Ideas for regular features

EricNoah

Adventurer
I like seeing the news go a little deeper than a quick summary and a link. I think with some effort there could be more in-depth articles and regular features that folks would find entertaining.

ideas:

Story Hour of the Week: Pick a person or two who read the Story Hour Forum regularly to highlight one story hour per week. Provide some sample quotes, maybe do a teeny tiny interview with the author, provide a link, etc.

Dig Deep into the Boards: There is so much cool stuff going on here on the boards it's impossible to keep up with it all. I would love to see an expert on each form dig up a couple of links to the neatest thing going on in that forum. You could almost do this daily, with a different forum being highlighted each day. Not only interesting discussions -- but also creations like house rules, the cool templated monster threads I've been seeing in the Rogues Gallery, explain how some of these message board games work (is You Bastard! still being run here?).

More ideas (not regular features necessarily):

Gameday Expose: A little investigative reporting into this kind of mini-convention -- what it is, how you set one up, what you can expect if you attend, what it's like for those who are hosting it, etc.

Hightlight new d20 Systems as they appear in different products: People seem to dig Unearthed Arcana because of its different ways of doing D&D -- there are lots of D20 products that do this too.

Comparative Reviews: I know, the reviews system is great, but it would be neat to see 3 or 4 similar products reviewed together by the same person.
 

log in or register to remove this ad

I'd like to do some articles myself, mostly on the types of items that come up here already but a little more polished and in depth. Also, I'd like to see a few features be community supporter only to encourage the setup of the accounts which make these boards possible.
 

Michael Morris said:
Also, I'd like to see a few features be community supporter only to encourage the setup of the accounts which make these boards possible.
Now that sounds like a good idea. I know Morrus posted something about what extra benefits could go to CS accounts, maybe in depth reporting could be one.
 


Some good ideas. I'm all for more "in depth" content, but unfortunately, it's very time-consuming!

Recently, there are two more "in depth" ideas that have been/are bring set up, but neither are for the d20/D&D news page:
  • Krug's "Friday Five" e-Publishing interviews. He did this completely off his own back, and I think it's fantastic!
  • SemperJase has a background in interviewing fantasy authors; he has worked for other sites, but approached me about switching to EN World. He's going to make a fantastic addition to the sci-fi site and, hopefully, will be the start of great things to come there.
If anyone ever wants to do something in depth (articles, interviews, highlighting stuff on the boards, or that-have-you), I'm very open to such ideas. For example, does anyone have the time to do a semi-regular "Messageboard Highlight" feature, as Eric suggests?

Mark - you used to organise gamedays (in fact you came up with the idea) - would you be interested in helping put together something on the subject?
 

Morrus said:
Mark - you used to organise gamedays (in fact you came up with the idea) - would you be interested in helping put together something on the subject?

I think most of the current wisdom that is available on the subject is located in this thread -

http://www.enworld.org/forums/showthread.php?t=81430

You could also collect the links from all previous and future gamedays and add them to the end of such a page so people could read how they developed on their own and learn by example.

I can't claim to having come up with the idea, IMO, since I merely took what Piratecat was doing in his home and expanded on it for a gamestore location. Admittedly, I have answered a good deal of questions in threads and emails to help others do the same, but I think the bulk of that has been in giving reassurance that it is fun and worthwhile. In many cases people (including those to whom I passed the Chicago Gameday torch) have done things in a decidedly different manner than myself with varying degrees of greater or lesser success than my own method. If you want somone to put together a sort of manual, I'd suggest roping in Rel for that duty because I think he not only has the right stuff to run gamedays but has a good grasp on how to convey that knowledge...much better than I believe I could do so.

Humbly,
Mark
 

Remove ads

Top