Hi,
I searched this topic but I was not able to find any help. Is there a way at Rpol to separate the total number of posts a character has made [IC-scenes- vs OoC]? In a game I am participating we are discussing this topic and I want to share what you guys know about this [recent joined this community, so don't slap me if I have raised a studied question. I say "slap" because I have recently slapped one of the GM's NPC several times during a healing ritual. I had to cure him again after my ritual :)]

I've never seen or heard of the capacity to do so, though I think it would be an interesting feature to be able to mark a thread as not counting towards post counts... Good question.

To the best of my knowledge, no, there is no function for isolating what posts are IC vs OOC.  For one thing, there's no way of flagging them as that within the game itself.  I'm in one game where the GM has repeatedly requested that all OOC commentary and inquiries be made in the OOC thread...yet the same four or five players continuously ask questions and editorialize on each others' posts in the IC threads, often as part of what is, otherwise, a standard IC post.

Since there's no function to flag them, however, there's no function to count them, either.

First of all I am not an expert in RPOL (with 5 posts I believe this has to be clear to anyone)

What about this approach?

Rpol is capable to count all posts from a character in a game. The different subtreads should have a variable that differentiates between each of them (scene 1, Scene 2,....OoC and so on). Probably is the name of the thread the responsible variable. Since all games are different and the variable name (threads) are all different:
Is there a way to ask RPOL, count the posts of character x in the thread "ooC"? If this could be done, we would only need to substract the total number of posts (which is always given) with the previous number. It may be not the perfect approach, but at least it will come closer to the total number of posts of Character x.

If your game has a thread dedicated to OOC (whatever it's name) there is a post count for that thread. It doesn't break the count down per character, however. That's probably as close as you'll get without doing a 'manual' tabulation.

Thanks for your comments. Since all characters participate in the IC and OoC threads, it is all mixed and we cannot have an easy way for the GM to differentiate IC and OoC posts. In a way, we will have to limit somehow posting in the OoC Thread [will keep us more focussed in the game :)]

Now that I think about it, I'm not sure why we even have post counts for characters.

A game where quantity is more important than quality...

I understand posting frequency being a concern, but I'm just curious what purpose other accounting and discussion would serve?

All of this is IMO, of course.

If someone doesn't want to post in a game, the only thing limiting their ability to chat in OOC will do is keep them completely away from the game.

At least if they're posting OOC, you know the interest is still there.

I understand all too well the frustration of players not making game posts, but it's not something that you can force -- and if you force it, you're going to end up reducing your player base.

A GM in a game knows, without need of counting posts, whether a player is more active OOC than IC.  That GM has the ability to discuss the issue with the player, and remove them from the game at any time if they don't participate IC based on the GM's preferred game speed.

In reply to jase (msg # 7):

Please don't remove it.  I find it really useful.

In reply to bigbadron (msg # 10):

+1

In reply to ESC1973 (msg # 6):

The GM can simply edit out the OOC comments from IC posts. Or, if in a benevolent mood, re-post them where they belong.

I join in bbr's petition to keep the character post count on the cast list.

I'm with Shannara...why would you want to limit OOC posts?  One of my favorite parts of gaming is the interaction with the people in the game...not the IC interaction of the characters, but the social interaction with the players.  I've said it before, but I used RPGs the way some people use poker to get together (in this case, in a virtual sense) with people who share an enjoyment of the game, but a lot of the time, much of the focus is on something other than playing.

Take that out of the game, or make me worry about how much I'm doing it, and suddenly half the appeal (or more) of that particular game is gone, and I'm that much more likely to give it a miss and move on to a game which will allow me to do things like share horror stories about dental visits or talk about my latest makeup project or grouse about my boss being a road-apple at work that particular day.  Doesn't stop me from being active in the game...quite the opposite.  But without that, I'm much less likely to go look at that game.

(And, jase, I agree that there's not really much of a practical reason for the post count...but I do find it helpful at times in dealing with people.  It's a little visual reminder of just how experienced they SHOULD be with the game, and can help me temper what might be a caustic response to a question when I see they've only got a few dozen posts, or lets me know that I don't have to go into as much detail if they've got a few thousand.)
This message was last edited by the user at 16:49, Thu 06 Mar 2014.

Let me chip in that I find character post counts useful in my games.  But (when I actually manage to be running one), that's because I do give PCs experience point rewards per-post, and it suits my accounting to know which post of theirs it is.  I would probably cope if it were removed but I'd still weep and moan. ;-)

I am personally in the camp that thinks keeping track of post counts in various threads would probably be detrimental to most games, along the reasoning of facemaker and Shannara -- but this issue has been brought up by other people in the past.

I like the aggregate post count as something akin to experience points, showing roughly a player's (or character's at least) time with the game. I don't use them *as* experience points, just saying they are similar in a way.

But I can't say anyone's preferred style of running a game is wrong, I can only say if it isn't for me.


From a user standpoint, if the idea is adopted at some point in the future, I think showing the breakdowns by thread (or possibly user group) should definitely be a GM-only data field.

And probably information that is only viewable from the character option adjusting page, so it's not always "in their face" if they aren't especially concerned. The cast list is probably too visible a place for it, and I can't think of any good reason the other players should be privy to such breakdowns.

Possibly a player's own post totals can be shown to themselves as well at the GM's option, perhaps enabled by a checkbox similar to the "User-editable character sheets" option.


As a technical solution, since a given thread's total count can be derived (RPOL visibly tracks # of replies to a thread, so the total number of posts, if not recorded elsewhere, is that # of replies + 1). I don't know if there is any way to actively search through a thread, but you might be able to take a thread's total posts divided by character x's posts, and the fields update on each new post (it tracks new posts already for the alerts?).

Or, possibly a running tally system could be started, determining where the player is posting at the same time their post count increases. Past post counts wouldn't be known by breakdown, but going forward after the change recording would be kept.


Problems might be "what happens if a character/NPC is deleted or changes owner? Or game status? What happens if game thread(s) are archived or pruned? Posts deleted by the user? Posts deleted by a GM or moderator? And do Private Messages count for anything?

EDIT: Dangit, this was not the Development thread again!
This message was last edited by the user at 03:16, Sat 08 Mar 2014.

As a kind of a "workaround" ESC1973: I was in one game where the GM wanted to keep OOC very separate from IC, and so set it up so each player had an OOC persona and a character, so on the cast list each player actually was responsible for two "characters." The game thread and OOC thread were in separate user groups, and the OOC "characters" were assigned access to only the OOC thread, and the "real" characters to only the game thread.

Also, and I may be recalling incorrectly since this was a while ago, a player had to always choose which character they were posting as from a dropdown list, even though they only had one character capable of posting to a given thread. Don't know if that was changed at all.

I must say it was personally confusing for me trying to remember who was who, and what they were referencing in OOC threads regarding things going on in the game threads, and generally unpleasant. Also, the cast list size was doubled, and kind of messy because of all the different "real" characters being mixed up with the OOC "characters" on the list by alphabetical order.

The "mixed up" issue can be addressed with some kind of naming scheme for the OOC personas, all starting with the same letter for instance so they are arranged together, and keeping track of who was who could be done by modeling the OOC "character" names after the "real" character names. Example: oocTrusk is the OOC persona for the character Trusk.
This message was last edited by the user at 03:11, Sat 08 Mar 2014.

Tnanks for the feedback and comments.

Or, to simplify the matter even more, name it 'Trusk-OOC'.  That way, the IC and OOC character names will appear next to each other on the cast list.  You still have them intermixed, but you can readily sort out who's who.  Either option does eliminate the confusion of who is posting about what in-game issue, since you're seeing the same name appear in both threads.

The 'experience based on/influenced by post count' is the only productive reason I can think of for wanting to sort the two out, because it's hypothetically possible to have someone who's forever commenting on stuff OOC but rarely posts IC.  Still seems like an incredible amount of fuss over a very trivial issue, to me, though.

Well, there's that, and being able to see, at a glance, which players are posting a lot and which are posting less.

Sure, the last posting date tells me that a player has posted recently, but without the post count I have to go searching through threads to find out how often he's posted recently.  Sure, he's posted in the last few days, but is he posting far less than everybody else over the course of a month?  If so, maybe I need to have a word with him and find out why?

And yes, I do keep records of the number of posts per player per month, so that I know if somebody post rate starts to slide.  While I might have a gut feeling that a player isn't posting as often as he used to, actual numbers will confirm whether I'm right or wrong.

...
Tallies in the scratchpad, anyone? No?