Captain Jordan

Is 12 to young to start roleplaying?

Granted, we suspect that LARPs might be easier than PbP RPs for the younger ones.

@Ellri

Or tabletops. I kinda wish I'd gotten into tabletop games as a kid. A friend in middle school tried, but we never got together for that game. It took until college to get there.

Is 12 to young to start roleplaying?

Honestly, I've never seen an 18+ Roleplay that has actually been too mature for a high school student. I temper this with several caveats: -I'm not saying that the 18+ restriction doesn't exist for some legal reasons (as weak as they are). It does. They should be respected for that, for reasons stated above. -I'm talking about 18+ roleplays that don't actually venture into X-rated territory. Graphic sex, abuse, torture, rape, I'm sure those exist in roleplays somewhere. On the whole, R-rated/18+ roleplays don't usually involve those subjects, and I am speaking about those roleplays in particular. Now, back to what I said. Most high school students, especially upperclassmen, are basically mature enough to handle heavy violence, sexual drama, romance, and most of the other material that comes up in 18+ roleplays. Plenty of them watch or experience it already in movies, video games and on TV. There's also no shortage of places on the Internet where you can find that kind of thing. There are a few exceptions, some high schoolers are simply not mature enough for this, but so are there exceptions for actual adults who can't handle that kind of thing. So the question about maturity is usually pretty null. Roleplayers tend to be fairly young, anyway, from high school to college aged, with a few outliers on either ends. There are plenty of college-aged folks who are more immature than some high school freshmen, and since everyone really matures at a different rate, it's hard to pinpoint an actual age. 18 is pretty arbitrary when you think about it, but it's usually chosen as it coincides with the age of legal consent. And that's the key here. Consent. Legally, a minor cannot consent to a whole host of actions which s/he would otherwise be mature enough to handle. Not because there's some conspiracy against them, but because the law was designed that way. For some, it sucks. For most, it's just right. For a few, it's not enough. Could you join an 18+ roleplay, act mature enough and avoid detection? Yep, probably. Should you? No. If, and it's a big if but the if still exists, the Guild was ever discovered to have minors participating in mature situations, Mahz and the Guild would probably come under legal suspicion. It can cause problems. RPG is probably not as big of a target as the old Neopets once was, or other big boards like that, but the threat still exists. The best way to avoid this and keep the Guild away from that kind of trouble is to respect the 18+ restriction and wait a few years. Here's an alternative: Short stories that you write yourself don't have an age restriction. If someone really loves writing mature scenarios, but they're not old enough to join a roleplay, writing short stories on their own can be a creative outlet to keep the momentum going. That one's between you, your conscience, and your deity. Just don't share them until you are 18.

Mahz's Dev Journal

Statistically speaking, Apple is the leading smartphone maker in the US, followed by Samsung with their Android devices. However, worldwide (especially in Asia), Samsung, and Android in general, tends to lead the pack. While Apple and Samsung go back and forth for the title of biggest smartphone manufacturer, iPhones have had a relatively difficult time penetrating international markets where Android devices can offer a wider range of prices and specs. So it does seem that only in America will hordes of people line up for days to pay the iPhone premium.

Mahz's Dev Journal

Oh, and one other (also minor thing) that we've been annoyed by for a while... RP topics. Character sheet tab. Tab title. It uses the abbreviation [CHAR], when most abbreviate character sheets to [CS]. Is it an option to change that? And if it won't clutter too much... Would it be possible for RPs with the [NRP] tag (or in the NRP section) to have that tab renamed to [NS]/[Nation Sheets]? Or would that be more work to accomplish than its worth?

@Ellri

Until I came to RPG, I never called the character's description a sheet, and I've been in the RP world for 12+ years now. CHAR is an abbreviation for something that all roleplayers know, a character. The character description has many names. Character sheet, bio(graphy), app(lication), design, blueprint, etc. A newbie to RPG may never have heard the term CS before, so it would be completely un-intuitive what that tab was for. Keep it as CHAR.

Mahz's Dev Journal

Now that I'm home, I got to try the Guild on my iPhone (I almost never use my smartphone for web surfing). My thoughts: - The homepage is a hellish experience on a small device because of all the scrolling. Having to scroll the entirety of the Roleplaying category just to go between News and Off-Topic makes me feel like Odysseus trying to return home.

@Mahz

But the siren song is so beautiful. The RPs, they call to you!

- At the very least, I need to let users collapse/expand each category and then make the browser remember it.

@Mahz

This should probably happen on desktop, too. I'm sure there are a few people who would collapse the Off-Topic section if they could.

- Safari on iOS feels like Internet Explorer 5 in 2015. Can't even click the lil green top/bottom buttons in landscape mode (until I put a 20px margin between them and the edge of the screen). And in portrait mode, clicking the buttons open up Safari's status bar, so I have to click the green button again to let Safari know I indeed was interacting with the website I'm on. Feels like Clippy the Paperclip interrupting me.

@Mahz

Safari on iOS is just pure shit. I'm sorry to the iPhone users out there, but it is. At least on Mac, users have a choice of browser. I feel equally sorry for those folks actually using Internet Explorer on Windows Phone. I hear tell it's not awful, but still, it's IE. The web is no longer designed for IE, and Microsoft has a bad habit of ignoring the standards that don't suit them. /rant

- I need to fit more forums on screen. There's just too much padding between elements. If a forum has a subforum, it's pretty much doubled in height. Awful.

@Mahz

Eh, just don't crowd it too much. The fun part about modern smartphones is kinetic scrolling, which means I can usually fly past the parts I don't want to see. Eventually, my finger learns how fast to fling the page to land where I want, and then it's all muscle memory from there. Crowding the page will just introduce more link-clicking problems. You could make the link area larger, but that would probably also impact the desktop theme too much (for a while, phpBB had this thing where you could click most anywhere on a row to get into a board/topic, and it made for misclick hell!).

- I also need to auto-collapse the Who's-Online/Stats box. Mobile users can expand it if they ever want to make the page 2000px taller.

@Mahz

Is that so necessary for something that only takes up space at the bottom? What's below the Who's Online box that is so important on mobile?

Then I stopped and decided to start working on addressing these issues.

@Mahz

*cracks the whip*

Mahz's Dev Journal

@LegendBegins Alright, think I fixed the userbar-wrapping issue by just displaying "You" instead of username for now. Does it still wrap for you now?

@Mahz

This is kind of bugging me now. I got so used to seeing my username up there, now it kind of feels like I have no identity.

Mahz's Dev Journal

<Snipped quote by Shienvien> Cool. I'm trying to figure out how I can add a button somewhere that lets you toggle between the two polar device-width and fully zoomed-out scales. I think being able to easily toggle this will offer best of both worlds to mobile users as the desktop-scale is more reliable. As usual, my job here is never done. Like most things on the Guild, the experience will get better over time as I kinda chip away at it all. I'll be using the Guild via my iPhone as much as possible to try and smooth things out.

@Mahz

Typical button placement for that kind of functionality is at the bottom of the page.

Mahz's Dev Journal

<Snipped quote by LegendBegins> Thanks, I see what you're talking about -- the pagination and the userbar are wrapping in that shot. I'll play with some fixes right now. Didn't even think of usernames longer than "Mahz". Four-letter name privilege.

@Mahz

Maybe we should implement a 5-letter username minimum length. ;)

Mahz's Dev Journal

<Snipped quote by Mahz> <snipped image> Yes, it does. iPhone 5, latest version of iOS 8. And there's been a problem with the screen not automatically zooming to fit the size of my device. It's slightly bigger, which forces me to zoom out in order for it to lock in place.

@LegendBegins

Ugh, iOS does fugly things to the web. *grumbles about how it's supposed to just work*

Mahz's Dev Journal

<Snipped quote by Mahz> Could we also shrink all the profile/subscriptions/notifications links at the top, as well as the first/next/back/last page links in order to fit them into one line?

@LegendBegins

Looks like one line on my machine. The top title isn't, though, @Mahz. The "Play-byPost Forum Based Roleplaying." Kinda wordy and the Roleplaying word drops down a line.