[Fizzygoo]

A couple of posts in the past few weeks have made me think that a child board of Gamemasters' Lounge, entitled something along the lines of "Gamemasters' Toolbox" or "GM Sandbox" might be appropriate. This would be a Child Board where non-canon write-ups of locations, NPC and group outlines, playable adventures, etc. could all be collected in a place where GMs could easily find them and post their own adventure/campaign write-ups.

Specifically the following posts seem like they would fit perfectly for such a sub-board;

http://forums.shadowrun4.com/index.php?topic=5459.0

http://forums.shadowrun4.com/index.php?topic=5380.0

There may be older posts that I missed or forgot.

Now, even if the authors of the above two threads do think that their posts would fit a GM Toolbox child board (and they may in fact not be inclined to move their posts to an out of the way and less visible section of the forum, which I totally understand) two threads do not justify a new child board, I would think.

So this post is a testing of the waters, seeing what other GMs here think. Would you want a child board to the GM Lounge where you could read home-brewed adventures, location write ups, NPC & group outlines as well as posting your own? Players have their "Character creation and critique" section and I, for one, would love to see a similarly dedicated board for GMs.

What led me to this idea is that I've been writing up an adventure and nearly done and have been thinking about where to post it. Fan Fiction seems almost appropriate but it's for GMs, not players, so GM Lounge would be default, but it's not a war-story swap (though I plan to post notes on how it went once play testing is done), and so on which led me to the idea of a child board.

[gunrunner]

As a new GM working on preparing my first campaign, I would love to see something like this. It would be massively helpful.

[Mason]

I, for one, second this idea. I could post a great number of resources I have gathered and written to it. Another thread type to make in that section is adventure seeds. Small mini ideas that can be grown into a full adventure with a little effort.

[Mirikon]

One thing I'd suggest is to have different threads for different sprawls, and one for 'general', or unspecified locations that could be dropped into any sprawl.

[Crash_00]

It'd be nice to have a different one for each major sprawl, but we could probably manage it by just putting a tag at the beginning like [CityName].
Example: [ Denver ] Ohana Bar and Grill

I'd like to see this too, I think Toolbox would be a better fit as it would imply it for other GM world things as well. I for one wouldn't mind tossing my long list of Seattle contacts up there.

[Mirikon]

Well, the reason I suggested different threads is because it would make searching through things easier. If you're running Denver, do you wanna look through however many pages of Seattle, Denver, LA, Neo-Tokyo, Lagos, Hong Kong, Tenochtitlan, Carasir and Berlin contacts/locations to get the randomly placed Denver ones?

[Crash_00]

Oh, it would be nice, but I'd be happy just to get one new board. After all, we do have the search bar at the top. If we were to just adopt using a tag for each sprawl, then you would be able to just search [CityName] and pop up all the topics with that sprawl fairly simple.

I figured the biggest help would be to keep it more "permanent" feeling since it wouldn't dissapear onto the third or sixth page as fast as in this board.

[Fizzygoo]

I like the tag idea

[ location]
[ NPC ]
[ Group ]
[ Resource ]

etc.

Having multiple boards would be cool too, but that might get to "big" for coming right into the forum, so I vote tags ... which by default can be implemented for even if there's not strong enough support to warrant a child board.

[All4BigGuns]

I'm in favor of this most definitely I need ideas to steal borrow for games to run. 

[Crash_00]

Alright, here is my proposal for the tags. If we all agree on them, then we can make a single post explaining the tags and beg for it to be stickied on the forum.

Tag One
[Location]
ExampleTitles:
[Seattle] The Badge Bunny
or
[ Denver ] Neon (A Lakeside Gentleman's Club)
If the location in question is a supported (has official setting information on it) setting, then use the name of the location that is normally used. If the location is part of a bigger location, for instance Redmond Barrens being part of Seattle, then use the bigger locations name and use the rest of the title to specify the area. If the location in question is not officially supported, then use [Custom] as your tag. This will let a search of [Custom] to bring up all homebrew settings. In addition, include the actual name of the location in the title, allowing for the thread to be searched for by that name as well if needed.

Tag Two
[NPC] or [NPC][Location]
Example Title:
[NPC] Marky Two Fingers
or
[NPC][Seattle] Johnny the Wire
This tag allows for the search of all NPCs. If the NPC is particularly tied to a specific location, then the Location tag will help a search narrow down the results (as search of [NPC][Seattle] will only reveal NPCs that are tagged as being invested heavily in Seattle). If the NPC is tied to a custom location, then just use the NPC tag and note the custom location in the title as well ([NPC] Joe Smith, Georgia), this will let the NPC pop up in NPC inquiries and searches for the particular location.

Tag Three
[Resource] or [Resource][Type]
Example Titles:
[Resource] Updated Grunts
or
[Resource][Weapon] The Mr. Coverfire
These tags allow for all resources to be searched for with the resource tag as well as for particularly common types of resources (Weapon, Drug, Armor, Vehicle, etc) to be further sorted out if a type tag is used as well.

Tag Four
[Group] or [Group][Location]
Example Title:
[Group] Anti-Humanis Inc. "Where smacking them around is a business expense."
or
[Group][Seattle] The Redmond Choppers
This tag allows for special group to easily be sorted and, if a location tag is also used, easily sort the groups by intended location as well.

Tag Five
[Module]
Example Title:
[Module] A Juliette Story
This tag allows for adventure modules to be easily found. Most modules are easy to change the setting for, so the location tag isn't really needed here.

Most of those were snagged from Fizzy, just further explained, but everyone feel free to add more for us to accumulate together.

[Fizzygoo]

Looks good to me. It's simple and easy to remember.

My question now is...the brackets. Doing a search on "[Denver]" (without the quotes) brings up, it looks like, everything with Denver in the top post title, brackets or not, and all posts that have the bracketed version in their body text.

Curly brackets {} seem to only pull the top posts with that word in the title.

So some other marker may be better to use so that it only pulls from the toolbox. But I really like the brackets to separate the category out.

Nothing came up for "GM  -  Denver" or "GM  -  Seattle" (minus quotes and the spaces between the dashes). So [  GM  -  Denver  ] (no spaces), should force it pull only from the "Toolbox"

[Crash_00]

Weird, for me it only pulls up the three posts from this thread when I do [Denver]. Hmmm...I'll have to look into it.

Edit: Do you happen to have your search filter on Match any word? The entire tag concept only works if you're using the Match all words setting. If this isn't the case I don't really know what is causing the different results.

[Fizzygoo]

I just used the basic search field that's on every page of the forum on the upper right (it gives no options for filters).

Using the basic search bar, when I'm in the top level of the entire Forums, I get 11 hits (no settings offered).

 If I use the basic search bar when I'm in the Gamemasters Lounge section, I get 3 hits: one from your last post, Crash, one from the Handouts for a Denver Game thread, and one from the Resources for a Denver based Game thread.

But that's using Denver in the brackets [ ], and all 11 of the entire site basic search hits are either topic subject line without the brackets (8 of them, which says to me if you do a general search and put it in brackets it will default look for just topic subject lines, and not body text) or in the body text but with the brackets (3 of the hits). Trying a basic search with just Denver, no brackets, brings up at least 8 pages of hits.

If I use the Search page and use the bracketed "Denver" with "Match All Words" and check the "Search in topic subjects only" I get 8 hits (the same 8 from the basic search) none of which have a bracketed Denver in the subject title.

So it seems that, if one puts a bracketed tag in their subject line it won't make a difference in a topic subject search because brackets tell the search engine to do just that...search the topic subjects "only" unless it also appears as bracketed in the body text.

[Crash_00]

Figured it out. Its the most relevant topics filter. Its default and it picks what the engine thinks is the most wanted topic. It won't matter if you search for Denver like {Denver} or [Denver] or /Denver/, its going to toss other results in there anyway. That said, the ones in brackets should have their Titles highlighted at the tag.

For example, search [OOC] and it will show you two pages of results. Everyone of them that has the brackets will be highlighted in orange easily showing that it has the tag. Likewise a search of [NPC][Seattle] will show the one post from earlier.

I guess we could just require two tags, so it would be [Location][Seattle]. That should cut down on any extra clutter that will come into the searches.

[Fizzygoo]

Sweet. Sounds like a plan. Now just to figure out if it warrants a Child Board or not. This post has been up for around 5 days, with about 130+ views, and no one's yet said "no good for a child board for reasons x, y, and z." So maybe if we dial up a moderator...um, FastJack? Any thoughts about this?