Forum vs. NOVA/PBeM

Lol....we dare to be different. I've had a go with 3 different Nova sims (all ST) couldn't get a handle on them, so confusing for me.

 

I tried different games, but the platform that suited me most of Forums. Therefore, I am only strictly on forums.

 

It's so funny to me that so many of you like Forums for arrangement. I get so lost! lol. Sounds like we're still pretty evenly split up between the different areas. I'm excited to see what Nova3 brings... it should be good :D I need more time to play with the dev version lol

 

Sadly, there's not much to the dev version yet, so you're not missing much. >.< I see potential there, but you can't really even start poking at the skinning properly yet.

 

An update on Nova, there are now mobile friendly skins. Neptune was the first made available on anodyne xtras, and I think there may be more uploaded since I installed neptune on my site? Not sure. I know the skin creator has made more, I'm just not sure if she's shared them.

Also, the Nova developer has recently started to focus on a new development path for Nova 3 to help get a release out sooner.

 

The problem with forums for me is that I lose reading posts - I would use the "view new topics" but if I didn't read every new post at that point - or needed to go check something out in the mean time, I constantly missed reading submissions. That lead to the next problem of never reading anything and getting really far behind. With Nova and emails, if I don't read an entire post, I can mark my email as unread and go back to it later. Problem solved!

 

I'm an old school PBEM player and webmaster. In the old days I used to spend hours, probably days every month keeping our sites up to date. It was time-consuming and sometimes infuriating but it was just... what you did.

Since picking back up with RPGing last year I've been using Nova, and I'm now setting up my own game so I'm playing with it from an admin point of view as well. There are a few good things about it: I like the way it organises character bios and ranks, for example. But there is SO much stuff that is poorly thought through.

For example, you can't make new categories easily, and there's no direct way to link these to menu items without going right into the code. And even when you do go into the code it doesn't make much sense. That means you have to make do with the basic setup in terms of how you organise your site, unless you're a real MySQL geek and can get down and dirty with the server-side code.

Even having someone that could do that with me didn't allow me to do what I wanted to do. I realise that somebody has made this happen for free and it's a great solution if you don't want to customise much – but it's frustrating when you can see that you could change things, yet can't find a way to do it.

I see on the Anodyne site that there's been no information about an upgrade since last year so I'm not hopeful for v3. I'm thinking quite seriously about talking to some CMS developers that I know, planning out a more user (and mobile) friendly interface and crowdfunding, if I can find enough people who are interested. If not... I guess I have some choices to make :)

 

I believe that some people who prefer the Nova style I hear them say they don't know how to follow posts or get lost on forum posts? And yet that is exactly the problem I have with Nova. Forums were made for RPGing, especially those using SMF; even a novice can set one up it is just that dead easy. And the fact that you can involve the public, allowing them to see what you write, gets you more players on a regular basis. The other thing is having off topic sections and live chat; stuff Nova can't even compete with. Honestly I don't see any value in that system. There is one forum provider I won't go near, Jcink. Utter crap but I guess you get what you pay for which for most is nothing as they don't self host.

 

I have used but forums (many different types) and Nova. I used Nova for my very first Star Trek RP before the software was called Nova. I think it works perfectly for those kinds of RPs. But some genres need more flexibility that forums have.

 

I've been following PBEMs for many years via Greg Lindahl's list and a few other places. I tend to agree forum-based games take some getting used to but I've also found a number of amazing communities I'd otherwise been unaware of. I've never heard of NOVA but I'll defefinately give it a try.

 

I started back in the old school PBEM where I had to create my own site, and my players even had to do an email chain. I do currently use NOVA. In many ways it's just easier.

 

I guess I am reviving a very old thread.

I use Nova for the Dragon Age rpg that I manage. I like that I can easily create pages for maps, quest clues, monthly summaries of the adventure(s) so far, and detailed information about the setting on the website, along with organized bios for player-characters.

With Nova, only completed scenes are posted to the website for public viewing. So on the plus side it's easy for visitors to follow the story threads by reading complete scenes. On the down side, it's harder for a visitor to judge how frequently individual players respond to tags.

Also a down side, the default method for writing scenes is that only participating players see the contents of a scene as it is written. I get around that by including all players as 'authors' in every scene up until the point when it is posted and visible to everyone.

 

I even use forums for my personal fiction writing. It’s just what I’m accustomed to and I love compartmentalizing everything.

 

I've grown up with forum games, so you could say I'm biased--but I definitely prefer them. Especially now, with Discord as a go-between to plot.