Let's Play Archive, Claims and Rules ver. 4.0 - Read Before Posting!

And I'll do my best to make sure my Digimon LP is good as well.

Oh? We want to change how this thread works again?

Where were you guys a year ago? =P

I'm cool with making changes as long as there is some sort of consensus. I'd have to talk to Parish about some coordination with the front page and if that is even a thing we cares/want to do.

Also, if we want to raise the level of LPs around here the manufacture of a Style Guide of some sort would not be a bad idea (I've almost taken on this task myself several times)

I'm actually just stopping in before heading off for the rest of my holiday vacation but I did want to let you know that I saw this and will be coming back in the New Year to read through it all and discuss further

Thanks to all of you for contributing this last year!

I'm pretty sure I've written (and posted!) on at least two different occasions something along those lines, actually...

Link if you would not mind?

How To Write Shitty C&P LPs Part One of Forty-Seven (youtube link)

Had to dig this deep out of the Tech thread. Might not be what FL has in mind, but maybe?

looks good to me. you could add to SAVE your script beforehand since forums can (and will) eat posts.

maybe note what the image per post limit is for tt?

I don't know, I think the youtube mega-threads work because they aren't LPs that are being hosted here, really. They are more like the good LPs outside of TT threads. Of course, there are people who like to do hybrid screenshot/video LPs, and those of course should get their own thread.

I never feel like there's a real lack of content on here, but if relaxing the queue would help, then go for it. But I don't think we should have more than one LP of the same game at the same time. I think claims should stay, but I vote that when you make a claim, you have to have a start-date in mind and if you miss it, you lose your claim if someone else wants it ("start date" could be "when I'm done with this LP" for the regulars and people doing a series of games).

What McClain said, really. I'm not sure the queue is the only limiting factor for how many people do LPs, and I doubt we've got much capability to influence that number, but hey, what we can do, we should.

I'd forgotten that I had an updated version of that FAQ sitting around on my hard drive. So it's updated now with quite a few more useful things.

My issue with them is purely an advertising one; they "work" in the sense that they're a link to a current/finished LP, but they "don't work" in the sense that I can't see them legitimately driving traffic to the forum; it pains me to see them appear in the "last post" (in the main forums), as I doubt they would drive someone new to click through.

Ultimately - and going back to what Brick said earlier - if I want to watch a youtube LP of __________ I can do that by searching for it on Youtube, or subscribing to your channel.

When I enter the LP forum, I want to see our members creating quality LPs (video or not), not links to their Youtube account. They also do nothing to make me want to "click" them; I would check out something like Phenwah's Haze thread over another youtube thread any day of the year.

I'm not entirely sold on the idea of "claiming" LPs, but at the very least a thread of "I want to start an LP of this game on this date" wouldn't hurt anything.

Well the thing is if people aren't going to support a claim system then I feel like the potential for multiple LPs of the same game going on simultaneously would have to be acceptable, otherwise it just becomes a completely lawless free for all where the first person to make a thread automatically wins. First come first serve claims aren't different at all though in that regard, which is why I agree with McClain that a start-by date would be a fantastic idea, there's a ton of stuff claimed, sometimes for years now, that hasn't been acted upon.

I don't have a SA account, so can't read their rules, but to my knowledge there isn't a rule against two people LPing the same game at the same time. Yet, despite this, the number of active LPs about the same game is pretty darn small (Dominions and Dwarf Fortress LPs are the only ones that come to mind), despite having a much larger audience/threads.

I mean, have the rule if you must, but to me it just adds bureaucracy for little benefit.

Absolutely. I type all of my entries in Microsoft Word beforehand. Though the size of the documents doesn't indicate how big the posts will look. My first "block" so to say was 10 pages in Word. It was a few medium-sized posts.

This is a useful guide (when did the image limit go from 15 to 20? I coulda saved myself some posts), but it's not what I think of when I hear "style guide". I think a style guide is more like a set of rules for things like formatting and use of language or whatever. So the Yimothy LP style guide would probably say something about tiling multiple images between sections of text into a single image (to reduce the number of posts necessary). It might go on to advise that there be a gap of two pixels between each screenshot in the composite image, and to not go wider than three screens (for Master System games, anyway), and to try to have shots in multiples of two or three (so that you don't wind up with a blank space in the big image). And it would advocate for the use of the Oxford comma. But that's just how I like to do things, I wouldn't expect other people to do the same. I think a TT LP Style could be useful, but I don't like it as something compulsory.

Regarding reserving games, I think at a minimum we should be able to say that we're about to start work on an LP and nobody else should start one on the same game for a while. It's pretty unlikely to happen, but it would suck to spend ages putting together the first few updates and planning the rest only to have someone else start the game before you.

I mean, I don't really care. At the end of the day I only usually keep up with a handful of LPs and that probably wouldn't include two of the same game unless they were significantly different. I think it's a benefit for the LPers more than the readers to know what's planned. For example, Brick's been planning on doing DQ4 after he's done with FF2 for a while. Does someone really want to start DQ4 NOW and compete with Brick later on?

I think a claim/queue is useful just so people can see what's coming up and not step on other people's toes, but I think we should go ahead and clear the deck for stuff that's just been sitting there for maybe years now.

I'm semi-guessing on the image limit. I noticed that before I used to run into "you have tried to post 16/17/18/whatever images and the limit is 15, go fix this" at least once every single update, but I have not run into this in a few months.

I never felt that a straight-on "you must do this in your LPs" style guide would help participation; just the opposite. A guide to help with how to do various things that other LPs do is another matter, though.

Okay first post is updated and I think everything is current.

As to new rules. Let me go ahead and put in my inputs:

The Queue: As it works right now the queue just helps me know what kind of work/updating I'm going to have to do and when I'm going to have to do it. There are four open spots in January. There was an open spot in December until the 20th or so until on a whim I filled it. As it stands now there is nothing stopping three people right now from starting a LP.

I do not expect those spots to be filled. The queue isn't a hindrance mostly because there isn't enough interest in doing LPs right now. I'm fine with putting it on hold for now. Seeing as it was only created to handle the large amounts of LPs that were being created at one time. If that ever happens again it can be resurrected. I still want people to post in here though what they are LPing and when they want to LP it.

The reserve list: right now it gets updated every Spring. People are allowed to sit on a game for as long as they want to. If we don't want to do that anymore that's fine we can have reservations expire after a set amount of time.

video LPs: I think we're better off leaving how people want to do their LPs up to them. Every video LP megathread was created after I approved it. I assume if people wanted to have an individual thread for each of their LPs they would have done it that way.

style guide: We should have one. If there is a group of interested people willing to do this, I'm all for it. You can even make a thread for it and I'll sticky it. You will have to make something though. No, waiting around and talking about it forever.

front page stuff: I'm sending a PM to Parish now to see how and if this is something he wants to do

Probationary LPers: I've been all for this since we started the LP thread. I think we have far too many abandoned LPs here! Many of them started by low posters, new posters, etc. (also many started by veterans and high posters) I don't know how to deal with this. We could require people to finish a LP before starting a new one, we could require people to do a mini LP in the NWIOT thread, we could require someone to finish an abandoned LP before they get their own, or we could keep doing as we're doing.

Carry on.

I kind of think this should be a rule for sure. I don't think anyone, even a veteran, should have a bunch of unfinished LPs hanging around (is this even a thing that happens often?). But I don't want to restrict starting LPs from new posters so much just because we have never really been a post count counting kind of board and I don't want to start. But we should gently encourage new people to make sure they can finish what they start if they want to get off onto the right foot here.

I'm in a special case at the moment, where I've got my FFXI LP inactive while I'm working on my FFXIV one. I wanted to try and get the latter out before the relaunch of the game, but I've still got stuff lined up and ready for the XI one after the fact.

I like the idea of promoting more Micro-LPs. They're fun to read and to do, and take a fraction of the effort of a full-scale LP while still encompassing enough of the work of a full-size LP to give the poster a fair idea of if they're getting in over their head. Maybe we shouldn't require one, per se, before you can do a full-scale LP, but to encourage doing one first is definitely a good idea. Of course, if we do that, the Micro-LP rules may have to adjust accordingly at some point to account for an influx of new Micro-LPs. Trading one problem for another? Maybe, but I'd like to think it's a better problem to have than "dozens of abandoned LPs and growing".

We could do like the SA forums does, and ask that people make a "test post" in a designated thread first.

On the subject of a "style guide", I think I would want more clarification on what that means. This might seem weird coming from the guy who performed surgery on every FFT update to give it a certain "look", but I'm a big believer in having people create the kind of LP that they feel matches their own "style".

Certainly, I'm not against some basic tips (e.g. Make sure your format gels with the game - i.e. don't VLP RPGs in general), but at some point figuring out an LP means jumping in and seeing if you can swim. A test-post can accomplish any critiques (and hopefully make new LPers understand the work involved).

I could just be over-thinking what a "style guide" actually means of course.

- Eddie

Along these lines I would agree that making a mini-LP highly encouraged would be a good idea. It allows for the poster to get a feel for the work involved and gives a place for constructive criticism before a LP proper. I don't know if I would have that be a requirement, that seems like a lot of work for falselogic keeping track of who has and has not done their starter, but I do believe it should be encouraged.

I made a very deliberate decision to finish an abandoned LP before attempting one of my own, to get a real idea of the work involved and make sure I knew what I was geting myself into. I don't think this guarantees I won't leave FFL3 unfinished, but I suspect it reduces my chances.

I don't like the idea of making this mandatory, but I think "strongly recommending" than people do a mini-LP or finish an existing abandoned one before taking on a full-scale one of their own is a sensible idea.

I think it might be a good rule to require LPers to finish one before they can run more than one concurrently. As someone who was until recently running more than one concurrently, I would prefer that option to remain on the table.

Of course, sometimes people have Reasons that prevent them from finishing an LP, and I'm not trying to say that anyone who abandons a LP shouldn't be able to start a new one. There is probably a better way to phrase what I am saying, is what I am saying.

This. Preventing people from starting new LPs until they finish old ones could prove a much bigger problem than LPs being abandoned.

I think it's dumb to make a new guy finish an LP before starting one of his own. What if I'm a new guy and I want to LP a game but none of the abandoned ones appeal to me? We have a lot of abandoned LPs, but let us not forget that some of our best ones have come from dudes we had never heard of before.

(Was Eddie even around before LPFFT?)

Make? No, but offer as a suggestion? Sure, why not?

I was a lurker I think!

(edit: I technically joined this forum three days before Brickroad - in fact, if I'm reading the members list right I was the twelfth person to sign up - but I vaguely remember a forum before TT that Brick and others probably pre-dated me on.)

I agree with Brick tho; I don't think forcing people to finish an "abandoned" LP is a practical solution.We want to be removing barriers between people and the games they want to LP. If someone wants to finish "Legend of the Ghost Lion" or whatever, awesome, but let's not make it a requirement to start a LP. Ask them to make a test post, and if they want to start small (i.e. with little pressure), point them to the Micro LP thread or picking up an abandoned LP.

Let me further suggest that it's not really a problem to have abandoned LPs. Does it suck to have so many unfinished? Sure, but realistically we all get sad that they stop updating for a week and then they fall off the front page into obscurity. If there is a "problem", it kind of fixes itself. This is not to encourage the abandonment of LPs, but rather to suggest that it's inevitable that not every LP will finish.

If/when the front page archive happens, Abandoned LPs will be a non-issue anyway. Presumably we won't archive them.

Further suggestion: rather than having the big depressing Hiatus/Abandoned lists in the OP, just have a link to the Hiatus/Abandoned lists on a separate page. Instead of having giant lists of every active and inactive LP, it'd look something like:

• Current LPs
  • ...
  • ...
  • ...
• Recently Completed LPs
  • (ten most recently completed, mayhaps?)
  • ...
  • ...
• Completed LPs
  • ...
  • ...
  • ...
• Link to Hiatus page
• Link to Abandoned page

That way the unfinished LPs just slide away into irrelevance and aren't staring anyone in the face, but they're still easy to access if someone wants to go in and pick one up.