I'd call myself pretty new to forum rpgs and I'm curious how you or your GMs have used the Groups available to run their game.

  Are they used for specific scenes? Specific locations? A quest arc? the entire story? What other uses for groups have you or your GMs found to make the game more interesting and engaging?

  If you or your GM use groups for separate locations or scenes, how is movement between the two handled?
This message was last updated by the user at 16:59, Tue 24 Nov 2015.

I use groups as a way to limit exposure to stories that the entire PC party doesn't have access to. Or, if I want to do some prep work on the next chapter/scene/adventure I'll throw it onto the G group (for GM). If a character has some prelude/backstory/thing that happened in the past and we want to play that out, I give them their own group. All of those work moderately well. I'm sure others use them differently.

In reply to Sithraider (msg # 2):

Do you ever move your party, or individuals, from one group to another in the course of telling the story?

I had a game where one character's motivations took him in a different direction from the group for a while. In that instance, I placed that character in a different group for that time and moved him back to the main group when he rejoined them IC.

In my current game I have a group 0 for OOC and Background information threads that everyone can access, individual groups for each character for when they are doing things no one else would be aware of, and make and change groups are the party splits and recombines.

It's also proven helpful for bring replacement characters into the party, without letting the party or new folk know who is a PC and who is an NPC. That's particularly handy when the old players don't realize I'm bring in new folks. Of course, you have to tell one thread what they see from the other thread's postings, but that's not a major issue.

I use the numerical Groups to divide up people who are in different areas, mostly. The Alphabetical ones, I use for more miscellaneous things. Like flashback events, or threads I want to hide until I'm ready to use them.

In one of my games, I have five squads of four, who each were assigned a different letter group so nobody is in the known of other squads ect. It keeps everybody's actions a secret if you want the players to be completely split up.

I kept Group 1 as a common group so that everyone had access to all group 1 threads. I used the alphabetical groups to split them up.

You can always do it reverse too. Eventually it'll get a bit more complicated in my game once other squads start running into each other.

You can easily split them up though without much trouble.

I run a game where every player's turns are held in secret - so everyone gets their own group, with just one shared group for open discussion.

This leads to usage of a LOT of the groups.

I really never did use groups, aside from making the game non-public. I never split up the party and never pay much mind to "secret knowledge." I think the only time I'd split the game is if I were maybe running multiple different games under one roof, but that would be more style than anything.

Group 0 every one can see.
Group 1 only players can see and post in.
Group 2 only characters have access to write in this group so the players are not tempted to post as themselves but all players can see threads.
Group 3 is seeable by players but the threads are closed so no one can post in them.

I have different setups for different games, but generally speaking I like to run the stuff that the public can see in group 0, use group 1 for setting and houserule details, and group 2 for the larger chunk of the game. The type of game I'm running determines whether it's by location or event. I'm actually running one where I might use group 2 for commonly visited locations, and group 3 for one off scenarios, even if they take place in an area the players normally visit, if for no reason other than to diffrentiate the scenario from the normal goings on at the place. For example, if the party is fond of a particular club, I would have a club thread, but I might run a shootout that occurs there in a different thread just so it doesn't seem like it came out of nowhere. Not quite sure if I'm gonna do that yet, but it's what I'm thinking.