Openroleplaying.org

#1

That is www.openroleplaying.org .

An open review, please.

The site is designed to promote and support indie game design, though it has tools and data that are useful for gaming in general. It has a very active forum community. The tips section is of the most use, but that is tooting my own horn. In the listing of disclosure, this is my home site. I don't own it, but I have been on the site since its first appeared 3 years ago.

Openroleplaying.org

#2

I was wondering when you would get around to putting it up. Been taking a look off and on since you have joined. I really like the site :) and your name is all over it.

Will give it a critical look.

Openroleplaying.org

#3

Computer crashed halfway through my observations. Will try and be as complete as I was the first time, but as you know, when a crash steals your work, the second effort is built on an aggravation of the first so it is usually not as comprehensive.

Site
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I really enjoy the site. It is graphically appealing, VERY EASY to navigate, and a pleasure to read.

Specifics
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Index Page
I usually like a small description of the what the site does or what to expect as one of the first things encountered so I know what I am getting myself into.

Community-
Topics unusually sparse considering 700+ members. Community is alive with some interesting conversations, but that is only in a couple of the forums.

There should be at least a survey running all the time I would think. There is always something to vote on even if it is a silly question.

Tools-
Die roller is one of the better I have seen. Be nice to have a quick radio button selection.

Gaming Tips: probably a highlight of the site, but you can only view one at a time on the main screen and when you do a blank search to get more, you only get 5. I want more shown at a time, because with 1300+ tips, that is a lot to peruse at 5 at a time even if you narrow them down. A choice of amount would be handy. They are mostly short, I would go with 50.

NPC Profilers: Pretty cool. Great for a quick flesh out of NPCs. Put that and a name generator together and you got instant NPCs with a personality...which are sometimes a rarity in games. Handy for fleshing out a PC as well. Get an idea and run with it.

Weather Generator: Have yet to meet somebody who uses one. We had a die with different weather on it, barely used it, and when we did we sometimes got a tornado. We stopped using it. This one is a little more realistic but, for me, weather serves the plot or added as a complication, not random chance.

Features-
Character Gallery: Great resource. Great search. I would want the genre on the listings though so I could just browse. Pretty much driven to the search page because of the lack of details on the list but the search is very comprehensive...almost too much so...Gender - Other OR Unknown?

Sometimes there can be too much detail. The search really breaks it out, but searching on a characters stats is not something I have ever seen before nor an option I really need.

Plot Gallery: The diversity of the genres is a negative in this instance. So many different ones and so many fit in each one it becomes a little overbearing. Only really telling detail about the plot is the title so you have to go to the search again. It is good to see a place that caters to all, but with the general type plots should be more general type catagories. For specific full blown plots then the detail would be handy, but that is not what they seem to be going for. The experience identifiers don't seem to help much either with generic plots and just confuse the listings.

Online Library: One LARP article.

Articles-
New Release: Should be deleted since it is blank and everything is put under "News" anyway.

News: Newsfeeds.

Columns: Ooooh. Some real jewels here!! (Articles need to be displayed better, they run together and hard to sort out at a glance).

Reviews: I don't generally read reviews because I rarely buy modules and such. (Suffers the same formatting dilemna as the columns).

Resources-
Two links going to the same place but the links are very well structured, nicely organized, and, most importantly, commented. Excellent resource for the topic.

About Us-
Contacts: Should read Contact Us.

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Overall I like the site and it has a lot of great resources and tools. I just don't think it goes over the top on anything and the lack of any content in many areas never helps. Definately a site to return to, but not sure if it meets the criteria we set to make a Sacred Seal Site. I may have been overly critical in a couple of areas because of my obvious bias.

Will see what the others have to say.

Openroleplaying.org

#4

Heyhey! It's spiffy.
I like it.

FYI About the tips....

#5

If you review a smaller subject, you get around 10-13 tips. If you review a larger subject, like "GM" you will get 517. It was originally designed to make a searcher focus the search (there are GM orriented story plotting tips that don't all come up from the GM search for example).

There are some cool tricks to make it much easier.

* If you find a tip you like, search again with the same title (first part of the tip), most of the better tip submitters use the titles to group their tips.

* Search for "e". This will list all 1300+ tips in order of submission. You will be able to tell when I joined the site.

* If you want to change the number of tips per page, click the see the next five link... then look at the address line.

...http://www.openroleplaying.org/tools/tips/search.cgi?t=gm&max=5&start=6

You can change the start and the max per page by adjusting the numbers...
http://www.openroleplaying.org/tools/tips/search.cgi?t=gm&max=50&start=400
This address changed will show tip 400-449, and the next click will be 450-499.

That is an old search engine trick, that no longer works for most search engines but still does for many cgi searches.

Not that this should change the review of the site, just for your FYI

Openroleplaying.org

#6

For tips, I generally would not go specifically searching for specific tips, I would almost always just be looking for a juicy tidbit to use. If I had a specific question I would ask in one of the forums.

The tips you provide should be as the header of that page for a quick tutorial on how to use the search to their benefit. If each user generally uses their own topic structure their could be an easy way to have prebuilt searches by clicking on a button as well.

Changing the number in the actual url is a good trick, if you know it. Works on my site as well I am sure you noticed, but it is even more simple to add the options as I did for those that don't know the tip....but if there was a quick tip section as you provided to me, that would greatly help the useability of the product. How many people do you think that were just browsing would take the time to figure all that out?

There is a lot of content, it is the useability that is a little rough around the edges.

Openroleplaying.org

#7

Looked at the site again just cause I am reviewing all these again.

Still like the site A LOT, still think it needs some improvement on the useability and visibility of the content and make it easier accessible. If it had that I would probably fall over the thin edge I am and nominate it.