a rating system of GM and players. But then I would see that the best rated GM would only invite the best rated players...

Does this sound like the future we hope to see?
I do not

In reply to DarkLightHitomi (msg # 63):

I still consider that a Herculean task.  Yes, there are fewer GMs than games, but there's still a truckload of GMs and new ones joining all the time.

And what if you have a GM that doesn't necessarily use the same style to run games of different genres?  What about GMs who may be running pre-written material, but it's in a system that none of the reviewers are familiar with and therefore they don't recognize that?

And it still doesn't address the question of who does the reviews...and why would they bother with them, rather than focus on games which they themselves are running/playing?

Big task? I agree.

This isn't really about systems. Besides it isn't the hard to ask if the GM is using a module, as for system the reviewer can, and shoukd, look it up. Most of a GMs style won't change regardless of system, setting, or pbp vs tt. Example, one old GM of mine was very descriptive and high energy, this held true in every system he played, and as a player as well.

Some GMs stick with modules because they don't feel comfortable improvising their way through.

As for who would do reviews? People who want to of course. You can find lots of people who do reviews on all kinds of things, for free even! You could ask the same question of them, why do they make reviews? Well it isn't for the money.

I guess this is going to be one of those 'agree to disagree' things...because I still see nothing useful in what you're suggesting.  For every GM I can think of that would be screened by what you might write about them, I can think of another one who would get the same basic review...but was a drastically different experience, in terms of playing with them.

Based on my personal experience, a review like what you're suggesting would serve only as a drain on the time of the person writing the review, without providing anything helpful to a person reading it.  I mean, if you're only going to assess objective details about the GM, the GM can answer all of those questions on his own, in his game ad ("This game will be utilizing the Black Ice adventure module, for a basic premise...but I will be adding in a lot of my own plot details and players should not expect the game to run exactly as listed in the module," for instance...I've seen several GMs do exactly this...)

Since RPoL will not organise an onsite review/rating system, and will not permit anybody else to do so (or allow anybody to advertise an offsite one that they have set up), there seems little point in continuing this discussion.