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Troll Lord
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The Knights Forums

Post by Troll Lord »

Greetings all!

We are beginning the slow shift of material to the Knights of the Crusade page. It is fully functional and easy to navigate.

I made a few posts of there today.

But if you have material on these forums that supports the game we all love, I'd love it if you could migrate it to the new pages!

Knights!

Trollzah!

Steve
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arcanechimera
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Re: The Knights Forums

Post by arcanechimera »

As Steve said, we are going to shift focus from the TLG forum over to the knightsofthecrusade.com website. We have a forum there, and can also add any content that you've written to the Society Library, which this forum can't do. If you need to talk to us, there is an active chat running on the KOTC site too.

I MAY attempt to move the content from this forum over to the new KOTC website. It is possible, although I don't know how difficult it will be. I didn't try to move it before because I know how important this forum is to the community. If I'm unable to move this forum's content into the KOTC site, I have been maintaining this forum and will continue to do so.

If you have any suggestions for categories for the Knights of the Crusade forum, please let me know.

Thanks!

Darryl

alcyone
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Re: The Knights Forums

Post by alcyone »

Random basket of thoughts:

I wasn't clear on what "material" meant. So, everything: posts, threads, topics, everything?

I initially assumed house rules, classes, items, etc. that are probably buried in posts and not formatted in such a way they'd be directly useful as KotC uploads. Many of the people who have written those aren't going to be around to package and port them into KotC uploads, but as long as this forum is up also we have time to do it.

So, every time we move forums, it's kind of painful. There is stuff out there a couple of forums ago that I think is basically lost. That's no reason not to try something new, but I would advise making sure the new forum can accommodate everything this one does: online game threads, questions, announcements, general RPG discussion, etc. To that end also, whatever forum plugin you are using, make sure it's really the final one you want and has the flexibility to grow and will be maintained long term, so we don't have to do this again anytime soon. And we'd need to make this forum read-only to force posts to go to the new one so we don't divide the audience.

Looking at the member list these days, it's becoming clear that the forum is losing ground to other forms of communication: it's not really as if we are moving 2,882 active users. Probably 50-100 counting lurkers and people who log in a few times a year. Alas, I don't want to use FB or G+ so I am ready to follow the forum wherever it goes.

One thing: if this makes it more likely we see posts from TLG writers and artists again, I'm all for it.

As for chat, MadCartographer had a good point, it's a lot more flexible to use an IRC backend for the chat; we can then access it through a number of different means, and then the chat plugin on the site could just be an IRC front end. For one thing it would be possible to set up long-term moderated channels, including Play-By-IRC events and Q&A sessions with TLG people.

Some of us maintain some of our documents off-site, in Google Docs or our own websites, etc., partially because we can then update them at any time without any go-betweens or hassle. Can we do that in KoTC? For instance, there are some very good house rules documents around, that some of the more active online CKs have, that are useful outside of their games and a good starting point for others, but if we upload them, they are frozen in time unless we can get at them and update them easily.

I appreciate the time and effort this all takes, and am not trying to be negative. I log into this place every day, and I am not even in the top 10 posters, so whether this is a done deal or not some discussion would be good.
My C&C stuff: www.rpggrognard.com

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arcanechimera
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Re: The Knights Forums

Post by arcanechimera »

Aergraith wrote: I wasn't clear on what "material" meant. So, everything: posts, threads, topics, everything?

I initially assumed house rules, classes, items, etc. that are probably buried in posts and not formatted in such a way they'd be directly useful as KotC uploads. Many of the people who have written those aren't going to be around to package and port them into KotC uploads, but as long as this forum is up also we have time to do it.
We'd prefer documents in PDF. Often times you can print something to PDF (even a web page). But, we can also accept it if it is in .txt, .doc, and .odt. The Society Library has examples of content that has been submitted. There is a document here for submission guidelines.
Aergraith wrote: So, every time we move forums, it's kind of painful. There is stuff out there a couple of forums ago that I think is basically lost. That's no reason not to try something new, but I would advise making sure the new forum can accommodate everything this one does: online game threads, questions, announcements, general RPG discussion, etc. To that end also, whatever forum plugin you are using, make sure it's really the final one you want and has the flexibility to grow and will be maintained long term, so we don't have to do this again anytime soon. And we'd need to make this forum read-only to force posts to go to the new one so we don't divide the audience.
I agree with you and have been working on it for quite some time now. Like I said I'd need to know what forum categories are needed. And I may just port this all over into the KOTC site.
Aergraith wrote: Looking at the member list these days, it's becoming clear that the forum is losing ground to other forms of communication: it's not really as if we are moving 2,882 active users. Probably 50-100 counting lurkers and people who log in a few times a year. Alas, I don't want to use FB or G+ so I am ready to follow the forum wherever it goes.
We will be growing with FB and G+ and integrating them more with the KOTC website, which has tools that we can use to help us do things like organized play.
Aergraith wrote: As for chat, MadCartographer had a good point, it's a lot more flexible to use an IRC backend for the chat; we can then access it through a number of different means, and then the chat plugin on the site could just be an IRC front end. For one thing it would be possible to set up long-term moderated channels, including Play-By-IRC events and Q&A sessions with TLG people.
That's a nice idea. If someone would like to set that up, I'm all for it. You might want to get an idea of how popular it would be, though. You could do something like run a poll on the KOTC site to see who else is interested. We won't be swapping out the KOTC chat for an IRC one, though. The current one is really nice, clean, functions well, and is tightly integrated with the site.
Aergraith wrote: Some of us maintain some of our documents off-site, in Google Docs or our own websites, etc., partially because we can then update them at any time without any go-betweens or hassle. Can we do that in KoTC? For instance, there are some very good house rules documents around, that some of the more active online CKs have, that are useful outside of their games and a good starting point for others, but if we upload them, they are frozen in time unless we can get at them and update them easily.
Yes we can do this, and have done that already for "Rigon's Whatnots" in the Knights Downloads. But, since they are hosted elsewhere, we can't guarantee that the data will be saved/backed up or maintained. In most cases I'd suggest to submit them to us so we can keep them organized and safe for you!
Aergraith wrote: I appreciate the time and effort this all takes, and am not trying to be negative. I log into this place every day, and I am not even in the top 10 posters, so whether this is a done deal or not some discussion would be good.
It's a done deal! I hope people will log into the KOTC site just as much. It was build by the community for the community with the support of Troll Lord Games. We're very lucky to have resources like this forum and the knights site.

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Re: The Knights Forums

Post by alcyone »

When does this forum close?
arcanechimera wrote: We will be growing with FB and G+ and integrating them more with the KOTC website, which has tools that we can use to help us do things like organized play.
How will FB and G+ help with organized play?
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alcyone
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Re: The Knights Forums

Post by alcyone »

On the KOTC site:

- Can't find a search function. There wouldn't be any point in porting over old posts unless there is one.
- What does "contact" do? Is there a mailbox in the Drupal software like there is here, or does it just email the user?

Everyone, if this forum is going away, now is the time to chime in if you think you'll miss anything from this phpBB board.
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Re: The Knights Forums

Post by Rigon »

I wouldn't want these boards to go away, if for no other reason than I house my House Rules here and while they don't change often, I do update them from time to time. And I have all of my old game threads and my current game on here. Plus, when I was looking at the Forum over at the KotC site, it has a very basic navigation structure that isn't as easy to use as this one is.

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arcanechimera
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Re: The Knights Forums

Post by arcanechimera »

Aergraith wrote:When does this forum close?
This forum isn't going to close. Nobody suggested it was. It might be combined with the KOTC site.
Aergraith wrote: How will FB and G+ help with organized play?
FB and G+ can help us reach a wider audience and organize more people to attend C&C events.

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Re: The Knights Forums

Post by alcyone »

arcanechimera wrote:
Aergraith wrote:When does this forum close?
This forum isn't going to close. Nobody suggested it was. It might be combined with the KOTC site.
Sorry, I guess I misunderstood then. Closing it would definitely move conversation to the new forum, otherwise us old grognards might be tempted to keep doing what we're doing.
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Re: The Knights Forums

Post by arcanechimera »

We won't be closing this forum. We're shifting focus to the Knights of the Crusade, and this forum may be moved to it.

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